App Title: Grand Theft Auto: iFruit
App Type: PlayStation Vita
File Size: 255 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes
When was the last time I did a review on a PS Vita app? To be honest, I don’t even remember…Okay, now that I’ve gone back to look, I haven’t posted an app review since February 2016! 4 months away and I’m finally getting back into the app scene. However, I’ll be honest that I’d been thinking about reviewing this app for a long time, but never really had the drive to go download it. I saw it in a random search for the Grand Kingdom demo, so I nabbed it while I was there.
To go into a bit of a background, this app has to do with Grant Theft Auto V. While I have barely even touched GTA V’s story, I’ve played a ton of GTA Online on both PS3 and PS4. In fact, I just reached Rank 100 in GTA Online last night. This begs the question of why I’ve spent so much time in GTA Online and waited until now to download the PS Vita Companion App for GTA V. No answer for that, really. However, here is my review of the PS Vita app, Grant Theft Auto: iFruit!
Interface
When you boot up the iFruit App, first you go through the same Privacy Policy and Terms of Service you have to do in order to play GTA Online. Then, the interface starts with an iFruit banner at the top and large square “app” icons for each feature of the game. Said features are LS Customs, Chop the Dog, Settings, GTA V, Life Invader, and Store.
Each of these has a different interface available. For starters, three of these apps don’t actually use the iFruit App. When you open the icons for GTA V, Life Invader, and Store, they launch the PS Vita web browser and open web pages. The only icons with actual interfaces are LS Customs, Chop the Dog, and Settings.
The LS Customs app is set up in a horizontal fashion with slots containing each set of cars. You have sets for each of the three GTA V Story characters, and a slot for each of your GTA Online characters. You can use the touch screen to navigate through your vehicles to choose one you wish to customize via the app. Aside from this, there are buttons across the bottom for the various features.
It’s worth noting about the LS Customs app for a couple reasons. First of all, you can customize your own License Plate, like me putting R2G on my plates and then using them in GTA Online. This is something I have yet to find the ability to do in the main game, so that’s a nice reason for owning the app in general.
The upgrades you can do to your vehicles is also here, from Horn and Resprays to Engine and Transmission upgrades. You can scroll through all upgrades, it says how much everything costs, and goes as far as showing you colors for paint jobs and lets you listen to all of the different horns you can use to customize the vehicle with.
The only thing is the while you can do these upgrades in the app, you still have to go into GTA V/Online and travel to an LS Customs to process the order, which kind of defeats the entire purpose of doing it in the app. You might as well just go and do the same thing in the main game without it.
Chop the Dog opens up a screen showing the dog you gain in GTA V and some buttons on the right hand side, symbolizing what you can do with him, like feeding, training, gifts, etc. It’s a pretty simple feature and both this and LS Customs have touch icons you can use to go back to the home area of the iFruit screen.
Settings is simple as well. It is a simple scrolling menu like a web page that allows you to replay tutorials for LS Customs and Chop the Dog, and switch between your GTA Online characters and the platform between PS3 and PS4.
The design is very smartphone-ish and easy to figure out and use. The tutorials there are also helpful so you don’t just go into the different apps blind.
Performance
Performance with the app in general is done quite well. It flows nicely and there are no noticeable issues with lag, freezing, or hanging, despite how unstable Rockstar’s GTA Online servers tend to be regarding auto-save in the main game. An app shouldn’t really have performance issues, but I believe it is always worth noting in this regard due to the many media streaming apps the Vita has that do have performance lag, like Netflix and Hulu.
One thing I’ll say that’s poor about the performance is that Life Invader doesn’t load. Whenever I tap it and the web browser launches, it partially loads and never finishes. I’m always left with a blank white page. GTA V and Store load just fine every time I use them, but Life Invader has never worked for me.