I played this game on and off for over a year now, forgot to write a review so this is not fresh in my mind but I made up my mind on this game a while back so here it is. I’m no racing enthusiast but I’ve been a GT fan since the first game, the realism, the way it’s a sort of car RPG where you level up cars and get to higher races was always addicting to me. For some strange reason I have only ever played the odd numbered GT games, GT3 being my favorite easily. GT5 felt kind of like the series was lost, spreading more online than focusing on the career mode. Grab Turismo 7 though is a great return to form with an involved meaty campaign and loads of modes to mess with, all tied together in the most slick presentation I have ever seen in a car game.
There are games where you can feel the love from the developers for the topic they are covering, it oozes out of every area of the game. GT7 is a car historian love letter to racing in general. The game itself feels like it was made with white gloves on, as if I am getting a personal history lesson from the most high end car museum. Nearly every car manufacturer represented in the game has their entire history told through a slide show with real photos of their first cars, their first racing wins, their factories, their models, their creators. It is a car enthusiast history lesson, I don’t care too much about racing history but the amount of love this game shows for it was addicting and it made me want to read up on it. Every car gets a detailed history with what year it came out, how much power it had for the time, how long it was in production, was it successful or not and so on. To top it off you can view every car in exquisite detail with the car model viewer, all interiors perfectly recreated. It’s one thing to see it in a tv, seeing it in VR, oh man, might as well be at a car show. I can’t think of a game where I enjoyed the menu information as much as this game, so before even playing a race this game is impressive.
So how is that racing, well it’s easily the best Gran Turismo has ever been. I cannot tell you how accurate the Mustang 67 feels. I can’t tell you if other games have better physics. I can only say as a casual racing player that the feel of the cars is the best I have ever played in a game. Every car feels different, the way each car responds on the tracks feel different. The weight of braking, the acceleration, the pull of turning, it all works so well. From my perspective it feels like I am driving different vehicles rather than arcade like video game cars. Then add things like how the weather and tire wear can affect the driving, it takes it to a whole different level. It’s an absolute joy to drive in this game.
Hell most of my favorite moments was just doing time trail missions against my own ghost, I didn’t even need a race, it’s just me against myself trying to master a turn on a track. That alone was hugely compelling and humbling. I cannot imagine the reflexes and pinpoint accuracy needed to achieve the best times consistently on a turn, it feels inhuman. I could get a good time once, try to replicate it and it’s almost impossible, it matters down to the split second when I brake, how hard I break, what angle I take the turn, it’s all those things and every tiny little bit has a massive impact on the time.
Every track has a time trial mission where it gives you a set car and times to beat for each section of the track, you can earn gold/silver/bronze depending on the time, one final full lap trial awaits the end. I loved these, it taught me how to navigate each track even though gold was usually out of reach for me. Each had a small video showing exactly how they got the best times but watching someone driving and trying it yourself are two different things. If anything this game gave me a new found respect to everyone that can master this game, and by extension awe for those who do this in real life.
GT7 forgoes the usual event tree campaign mode for a new more guided experience that uses “dinner” menus. So you get a menu of a certain kind of car and the races you need to compete with those cars to complete the menu, you then earn some cars as rewards and unlock the next menu. In classic GT fashion you begin with slow cars, the first menu being something like a 70s love van race. You go to the events page and the event for that is available. The events still have the usual cup races where you can enter any car of a certain class or horse power limit but there aren’t the variety of past GT games. It’s best to just follow the menu as it will have you complete the series cups as you play along.
This is where GT7 lost some people, it’s not as open and free as past games. There was a certain joy in starting with a Toyota Camry and slowly buying better cars and racing in better circuits and doing it your way. That’s still present in this game but now it’s done the games way, so everyone will take the same route, getting same cars, following a menu… I prefer the old way, I think most do as well but this method does allow way more cars to shine and get attention. Every manufacturer gets an event, you learn about a bunch of famous car models as you play. It’s part history lesson and part climbing a sort of car tower till you reach the end of the menu and you finally get a real racing car.
Once the menu is done you do get the ending credits but that’s kind of when the main races open up. A bunch of advanced racing cups become available and finally you can do some really long events with points and more traditional settings. The worst part of the menu wasn’t making you play with every car, it was that it really took away the multi race events away. Almost every race in the menu was one time race here, one there, another there. The series of races with points was saved for the “boss” at the end of each license level. So you could play this game for like 30 hours and almost do no real racing events.
