Gran Turismo 7

Gran Turismo 7 is not a game made for me.

And yet, strangely, it is.

In 2003, I bought my first car, a ’98 Chevrolet Malibu LS for $3500. A week or so after I had the car, I got into a fake drag race with someone else. My car was actually in reverse, so I went backwards while my opponent skirted forward. Laughter ensued. In the summer of 2005 I drove the car to Chicago to go to Lollapalooza and on the way back I hydroplaned on the highway and spun out into a field, damaging one of my fog lights but surprisingly nothing else. Sometime before 2010 a woman backed into my car while I was parked to get gas and cracked the plastic fender. She tried to blame it on me and I cashed the insurance check for $700 because I had no job and didn’t mind a crack in the fender that had already, on the way to school, bumped into the back-end of an angry man’s SUV who yelled at me and drove off without getting my information. Years earlier my radio went bad, my cassette player stopped functioning, and my CD player spat out discs. At one point doing some night driving I blew out a speaker not realizing that the sound dial was turned far too high. At one point I hooked up speakers from an entertainment center and put them in the backseat because I never had any passengers. When I moved to California for a few years my mom drove the car around and likely drove like a madwoman in it, she had a tendency to brake hard and leave the lights on at night.

I could tell you hundreds of small stories about that car because it was the only car I owned for almost 20 years. Minus a brief few months in which I bought a PT Cruiser in California, that Malibu was my car. Earlier this year I sold it for $500, knowing it was on its last legs and I didn’t want to have to worry about the next major repair it would need.

Gran Turismo 7 is not a game made for me because I am a person who owned one car for most of their life and was okay with it. Cars, simply, do not fascinate me. I’ve sat in an old Bentley and admired the luxury. I’ve watched antique and flashy cars drive past me and been wowed by their look. I deeply understand and appreciate that many people in this world absolutely love cars, racing, and the lifestyle behind vehicles and their capabilities.

Gran Turismo 7 is also not a game made for me because I have so often loathed the driving portions of games like Grand Theft Auto or Watch Dogs when they require accuracy and speed on four wheels. As a youth, I played Super Mario Kart. And then Mario Kart 64. And then Double Dash. One of the first games I got on the PlayStation 4’s launch was Need for Speed Rivals. If I have to race, please let it be an arcade-like experience. The less realistic, the better.

Gran Turismo 7 is not a game made for me because I don’t find the act of racing down a strip of tarmac at 150 miles per hour only to rapidly brake for a turn to be that appealing.

Despite everything in my programming working against Gran Turismo 7, I can’t help but think that Polyphony Digital Inc. wants to make a game that will get under my skin and leave an impression.

In the past couple weeks since spending time with Gran Turismo 7, I’ve done a wild bit of investigation into just what this series is about. And I think it’s extremely important to create some context for you, reader. Much of what I am going to say about GT7 is positive. Much of my opinion of this “Real Driving Simulator” celebrating its 25th Anniversary is based off this one game and cursory knowledge of the series. Yes, I’ve never played a Gran Turismo game before this one and while that may invalidate my opinion for some, I also think it holds a lot of value.

Should a newcomer instantly be turned off to a game because they could potentially be lost in a swamp of technical racing aiming for absolute realism and player vehicular agency? Should a developer work to make a game that can satiate the needs of veterans and enthusiasts while at the same time creating an avenue of approachability for those who might want to see what all the fuss is about?

In the past few days I’ve seen a number of people on the road driving loud, flashy cars and joking, “Gran Turismo 7 is probably made for them.” That includes you, person who drove the yellow car with the BUMBLE B license plate and the Transformers decal on the side. My coworker told me about how his friend played so much Gran Turismo 2 or 3 or 4 and fell in love with a Toyota Celica and had to buy one to drive and trick out in real life. To me, the owner of the sole Malibu, that sounds insane.

But it also sounds so deeply fascinating.

How does a game instill that kind of yearning into a person?

YouTube comments on Gran Turismo videos have informed me that several people have only pre-ordered a few games in their lifetime and Gran Turismo 7 would be the second or third. Why?

After nearly 25 hours with Gran Turismo 7 and its various points of interest, I think I understand. Or at least I’m starting to.

Recently, I’ve tried to avoid using the phrase “love letter” when writing a review. Truly, though, Gran Turismo 7 is a love letter to vehicles. I can think of no better-fitting descriptor. Only a few hours into the game and I could tell there was a kind of gentle obsession Polyphony had with cars. The way the steel was framed in the bright lights of the player’s garage. The classical music track over a replay. The delicate piano keys tinkling away as a VW Beetle wheeled into the Gran Turismo Café. Somehow the small spurts of confetti after winning a race or unlocking a car served as just enough fanfare to allow the player to feel accomplished while doing little to take away from the spectacle of the vehicle and its capabilities.

