Gran Turismo 7 review: a hymn to the automobile

After an eight-year break, Sony has again released a new, fully-fledged part of the racing game grandfather Gran Turismo. 25 years after the start of the first part, it brings back memories and is sometimes a bit awkward, but better than ever.

Anyone who is old enough to have gambled on the first Playstation (PS) can probably still remember Gran Turismo (GT) well. GT and GT2, which followed just over a year later, turned the racing game world on home consoles inside out. Racing games never looked so good on the tube TV – and never did the individual vehicles feel so realistic and distinguishable as in this game series.

What made the series so special was, among other things, the choice of vehicles: Instead of only presenting the players with the crème de la crème of motorsport vehicles, players initially entered the race with a Fiat 500, Opel Astra or Mazda 323. With the first prize money, which was awarded for good placements in small racing series, the small cars could then be tuned – or exchanged for a car in the next higher class.

A street race in Tokyo in the Mazda MX5 or a tuned Honda Civic became a more impressive memory than the interchangeable races that you later completed in the supercars in other games. In the later course of the game, GT also raced across the track in real sports cars – but here, too, the sports car models from Japanese manufacturers, which are little known in this country, provided a change from the typical Porsche, Ferrari and Lamborghini monotony.

All of this was over 20 years ago – in fact, GT7 even marks the 25th anniversary of the cult series – and creates the almost perfect bridge between nostalgic retrospect and contemporary, modern racing simulation. Because with GT 7, Sony is also bringing the popular game series into the present in terms of technology.

However, the developer Polyphonie Digital has apparently not quite arrived in the present, which has been shown in the past few weeks by the unfortunate actions with regard to in-game purchases. But the game itself also has some quirky nods to its video game past. It doesn’t make the game worse – but it makes it special. But one after anonther.

Why is?

Like its predecessors, GT 7 is a genuine racing game. And as already mentioned, the focus is not on the pure high-performance motorsport scene, but rather presents racing in all price and speed regions. Unlike in currently popular open-world racing games, such as the masterful Forza Horizon 5, public roads are not driven on here, but only marked racing tracks.

The player begins his career with a lame small car and then gradually works his way through successfully completed missions and won races to the dream garage of every motorsport fan. Driving technique, the fine adjustment of various vehicle parameters and tuning also play a major role.

What’s special?

The fact that GT 7 is not the typical racing simulation is already apparent in the opening credits: music, presentation, cutscenes – everything is very kitschy and charged with pathos, the love for the automobile is clearly emphasized here in almost all places.

The many borrowings from the original series also seem a bit outdated: As in earlier titles, the “main menu” is a kind of map on which the respective buildings are located, which are the metaphor for the respective menu item. If you want to change your vehicle, you go to your own garage, special challenge missions are in a circus tent, and you visit a stadium to choose the race track.

This is not bad in itself and works well – but has a real 90s touch. But GT nostalgics will be happy. This big location metaphor is turned slightly absurd in the main missions: GT 7 contains a number of tasks designed to familiarize players with the different vehicle types and their history: Japanese small cars with front-wheel drive, the origins of American muscle cars and much more .

The player receives the orders in a café, where they are handed over as a menu card. Individual figures also appear and tell something about the history of a particular car model. The narrative form is quite quirky, but doesn’t disrupt the flow of the game – and gives GT 7 another opportunity to present its wonderful vehicle models in a rendered everyday scene.

In general: The effort GT 7 puts into presenting its vehicle models can only be described as voluptuous tin eroticism. The cars look spectacular, no question – even better than in Forza Horizon 5.

And Polyphony Digital stages that where it can: each race is followed by an obligatory repetition (but can be cancelled), there is a car wash in the game where players can have their cars cleaned so that they shine even more brightly at the next race – and there is a separate menu station where you can stage photo shoots with your favorite models:

You choose between a number of photo-realistically calculated locations, position the vehicle of your choice, can set dozens of parameters and then get a finished rendered image, where reflections of the environment on the car are also correctly reproduced.

Fortunately, this form of hyperrealism can also be found during the race itself. The driving physics are reproduced down to the smallest detail. For example, the air temperature also plays a role in driving performance – parts of the route are heated up by direct sunlight and offer a different level of grip than sections that are in the shade.

This obsession with realism also sometimes drifts into the slightly absurd: A lot of work was put into ensuring that the starry sky is always correctly displayed in the night races, depending on the location and time on the route. So if you want, you can navigate by the stars. And in the wonderfully designed cockpits of the vehicles, of course, all the displays work as they should: Even the LED clock in the center console of the ancient Toyota Corolla correctly shows the time on the route – and when the sun falls into the vehicle, it is reflected the dashboard correct-annoying in the windshield.

Gameplay and driving experience

In the game you complete missions in the café, win and buy cars, tune them and then drive further races on tracks that are unlocked bit by bit. A nice feature here are the driver licenses. Certain tasks can only be completed if you have acquired one of the five successive racing licenses: National B and A, International B and A and Super License. Here, ten increasingly crisp driving maneuvers have to be completed as perfectly as possible.

This is seemingly trivial, especially at the beginning: For example, you only have to drive through one corner or chicane. However, the tight time constraints require players to really engage with steering, apex of corners, braking point, and throttle and brake play – and become better drivers. In order not to get too frustrated, you can complete each challenge in bronze, silver or gold. Especially the gold times are sometimes really tough challenges.

For the best driving experience, real fans should of course get a steering wheel with pedals. We played GT 7 on the PS5 with the included adaptive controller – and loved it. The precisely reproduced counter-pressure for gas and brake on the controller is not only fun – it also makes it much easier to play with both. The shaking effects are also great: Every rough shifting process is acknowledged with an appropriate jerking of the controller, on the Tokyo Expressway, a race track on the Tokyo city highway, you can feel the typical jerking of the bitumen-bonded concrete slabs on the track in your hands – great!

As already mentioned elsewhere: The cockpits not only look great, they are also fully functional, including all visible displays. A virtual driver holds the steering wheel and regularly grabs the gear stick or paddle shifter. The overall outstanding soundscape is also absolutely believable here. Controlling the virtual car from the driver’s perspective has never been so much fun.

Conclusion: Great simulation with a lot of heart for the car

GT 7 is a wonderfully quirky blend of runaway perfectionism, video game nostalgia and undisguised love for cars. Especially in the presentation of the menus, not everything looks as you would expect in 2022 – but that doesn’t matter at all. Anyone who wants to spend countless hours fine-tuning their cars, enjoys a vehicle grid that is not quite typical and also likes to spend time artistically staging their own dream car will enjoy this game for countless hours.

Friends of serious racing simulations can also access here. If you are looking for a quick race in between, want to collect whimsical achievements in an open world – and don’t really want to waste time with cars that mere mortals can afford, you should look elsewhere, for example at Forza Horizon 5 (what However, it is not available for Playstation, only for Xbox and PC).

It’s a bit disappointing, however, that Sony so blatantly relies on real money purchases for a full-price title. In the past few weeks, Sony had also caught the concentrated anger of the community and adapted a change to the bonuses paid out in the game. Hopefully this is a lesson for Sony: the blatantly brazen attempt to squeeze even more money from players who have just paid 70 euros for a game is undignified and does not fit the heritage of this great racing series.