Then there is the extremely weird obsession with rolling starts and having zero qualifying races. Basically every “race” is a chase, it’s not a race. You almost never start somewhere in the middle, it’s always starting at the back and it’s a rolling start and you have like 4 laps to catch the front car. This means your car needs to be much faster than the competition to win, so I just picked the fastest car or upgraded some parts to get more horse power and boom I always won the chase. The AI was also on a kind of script and when you replay the races you can see it’s kind of all already predetermined what would happen. So while the act of driving is the best in the series, the way this game handles its racing is kind of disappointing. It’s only till the end when you get the real racing events where your car is always evenly matched that your skills as a racer is the only way to win.
About a month after release there came an update with experimental AI, these were four races against these four AI racers. These races were so different from the standard ones. This AI felt like humans, they raced differently, each had their own temperament. They would react to you trying to overtake them. Like a human they would make mistakes and clearly were not following a script. It’s a damn shame the race options were so limited because that AI was a game changer. Still no word if it will ever be implemented into the game, I doubt it at this point.
The racing part was maybe the weakest but thankfully there are so many ways to play this game. There is a whole mission mode where you get a ton of different missions to complete with a wide variety of cars and situations. Some are as simple as executing a turn perfectly, to doing a certain track in extreme weather. Managing fuel while driving on a track with plenty of downhill driving for momentum was one of my favorites. You will also find the endurance races here but 24 hours of driving is not for me. Licenses are of course in the game and are a great way to learn the ins and outs of racing. The final license was pretty damn hard, there are optional gold medals to go for as well for rewards.
Every event you do or mission you compete earns you money or gift cars. There was a lot of talk about exploitative F2P style monetary systems in this game where they made it very annoying to earn enough money to buy the most exotic cars. Also there are all kinds of free to play staples in this game like roulette wheels (which are broken and always give a totally shit prize that is useless), daily log in bonuses, timers on cars being on sale and so on. Clearly they did this to push real life microtransactions to exploit the players who can’t help themselves. If you are a player that wants to buy every car then this game is impossible, it will take ages to earn enough and it will be infuriating that those with real money can cheat their way to it. But if you are like me and just want to buy whatever cars you like you will have more than enough money to fill the garage with a nice variety of great cars. It’s a shitty practice, it has no business in a GT game but it didn’t change how I played much.
Speaking of cars, as usual there are hundreds to buy and drive. There is an issue though, it feels like this game was made in 2012 or something cause basically all models are from before that. There are a handful of new cars but that’s it, almost everything is from years go. It probably has to do with model reusing of some kind, I’m just guessing. So anyone hoping to race in that new corvette or Ferrari, well you can race an older one.
There is also a complete online mode which is an entire game on its own. I dabbled a little in it but even the intro scared me as it has a video that teaches you to behave when you race, that you will be penalized for any bumping, bad sportsmanship, cutting corners, all kinds of stuff. So I did a few races and I was being penalized all the time, my car gets forced to slow down, everyone is better than me, it was not happening for me. Also a bunch of the races were on a timer, so you had to wait sometimes up to like 8 minutes for a race to start, I guess that’s if you are doing the official GT sport races. Online felt way too major league for me, I am not that serious into racing but for those that are i’m sure it’s good.
I played this game in two parts, I did most my play when it first came out, took a break and came back when PSVR2 hit. This game in VR is something else, it is absolutely incredible. That’s that I don’t have a racing wheel, even with a dumb controller in my hand, the feel of being in the car, being able to turn my head with to follow a turn or see other cars come up beside me is incredible. I can’t imagine going back to standard racing. This has some of the best VR implementation I have ever played and it’s definitely one of the very few reasons to get PSVR2.
This being Gran Turismo you know the game is a graphical showcase. The car models are the best around, especially in VR it’s wildly impressive. The race tracks look great but not exactly the next gen leap I was hoping for. On the music side I was very disappointed. GT games used to have great soundtracks and this game is mostly some unknown tracks in limited genres of music, I didn’t care for any of it.