Gran Turismo 7 is a borderline sensual exploration of the car lifestyle. On one hand, it is a racing simulator. But on the other, it is truly about ogling cars, exploring their history, pushing them to their mechanical limits, and setting them free on a variety of tracks.

Part of me feels strange using that world–sensual–but I’ve been told it’s extremely accurate. Initially, I used the term with bemusement. After dozens of hours, I recognized that there is a method behind it all.

There’s a kind of relief not having Gran Turismo 7 tied down to any expectations of previous games. The few comparison videos I’ve seen show the natural progression of console generations as cars’ polygons further smoothed out to create more realistic looking models. I’m sure the PlayStation 1 games had only a few modes, where Gran Turismo 7 is packed with things to do. But I simply allowed myself to sit down and figure this game out, knowing the process would be slow and I might not be dazzled by action, or that my eyes might glaze over during lessons about cars.

Unless players purchase and spend an exorbitant amount of in-game credits on the best cars in the game, Gran Turismo 7 spends a lot of time acclimating newcomers and veterans to increasingly better tiers of vehicles over the “campaign” process that was seemingly absent from Gran Turismo Sport.

The progression begins in the Gran Turismo Café, where players are introduced to Luca, the owner of the Café. Luca guides the players in completing a series of Menu Books that require collecting specific groups of cars, interacting with a new activity, or competing in races. Once completing a Menu, players move on to the next one. Rather than a tedious set of chores, Menus are tasks that simply ask players to become more familiar with Gran Turismo 7. If the Menu is based on acquiring a collection of cars, Luca will proceed to tell the player a little of their history, whether it be the brand or the type of car.

Don’t expect to feel an overwhelming sense of reward when completing Menus at the Café. Often a roulette ticket will be granted that can gift credits, upgrade parts, or a new vehicle based on luck. Tickets have a certain number of stars attached to them indicating the value of the rewards. Ultimately, though, a new Menu is going to be the second fastest track to unlocking new vehicles and tracks in the game. Yes, if you have a lot of in-game credits, you can complete Menus faster by outright buying the vehicles in them. For people like me, those cars are awarded by placing third or better in the newly unlocked races.

A large part of me gaining a sense of comfort with Gran Turismo 7‘s ruthless simulation accuracy was the steady, friendly pace of constant Menu unlocks while opening up new parts of the game. Polyphony starts players out by acquiring everyday front-wheel drive vehicles made in the 2010s before navigating into older European classics from the 1960s and 1970s. Simultaneously, the tracks players are racing in feature fewer sharp turns because the ability to tune vehicles hasn’t been unlocked. Much like a car rolling out of a stop, Gran Turismo 7 eases on the gas rather than spinning out.

Strangely, this approach didn’t dawn on me until I was fairly deep into the game and nearing my 20th Menu completion. Luca asks players to place high in Championships. The past four Championships had me race a single track in one direction and then do it again in reverse. And then, finally, I had to place in the Asia-Oceania Championship, a series of three different courses, two in Japan and the final at the Mount Panorama Motor Racing Circuit in Australia. Not only did it feel great racing in a Championship that wasn’t just one track, the race at Mount Panorama ended with the sun setting and the final lap taking place at night.

It was an iconic moment in my Gran Turismo experience, one that brought my journey so far to a fuller circle. The game had been wearing a little thin on my senses as I became tired of the repetitious loop. That certainly isn’t to say others more entranced by the genre than me wouldn’t mind the process… I just was looking for something more to spark my continued dedication.

Players bounce around the world in Gran Turismo 7, unlocking tracks in North America, Europe, and the Asia/Oceania regions. But the unlocked tracks frequently coincide with the progress players should have made so far. When it came time for me to collect a set of Mustangs and Camaros, I was racing in Florida at the Daytona 500 where that type of raw, chunky speed was needed. It was also the first time I spun out in the game.

Luca will hand out a Menu that requires the player to race a certain type of car in a specific type of race. Maybe you’ll need a Japanese car with a rear-wheel drive. Maybe you need an American four-wheel drive.

Players should have a comfortable garage of cars that fit specific needs but also need to focus on raising the Performance Points (PP) of those cars so they can compete in more challenging races. The PP of a vehicle doesn’t entirely mean that players can outstrip the AI regardless of the difficulty setting. For a large portion of Gran Turismo 7 I played on the Normal difficulty, which made AI-controlled vehicles operate at their standard speed. Relying on a bit of braking and oversteering assistance, I still had trouble getting first place when meeting or exceeding the recommended PP of a race.

