I got to spend a little bit of time with Gran Turismo PSP at E3 last week and while I tried really hard to both play and record footage, the footage lost out so you’re just going to have to read about it.  I think most people were pretty surprised when it was announced the game would run at 60fps.  Seeing the game running first hand, you’d almost think it was running on a new PSP… it looked that good.

More impressions after the break…

I should probably state that I’m not a big fan of sim racers.  I played the original PS One version of Gran Turismo pretty extensively, but since then I’ve found my true(r) love to be more arcade style racers.  That said, I’ve always been one to appreciate a well made racer, regardless of the style.

The graphics and frame rate of GT PSP are attention getting.  I can’t really say if they’ve been working on this game since before the PSP launched or if they had scrapped their work and started over (I mean they literally did have enough time to do that!) but for fans that still long to play Gran Turismo on the go, you wait looks like it will finally be shorter than “forever.”

I really wanted Gran Turismo to play “faster” than it did.  This is one of my personal hangups with sim racers.  It was gorgeous and buttery smooth, but you still look like you’re poking along until you get to the highest of speeds and usually by then, you’re in for a crash because there is inevitably a turn in the road.  There was no damage in GT PSP that I could see, so while its big brother GT 5 will be getting the damage treatment, they’re either not showing it at this point, or we won’t be getting it on the go.

They listed the number of cars (800) and tracks (35) as well as track variations (60) and drove home the point that Gran Turismo was not a compromise on the vision of a Gran Turismo game, it was merely Gran Turismo that played on the PSP.  I found this an interesting take on what I’d read their more recent goal for the PSP was… shorter games that are more easily played in small chunks.  Gran Turismo PSP seems to be the exact opposite… a full fledged console game, running on a portable.

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