Gran Turismo 7 was a nice return to form and feels like the best GT game since the PS2 games. Yeah the campaign is changed up for the worst at times but the act of driving is still unmatched. I loved doing the time trials, the missions, trying to beat friends times and so on. Hours and hours can go by as I try different cars on different race tracks. Above all the presentation is top notch, an absolute love letter to everything racing. There is a ton to love with GT7, especially if you have VR.
Overall Score 8.8
There are games where you can feel the love from the developers for the topic they are covering, it oozes out of every area of the game. GT7 is a car historian love letter to racing in general. The game itself feels like it was made with white gloves on, as if I am getting a personal history lesson from the most high end car museum. Nearly every car manufacturer represented in the game has their entire history told through a slide show with real photos of their first cars, their first racing wins, their factories, their models, their creators. It is a car enthusiast history lesson, I don’t care too much about racing history but the amount of love this game shows for it was addicting and it made me want to read up on it. Every car gets a detailed history with what year it came out, how much power it had for the time, how long it was in production, was it successful or not and so on. To top it off you can view every car in exquisite detail with the car model viewer, all interiors perfectly recreated. It’s one thing to see it in a tv, seeing it in VR, oh man, might as well be at a car show. I can’t think of a game where I enjoyed the menu information as much as this game, so before even playing a race this game is impressive.
So how is that racing, well it’s easily the best Gran Turismo has ever been. I cannot tell you how accurate the Mustang 67 feels. I can’t tell you if other games have better physics. I can only say as a casual racing player that the feel of the cars is the best I have ever played in a game. Every car feels different, the way each car responds on the tracks feel different. The weight of braking, the acceleration, the pull of turning, it all works so well. From my perspective it feels like I am driving different vehicles rather than arcade like video game cars. Then add things like how the weather and tire wear can affect the driving, it takes it to a whole different level. It’s an absolute joy to drive in this game.
Hell most of my favorite moments was just doing time trail missions against my own ghost, I didn’t even need a race, it’s just me against myself trying to master a turn on a track. That alone was hugely compelling and humbling. I cannot imagine the reflexes and pinpoint accuracy needed to achieve the best times consistently on a turn, it feels inhuman. I could get a good time once, try to replicate it and it’s almost impossible, it matters down to the split second when I brake, how hard I break, what angle I take the turn, it’s all those things and every tiny little bit has a massive impact on the time.
Every track has a time trial mission where it gives you a set car and times to beat for each section of the track, you can earn gold/silver/bronze depending on the time, one final full lap trial awaits the end. I loved these, it taught me how to navigate each track even though gold was usually out of reach for me. Each had a small video showing exactly how they got the best times but watching someone driving and trying it yourself are two different things. If anything this game gave me a new found respect to everyone that can master this game, and by extension awe for those who do this in real life.
GT7 forgoes the usual event tree campaign mode for a new more guided experience that uses “dinner” menus. So you get a menu of a certain kind of car and the races you need to compete with those cars to complete the menu, you then earn some cars as rewards and unlock the next menu. In classic GT fashion you begin with slow cars, the first menu being something like a 70s love van race. You go to the events page and the event for that is available. The events still have the usual cup races where you can enter any car of a certain class or horse power limit but there aren’t the variety of past GT games. It’s best to just follow the menu as it will have you complete the series cups as you play along.
This is where GT7 lost some people, it’s not as open and free as past games. There was a certain joy in starting with a Toyota Camry and slowly buying better cars and racing in better circuits and doing it your way. That’s still present in this game but now it’s done the games way, so everyone will take the same route, getting same cars, following a menu… I prefer the old way, I think most do as well but this method does allow way more cars to shine and get attention. Every manufacturer gets an event, you learn about a bunch of famous car models as you play. It’s part history lesson and part climbing a sort of car tower till you reach the end of the menu and you finally get a real racing car.
Once the menu is done you do get the ending credits but that’s kind of when the main races open up. A bunch of advanced racing cups become available and finally you can do some really long events with points and more traditional settings. The worst part of the menu wasn’t making you play with every car, it was that it really took away the multi race events away. Almost every race in the menu was one time race here, one there, another there. The series of races with points was saved for the “boss” at the end of each license level. So you could play this game for like 30 hours and almost do no real racing events.
