Review Gran Turismo 7 – Excellent return to the old form

Gran Turismo appeared on the scene 25 years ago and has arguably revolutionized the racing genre. I still have fond memories of the original PlayStation release, which played a big part in my love for cars and racing games. A quarter of a century later, I’m playing Gran Turismo 7 non-stop on that giant PS5. The thousands of virtual kilometers that I have already covered in the game confirm it: GT7 is a very comprehensive, nostalgic and above all excellent return to the old form.

With Gran Turismo 7, developer Polyphony Digital is once again steering the series in the direction of a classic campaign where you collect hundreds of cars as if they were Pokémon. And that’s great, because predecessor GT Sport was mainly a very competitive animal, with a focus on esports.

Restful Sunday ride

But before you can start that old-fashioned solo campaign with your first, second-hand city car – in my case a Honda Fit Hybrid – GT7 treats you very quirky to a Music Rally. This includes driving a 1956 Porsche Speedster on a classical music medley and racing against the BPM of the song instead of against the clock. Your beats will be replenished as you pass through a checkpoint in time and your goal is to race until the track ends, passing slow moving traffic along the way.

The faster the beat, the faster you have to drive to keep up. Music Rally is a brand new mode for the franchise, but it doesn’t really feel that different to play than a regular checkpoint race against the chrono. This light-hearted music mode is a relaxing taste of the real thing, but I never felt the desire to play it again after that.

Like it’s 1997 again

It is mainly the return of the oversized career mode that has greedily swallowed up all my free time in recent weeks. The 25-year-old formula has barely been tampered with. Just like all those years ago, you’ll need to get your driver’s license by passing tests and countless races in affordable family cars before you can even get behind the wheel of something more exciting. You have to win races, provide your current car with necessary upgrades with your prize money, unlock and/or buy better cars and slowly but surely plow your way through all races and championships.

GT7’s campaign is definitely a much slower grind than in other modern racing games and that can be quite disappointing for those who want a 3 million cart right away under their virtual buttocks. But the fact that its driving force, Kazunori Yamauchi, has remained so faithful to that slower and frillless style, is actually quite refreshing in an era of overly hip racing games and more rewarding in the long run.

In the pub

The main interface is a map that resembles a resort, with several points of interest. Centrally located is the café, a charming coffee bar in the middle of a forest, which serves as a guideline for the campaign. Luca, a true car enthusiast and the sympathetic owner of the establishment, proposes menu books that represent missions to fulfill. These often focus on a particular car type or manufacturer, such as a collection of Japanese front-wheel drive sports cars or a collection of BMW M3s. While others are designed as short tutorials to introduce you to the various features in the game, such as taking a picture of your favorite car.

When you complete all your objectives, return to the cafe to redeem your reward. Usually followed by a short lesson on the history and significance of the cars you’ve collected, plus the next menu book to focus on. As you go through the 39 menu books (it takes about 20 hours to complete them all), you unlock more tracks, your car collection becomes more and more impressive and gradually all the attractions on the world map are unlocked.

For lovers of the car culture

The cafe is also frequented by other car culture figures, such as car designers, who, for example, have something to say about the model you parked outside the cafeteria. The dialogue, delivered via text only at the bottom of the screen, is spot on. Short, yet informative.

Celebrating automotive culture through knowledge and historical context is a central theme in GT7. At Brand Central, one of the areas of the game where you can buy new vehicles, most automakers have digital museums that recount key moments in their history through videos and slideshows. GT7 is truly one of car enthusiasts for car enthusiasts.

Be careful on the track!

When you drive your ever-growing collection of cars, you’ll notice that GT7 still easily stands out in terms of driving physics on console. It accurately replicates the experience of driving a real car, while still remaining fairly accessible to play. Gran Turismo 7 also does a great job of acclimating newcomers to the more serious handling with a range of assist options that you can keep on or off all the time as you become more confident, while experienced racers naturally leave those aids for what they are.

Sense-ational driving pleasure

Cars are even more different from each other than in previous Gran Turismo titles and everything – from the slowest hatchback to the Lamborghini V12 – has its own personality on the track. The ride is precise, refined and responsive. Here we must also emphasize the DualSense support in a particularly positive way, because in GT7 it is used to great effect. While driving, both triggers can independently simulate the feeling of locking brakes and a slightly vibrating accelerator pedal as your car struggles for traction. While the haptic feedback meanwhile rumbles convincingly in specific parts of the controller. While a steering wheel is undoubtedly the best way to enjoy GT7, it is certainly playable with a PS5 controller.

