9 Best PSP Open World Games

Driver 76 came out in May 2007 and was the first Driver game for the PSP. Ubisoft Reflections made it with Sumo Digital. It is a prequel to Driver: Parallel Lines, set two years earlier, in the same game world and with most of the same cars and soundtrack. That makes it something close to a pocket Parallel Lines.

The story runs across 27 missions in six chapters, and finishing one earns you rewards like new cars and weapons. Players still put it on their lists of PSP games worth playing. It has never been the famous one, but it is a good pick if you want car chases with a story wrapped around them.

Test Drive Unlimited is set on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, with over 1,000 miles of roads and highways. It has over 125 licensed sports cars and motorcycles. You can visit dealers to buy a car or just take one for a spin, and you collect parts to make each car your own. Race winnings buy new cars, and they also buy homes and garages to keep them in.

One player called it "a more chill Forza Horizon", and that fits. It is the one to play when you want to drive without anyone shooting at you. Racing fans on the PSP call it a must-have. A sequel followed in 2011, and the series came back with Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown in 2024.

Midnight Club L.A. Remix was made by Rockstar London for the PSP. It is based on Midnight Club: Los Angeles, but it is not a direct port of the console game. You get a smaller version of Los Angeles, and Tokyo comes along as a second city, built from content adapted from Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition.

It keeps the open-city street racing the series is known for, with licensed cars and motorcycles. You move up through reputation and race winnings, and you can customize what you drive along the way. Players who recommend one Midnight Club on the PSP usually recommend the other one too. Two cities on one small disc was a generous deal for a handheld racer.

Chinatown Wars started on the Nintendo DS and came to the PSP later. It looks different from the other GTAs of its time and partly resembles the first Grand Theft Auto games. Instead of a camera behind your character, it uses a fully rotatable camera angled down at the action. The PSP version dropped the cel-shading for a more "classic" look, but the cutscenes stayed the same.

The PSP version had its own radio stations, which the iPhone version only got later in an update. Its multiplayer supports only 2 players. The most notable side job is trading drugs. You buy from suppliers, sell to dealers and read the market around the city to make a profit. It caused a fuss at release, but the game still got critical acclaim. Players still recommend it.

Need for Speed: Carbon - Own the City shares its name with Carbon on the home consoles, but it is a completely different game. There is no canyon racing and no drift racing. Your goal is to build a gang of the best racers and take over the city's territories. All the driving happens in the city, much like the open world of Need for Speed: Most Wanted. A light story plays out in comic book style pictures as you take over territories.

Police chases only happen in free roam, never during a race. Your crew members fill roles, and the Assassin, who replaces the console version's Scout, takes out several rivals at once with spike strips. That is a lot of job title for someone whose main skill is throwing spikes on the road. Players racing on the PSP keep putting it on their lists.

Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition is the third Midnight Club, made by Rockstar San Diego. It is an arcade racer built for wild, high-speed racing rather than realistic physics. The name comes from a partnership with DUB Magazine, which shows up all over the game as DUB-sponsored races and DUB-customized cars to win.

You race through open world versions of San Diego, Atlanta and Detroit, with 98 licensed music tracks that run from hip hop to rock. Players still swear by it. No racing game on this list gets recommended more, and it is the one to start with if you want speed more than a story.

Liberty City Stories is set in Liberty City in 1998 and serves as a prequel to Grand Theft Auto III. You play Toni Cipriani, a member of the Leone crime family first introduced in GTA III, who comes back from hiding to win his place back. He slowly gets pulled into a power struggle between the city's Mafia families. The city has its own period details, like the unfinished Callahan Bridge, which leaves a ferry as the main link between Staunton Island and Portland. A ferry is a slow way to flee the police.

Frank Vincent came back to voice Salvatore Leone. The game was a commercial success, selling over 8 million copies as of March 2008, and it is one of the best-selling PSP games. Players usually name it next to Vice City Stories, and the two make a fine pair for a long trip.

Vice City Stories is the PSP follow-up to Liberty City Stories, and it goes back to the setting of the second PS2 game, Vice City. It is the tenth Grand Theft Auto, and it came out as a PSP exclusive in October 2006, with a PS2 port in March 2007. You play Vic, who takes jobs from a man named Martinez until Martinez tries to have him killed.

Rockstar improved on Liberty City Stories here. The load times are faster and you can see further down the road. It received generally positive reviews and has sold over 7 million copies, which makes it one of the best-selling PSP games. Players recommend it more than any other open world game on the PSP, and it still turns up on their lists of PSP must-haves.