Then there is the extremely weird obsession with rolling starts and having zero qualifying races. Basically every “race” is a chase, it’s not a race. You almost never start somewhere in the middle, it’s always starting at the back and it’s a rolling start and you have like 4 laps to catch the front car. This means your car needs to be much faster than the competition to win, so I just picked the fastest car or upgraded some parts to get more horse power and boom I always won the chase. The AI was also on a kind of script and when you replay the races you can see it’s kind of all already predetermined what would happen. So while the act of driving is the best in the series, the way this game handles its racing is kind of disappointing. It’s only till the end when you get the real racing events where your car is always evenly matched that your skills as a racer is the only way to win.
About a month after release there came an update with experimental AI, these were four races against these four AI racers. These races were so different from the standard ones. This AI felt like humans, they raced differently, each had their own temperament. They would react to you trying to overtake them. Like a human they would make mistakes and clearly were not following a script. It’s a damn shame the race options were so limited because that AI was a game changer. Still no word if it will ever be implemented into the game, I doubt it at this point.
The racing part was maybe the weakest but thankfully there are so many ways to play this game. There is a whole mission mode where you get a ton of different missions to complete with a wide variety of cars and situations. Some are as simple as executing a turn perfectly, to doing a certain track in extreme weather. Managing fuel while driving on a track with plenty of downhill driving for momentum was one of my favorites. You will also find the endurance races here but 24 hours of driving is not for me. Licenses are of course in the game and are a great way to learn the ins and outs of racing. The final license was pretty damn hard, there are optional gold medals to go for as well for rewards.
Every event you do or mission you compete earns you money or gift cars. There was a lot of talk about exploitative F2P style monetary systems in this game where they made it very annoying to earn enough money to buy the most exotic cars. Also there are all kinds of free to play staples in this game like roulette wheels (which are broken and always give a totally shit prize that is useless), daily log in bonuses, timers on cars being on sale and so on. Clearly they did this to push real life microtransactions to exploit the players who can’t help themselves. If you are a player that wants to buy every car then this game is impossible, it will take ages to earn enough and it will be infuriating that those with real money can cheat their way to it. But if you are like me and just want to buy whatever cars you like you will have more than enough money to fill the garage with a nice variety of great cars. It’s a shitty practice, it has no business in a GT game but it didn’t change how I played much.
Speaking of cars, as usual there are hundreds to buy and drive. There is an issue though, it feels like this game was made in 2012 or something cause basically all models are from before that. There are a handful of new cars but that’s it, almost everything is from years go. It probably has to do with model reusing of some kind, I’m just guessing. So anyone hoping to race in that new corvette or Ferrari, well you can race an older one.
There is also a complete online mode which is an entire game on its own. I dabbled a little in it but even the intro scared me as it has a video that teaches you to behave when you race, that you will be penalized for any bumping, bad sportsmanship, cutting corners, all kinds of stuff. So I did a few races and I was being penalized all the time, my car gets forced to slow down, everyone is better than me, it was not happening for me. Also a bunch of the races were on a timer, so you had to wait sometimes up to like 8 minutes for a race to start, I guess that’s if you are doing the official GT sport races. Online felt way too major league for me, I am not that serious into racing but for those that are i’m sure it’s good.
I played this game in two parts, I did most my play when it first came out, took a break and came back when PSVR2 hit. This game in VR is something else, it is absolutely incredible. That’s that I don’t have a racing wheel, even with a dumb controller in my hand, the feel of being in the car, being able to turn my head with to follow a turn or see other cars come up beside me is incredible. I can’t imagine going back to standard racing. This has some of the best VR implementation I have ever played and it’s definitely one of the very few reasons to get PSVR2.
This being Gran Turismo you know the game is a graphical showcase. The car models are the best around, especially in VR it’s wildly impressive. The race tracks look great but not exactly the next gen leap I was hoping for. On the music side I was very disappointed. GT games used to have great soundtracks and this game is mostly some unknown tracks in limited genres of music, I didn’t care for any of it.
Gran Turismo 7 was a nice return to form and feels like the best GT game since the PS2 games. Yeah the campaign is changed up for the worst at times but the act of driving is still unmatched. I loved doing the time trials, the missions, trying to beat friends times and so on. Hours and hours can go by as I try different cars on different race tracks. Above all the presentation is top notch, an absolute love letter to everything racing. There is a ton to love with GT7, especially if you have VR.
Overall Score 8.8