Then I began to realize that my skill–and sometimes my dirty tactics to bamboozle the AI–were becoming key factors in victory. On Normal difficulty I got to the point where the AI player in first couldn’t catch up to me. Once I dialed up the difficulty to Hard, I was immediately put in my place. Going back to earlier races became more of an intense challenge.

Knowing that hitting the Tuning Shop and buying the best parts to raise PP isn’t a guarantee of success is a nice feeling. In a game that relies on such intense skill, skill should be rewarded, especially when playing against humans and the hardest AI.

However, mainlining the Menu progression can feel a little tedious when the player is tasked with moving from one type of car used to compete in a race to a drive train they may have just unlocked. Often I would funnel several credits into upgrades for one car, only to be told that I didn’t have a high enough PP with the right kind of car to compete. I then had to spend even more credits to perk up that one car to compete in a race that would potentially reward me with a new car that had a better base PP level than the one I had just upgraded. It wasn’t necessarily a progression wall but did make my excitement fizzle out a bit, making me wish I had spent the credits to outright buy a car that the Menu required.

So how does Gran Turismo 7 play? That’s an extremely loaded question. One that a person interested in the game already is well versed in and one that I’d probably sound a bit ridiculous trying to explain. But try I will.

In Gran Turismo 7, players shove their foot or finger onto the gas and propel a car forward. And then comes a curve. Maybe that curve is a near 90-degree angle. Maybe it’s a gentle series of turns leading back into straighter lines of more speed. Regardless of the combination, players have to figure out when to ease off the gas or hammer the brake to safely take the turn without slamming into another car or bashing into a barrier or driving off the track. That’s the long and the short of it.

Did I realize this when starting Gran Turismo 7? Absolutely not. However, I knew the game was a hardcore simulation and not interested in zany physics or even running from the cops. Polyphony Digital has created a game that hopes to recreate the actual driving experience of this tournament racing. Driving physics, weather patterns, tire traction, rain puddles, the stars in the sky, the weight of a car. All of these things and dozens of other tiny details factor into an experience that is literally gassing and braking around painstakingly accurate recreations of real-world locations.

At its most basic level, Gran Turismo 7 makes sense to me. I became acutely aware that I was getting better at the game the longer I played it. But I also recognized there was so much about what was happening on the screen and with the controller that I just did not understand. Icons would flash in the third-person view that took me hours to understand. I trembled in fear at having to manually shift my car because I have only driven an automatic. Buffers can be put in place to help out players like forcing a car to break if it is going too fast or preventing oversteering. On-track indicators show the best line to follow when driving or where players should consider slowing down. It can be overwhelming but necessary. And eventually these assists might need to be turned off to allow more precise control over the vehicle.

To further hone the expert skills of driving in this game, players will have to engage with the infamous License Tests that have become a staple of the series. These tests ask players to complete a certain task in a set time to achieve a bronze, silver, or gold trophy. And, unsurprisingly, achieving the gold is a fierce test of skill, patience, and perseverance. Passing a License will unlock a car and allow players to compete in further championships. Those less in tune with racing games may look at Licenses like boss fights in their difficulty. In fact, the deeper levels of Gran Turismo‘s difficulty can be tackled like a challenge in almost any other genre. Eventually a pattern will form and a player will have to acclimate or they will never advance.

A distraction from the somewhat rigorous math of Gran Turismo 7 are the Missions. These are small challenges unlocked in groups as players raise their collector level by gaining more cars. While these Missions are still difficult, they have specific guidelines or challenges that make them a touch more unique. Some are simply themed around a time of day and a location. Others ask players to finish a race with a limited amount of gas, or knock over cones in a small area, or try and beat AI opponents that got a 50-second head start by using an insanely fast race car. While not as rigid and tedious as License tests, Missions aren’t for the faint of heart either.

Gran Turismo is daunting in a sense because this is probably the closest most players will come to actually controlling these 3000-pound machines capable of going 200mph. People flock to this game because it invokes that sense of realism but with Gran Turismo 7, it’s so much more.

Gran Turismo 7 is a technical marvel. If it rains during a track and players go enough laps, they can watch the track dry and the low points at the edges pool with water. Burnt rubber and tire tracks scuff up the pavement as more and more cars struggle with the turns. The lighting system is truly phenomenal, bouncing ray-traced visuals off the bright sheen of a vehicle’s paint. These cars are jaw-dropping and gorgeous. Sometimes the interiors may sway towards being a bit plastic-like in their appearance but the exteriors of these vehicles are rendered with such precision that I often felt bad scuffing them up with dents and scrapes.

