"Gran Turismo" for PSP, when a simulator meets arcade.

A couple of days ago I talked a little about the most recent installment of the most iconic driving game franchise on Playstation: Gran Turismo 7.

In that post I reflected a little on how sad it seemed to me that, despite having the most beautiful graphic finish in the history of the entire series, as well as great gameplay that made the most of the possibilities of the dualsense, it was a game that did not provide a very pleasant structure for the player, limiting our options too much from minute 1, and forcing us to tackle that adventure of acceleration and collecting from a very linear perspective.

And, while I understand that vision, I feel that even previous games like Gran Turismo 5 or 6 knew how to execute it much better, without the player having to give up their freedom.

Now, if we had to go to the complete opposite side of the spectrum, we would talk about Gran Turismo for PSP, a very striking experiment that reconnects us with simpler times, where the mere possibility of having a game of this stature on a portable console was surprising, although along the way it had to give up several of the virtues that made this simulator one of the most successful games in history.

The reason? Although in terms of gameplay the controls are not far from those we saw in its PS2 counterparts, Gran Turismo PSP is essentially an arcade, since we do not have any progression or story system, and our only purpose is to win races, collect money and buy new vehicles to compete with.

This of course leaves us with a rather bitter taste in our mouths, since it works very well for a portable experience, but at the same time fails when it comes to giving us incentives to keep us hooked in the long term.

It's strange, since the selection of vehicles is on par with the traditional console versions (830), and the same goes for the available tracks.

Gran Turismo PSP ends up feeling like an extensive demo, with good gameplay and graphical finish, but at the end of the day it's a good way to kill a couple of minutes of boredom.