There is love work, and then there is Gran Turismo 7. From the famous Polyphony Digital developer and the creator of the Kazunori series Yamauchi, it is perfectly clear that each member of the studio has a passion for cars. In fact, we could even sell them uncovered. Gran Turismo 7 is a game born of love. These are the motors under the hood as drivers behind the steering wheel and spirits that have designed the engines. If you have not already appreciated the cars before Gran Turismo 7, you will certainly make it after.
The game goes beyond to put the manufacturers, young and old on a pedestal. Not only can you buy and drive digital replicas from vehicles they produce in real life, but also discover their origins and what brought them where they are today. It is a deep dive in the history of the car, detailing the beginnings of the automobile with game chronologies specific to each company. All the experience resembles a celebration of culture and entrepreneurship that almost uses the car race as a simple facade. Note, this forehead is being spectacular.
The real driving simulator returns with its biggest asset to launch: a solo campaign. Implemented months after the facts in Gran Turismo Sport, the seventh entrance to the main line gives the impression of having the best of both worlds. Long-standing fans can start their quest for automotive size with the Sunday Cup, while online riders can resume where they stopped with multiplayer sport mode. No if or but: Polyphony Digital delivered both sides of the track.
It’s the solo campaign, however, who will have the most unconditional supporters for a PlayStation 5. Once again, you can go from the competition against Toyota Yaris and the Honda Civic to the raising of the checkered flag in a bugatti Veyron. The CARPG, as it is nicknamed, successfully reproduces the history of the rags to the wealth that the series told six times before.
New in this episode, the GT Café, which acts as a kind of starting point for progression. Instead of browsing tournament lists that you can participate, Gran Turismo 7 is articulated around menus. Not literally, but rather a small collection of objectives to fill in new games of wheels. This is how you will get the vast majority of your cars collection at the beginning of the game, accessing a variety of vehicles you can take to other events. This creates a natural sense of progress that allows you to familiarize yourself with the mechanisms of driving and handling the game before moving on faster cars and other types of slopes.
However, at its credit, the functionality is another reminder of how the title is not limited to the race towards the finish line. Each menu has a certain theme, and after performing all the tasks listed, the owner of the GT Café, Luca, will provide a story on the cars you just added to your garage and what makes them relevant. Unfortunately, nothing of this is expressed, but it still reinforces the way Polyphony Digital has developed a game that is not limited to fighting for the first place.
If that’s what you want to focus on, then Gran Turismo 7 will always serve you very well. The campaign can be adapted to your needs, with adjustable difficulty levels to get the right amount of simulation for your skill level. Running lines and automatic braking options can be activated for beginners while veterans can disable all assistances to reproduce reality. No matter where you are with driving in the game and in real life, the game has a frame for you. After all, everyone should be able to discover The Corkscrew of Raceway Laguna Seca.
The titles Gran Turismo have always reached this ideal point with their orders and their handling, and the same thing can be said here. By respecting the settings you have defined, your steering wheel skills will be tested against an IA and the weather somewhat difficult. He sticks to what has been proven: an incredibly satisfying game driving.
This is the ps5 dualsense controller that pushes the experience beyond. The use of the haptic feedback by Polyphony Digital is absolutely exceptional, competing with the Astro game room as the best use of the functionality to date. We really feel that the steering wheel is there in your hands while the bumps on the road and the puddles are reproduced in the entrails of the controller. The vibrations move quickly from the front to the back of the pad, giving the impression that you are really there on the track. Moving at such high speeds, the game is not afraid to make these rumbings even rough if you catch them under a bad angle. It’s an incredible sensation between your hands that proves what the haptic return can do to raise the Games of the PS5 generation.
Adaptive triggers, meanwhile, are much less pronounced. They are designed to imitate braking, applying resistance when your car stops. However, this resistance disappears if the brakes are blocked. It is true to real life, but it is a functionality that only enthusiasts will appreciate. From the point of view of a newcomer to race, you will hardly feel the impression that there is no adaptive trigger support.
However, the management of the PS5 SSD is no doubt. Ultra-fast loading times make license testing attempts, allowing you to enter and exit attempts faster than the three-second countdown to launch the challenge itself. The same goes for starting races and navigation in the menus: the loading screens belong to the past in Gran Turismo 7.
Curiously, the main menu from which you access all the features that encompass the solo campaign is surprisingly slow. Click on one of the icons leads the game to crawl, almost as if it were caught up with something. We thought it could have something to do with the required online connection, but after testing the offline things, the main menu always seems to freeze for one second after leaving it and returning it. Perhaps a post-launch fix will tend to matter.
The main menu will also be strongly used because it contains many options. You can sort your collection of cars to the garage, then customize them at GT Auto before working on the pieces under the hood at Tuning Shop. Your vehicle portfolio can be expanded when selling car auctions, the Legend Cars tab invites you to buy classics and Brand Central is the place where the fastest drivers of the planet live. Although it can sometimes be a bit awkward, the main menu offers a multitude of clear and concise options that simplify progression and navigation.
Maybe his disadvantage is how it begins to introduce random elements into the experiment. After completing the Café GT menus and won specific races, you will have the chance to run a kind of price filled with price. You will always be rewarded with something, but that has sometimes put us a little uncomfortable. Another variant shows you three cars you could win, and you must select a random card with the vehicles behind. Of course, we almost always had the impression of receiving the least credits or the least efficient car. With the “Reload on the Playstation Store” icon has been displayed forever under your credit balance, it is clear that you can pay your way immediately to the best cars of the game.
Second opinion
I have a chance to have a Logitech G29 and Playseat Evolution configuration at home and Gran Turismo Sport has been my constant driving game for almost five years now and has been one of the first games installed on my PS5. GT Sport has been my first Gran Turismo since the original Playstation titles and it’s this wheel configuration / seat that has completely changed the game for me, finally making the approach of the really fun GT simulator to play. So, like a lot, I look forward to Gran Turismo 7 since what seems to be years now and he is finally here.
Coming from GT Sport, Gran Turismo 7 looks like a major update of the operating system of your phone or your laptop: everything is always there, but it has been completely reorganized and some elements have been redesigned. At first, I was a little disappointed, the gameplay in the race was identical, the visuals were very similar and the slightly disorienting menus. But just like getting to know a new version of the operating system, with a little bit of time, you start to notice and enjoy all the minor improvements, you get used to where things have moved and quickly start again. You feel comfortable in your new normality.
The structure of the coffee campaign means that the general progression towards better cars seems slower and given the substantial price to buy the game, you will also need to invest a lot of time to win enough credits to acquire truly fun cars to drive Unless you walk in undernourished and terrible cars with horrible brakes are your kind of thing. It is great to see that all PS4 compatible wheels / pedals appear present and correct with this last entry and serve as a perfect example of how GT7 is clearly a natural evolution of GT sport, refined, polished and improved rather than supercharged – And something that I can not wait to go from countless hours with him over the next few years.
Antoine Dickens
General manager
Return to the track and weather effects are another key detail that could have an impact on your place of arrival. Water puddles that raise water when crossing them with the foggy mist generated by cars in front of you, it is incredibly impressive to see how the dynamics of a race can change radically when it starts to rain. If you are caught off with bad tires, the rain can sound the knell of your track performance while you skid off for adhesion.
The game also passes subtly from the day to the night, which means that two turns can be entirely different from each other when the headlights are lit and your vision decreases. In synchronization with all the bursts of…