Rolling start

By stubbornly sticking to the 25-year-old formula, there are of course also times when Gran Turismo 7 feels a bit dated. For example, most races still start with a rolling start, where you start at the very back of the field with the cars spaced far apart. The result is not so much a hard-fought race, but rather a catching up to a podium place. The AI ​​of your competitors isn’t completely convincing either – the Forza series simply does that better with its Drivatar system – and that the cars have no damage model again is another quarter-century-old tradition that is still being honored.

Showcase

Although Gran Turismo 7 is also available on PS4 and runs very well on it, this is a breathtakingly beautiful game, especially on the newer PlayStation 5. There are two visual modes on the PS5. One prioritizes performance and another includes ray tracing. That technology is only used at non-interactive moments, such as in replays, menus or photo mode. It really made me want to watch every replay that automatically follows each race to pause frame by frame to get the perfect screenshot. During the races, the game always maintains a strong 60fps, resulting in a wonderfully smooth driving experience.

The car models themselves are painstakingly recreated in absurd detail and are the pinnacle of visual achievement. Every millimeter of both the body and interior has been meticulously recreated, bordering on photorealism. Visually I found the circuits a bit inconsistent. A number of environments seem to have a bit of extra shine or detail, which makes it particularly noticeable that some background details look rather low-res and a bit lifeless. Ultimately, the game’s lighting is so good that even disappointing environments still find a way to impress.

And of course, Gran Turismo 7 also benefits from the super-fast SSD in your PS5: you switch between locations on the world map almost instantly and within seconds you’re in a race. It is one of the most striking differences between the two versions.

Nice weather today

A day and night cycle and dynamic weather conditions mean you can start a race in the early evening and finish in pitch darkness. Or that you start on a dry track, but that dark clouds gather over the circuit over the course of a few laps and the heavens are opened. When it rains, large puddles form on the track and the way precipitation affects road holding has been simulated very well.

On a visibly damp track you will feel the grip decrease immediately and without a set of wet tires it is a chore to keep all that horsepower on the track. I find the effect of raindrops on your windshield from the cockpit camera less successful. If the sun shines again after a heavy downpour, the water will also dry gradually and irregularly. An insane eye for detail, which makes it an extra shame that this feature is limited to a number of tracks and is not extended to all 34 locations in the game.

The need for High Speed

In between are also a few old fan favorites, albeit with a slightly changed layout, such as Trial Mountain, Deep Forest Raceway and the High Speed ​​Ring. In addition to the fictional tracks that tickle our nostalgic knack, you will of course also race on the real classics, including the Nürburgring, Laguna Seca with the famous corkscrew bend, Brands Hatch and the most beautiful circuit in the world: Spa-Francorchamps.

Also in the huge car park of more than 400 cars, a lot of winks to the old fans. GT7 is reintroducing some of my beloved cars and there are plenty of iconic models in it. The line-up ranges from the cars you see on the everyday streets (the Civics and C3s of this world), to the luxury cars of Ferrari, Porsche and Lamborghi, to the cranked up touring cars and the futuristic-looking vision GTs. Enough four-wheelers to race and collect, but the car list would have benefited from some more newer models.

The hardcore car enthusiasts can also spend hours fine-tuning their vehicles in complex menus, while everyone else simply select tuning parts that increase the performance points of the car.

About how…

There is still so much to say. About how completionists who want to add any car to their GT7 collection must be willing to spend a significant amount of time on the game. Or about how you have to cough up a few million credits for the most coveted models and how the game keeps telling you that you can also spend ‘real money’ as an alternative to the endless grind. About the different car dealerships and the way two of them take into account the trends in real life. And how about the multiplayer, which again has the potential to produce a very successful competitive scene, but which I could not give enough attention to.

Gran Turismo 7 is definitely the most complete and best Gran Turismo game ever and simply one of the best racing games on the market.

One of the best

But before this review gets too long, I just want to say that this game turned out to be exactly what I, a long-time Gran Turismo fan, expected. Technically and content-wise, this is absolutely the most complete and best Gran Turismo game ever and one of the best racing games on the market. It’s a game that may look a little too hard at the past and stay too true to its puristic approach to win over all newcomers, but it’s the perfect gift to celebrate a quarter of a century of Gran Turismo!