At one point when I stared too long at the average looking skyscrapers in Japan or the distant onlookers, I realized how devoted Polyphony is in capturing and recreating the action that happens in the borders of a track. The game’s sound design approaches incredible levels of immersion, especially when using headphones. Tunnels bounce sound off and everything has a direction that can be pinpointed. Eventually players will realize that nothing outside the race matters, the weather, the breathtaking landscapes, all of it is a distraction from nailing those turns and getting the gold.

A love of vehicles is likely to be exacerbated by Gran Turismo 7. The game offers ample ways to simply admire a vehicle. After a race, the game instantly queues up a replay. This replay can be manipulated in a number of ways that just beg for attention. Players can select camera angles, speeds, and engage with a suite of photography options from any point from the race they just engaged in. Here, you can put a filter on everything but the vehicle, or just on the vehicle. It’s near-limitless control and, honestly, a bit frightening with the wealth of options.

That same explosion of detail and control applies to the Scapes mode where players can insert vehicles into over 2000 images that were taken of locations across the world. Photography enthusiasts can get lost in the Scapes mode, finding favorite locales and dressing up their vehicle appropriately. Honestly, when a vehicle pulls up on a distant mountain or in an abandoned garage, you may have to blink twice to know it is a construct of polygons.

Also keep in mind that players have thousands of customization options for every single car they get in the game. Hundreds of paint colors, wheels, accessories, fins, and more give an unprecedented amount of control over to players to guarantee that if they fall in love with a particular car, they can make it look how they want to look. Have a livery from Gran Turismo Sport? You can bring it over to Gran Turismo 7, or just make an entirely new one. So many of these features I barely spent time with simply because I’m not a car enthusiast. But seeing this embarrassment of riches, I understand how players can get lost in these features for weeks and months on end.

It helps that most of Gran Turismo 7‘s presentation is conducted through elegant menus that, while sometimes a bit sterile, always provide players with a dearth of information. A stat sheet can be pulled up for a car and various adjustments can be made and saved as a kind of preset. There are no NPCs, just the bubbles of real humans and fellow racers that pop up and talk to the player. There is an effort made to create as little friction as possible between the player and what they want to find.

The main pavilion in Gran Turismo 7 gives players access to the various modes and options that can be encountered. Scapes, Missions, License Center, World Circuits, Tuning Shop, Garage, and Café all take the player to the places and features I’ve discussed. In Showcase, players can access content created by themselves and other players. A Music Rally asks players to drive to the beat of a song and survive as long as possible. Players can go to Used Cars to purchase cheaper vehicles with prices that may fluctuate. If a used car needs work, players can take it to GT Auto to give it a wash, get an oil change, or tune up the motor. GT Auto is also where wheels and paints and other cosmetic features can be purchased. Brand Central takes players to a literal museum of the various brand found in Gran Turismo 7. You can directly buy some cars or engage with the history of these brands. Players can literally go through a timeline of what these companies were doing in specified years and what was going in the world at that time. Honestly, it’s crazy. There’s also a place to buy Legendary Cars and infrequently, players will get contacted when a particular car goes on sale there.

I spent a brief amount of time with Gran Turismo 7‘s multiplayer and found it a smooth experience if not one that I was completely destroyed in. I fully expect to get trounced by other players but appreciate the amount of dedication that has gone into being able to create specific lobbies that players can engage with other in. Will the “play nice” attitude Polyphony constantly brings up survive a couple weeks into launch? Who can say.

As a PlayStation 5 showcase, Gran Turismo 7 takes complete advantage of fast loading, never leaving players tapping their fingers in a menu or waiting on a race to start or end. I spent most of my time in the ray-tracing mode that focused on visuals. Look, I just want a beautiful game and don’t always get the fuss about 60fps. That being said, the game is absolutely responsive and blindingly smooth when frame rate takes priority. But let’s talk about the DualSense. I know a lot of people are going to be playing with a controller because the peripheral wheels are extremely expensive. I loved the way the haptic triggers resisted and pushed when fighting with the gas and the brakes. I knew I was doing something wrong when the game prevented me from slamming on the gas or that my wheels were slipping when the left trigger pushed up against my finger. The subtle vibrations perfectly line up with changes in the track and give a sense when the wheels are wearing down. It’s truly the farthest thing from a gimmick.

Gran Turismo 7 is a game made for car enthusiasts. It wants to ignite a passion in players for the expansive, rich world of vehicle customization and racing simulation. Polyphony Digital’s dedication to creating one of the most realistic simulations on the market shows in every drop of rain and every reflective sheet of metal. While Gran Turismo 7 may not be for everyone, it provides curious players with an engaging system of progression that will slowly reveal the depth the game has to offer. From breakneck speeds at the Daytona 500 to moonlit races at the Tokyo Expressway, Gran Turismo 7 is a technical marvel and a PlayStation 5 spectacle.