Gran Turismo 7
A simply stunning driving game.
Remember when Gran Turismo 5’ s pre-release screens looked too good to be true? They were. Thankfully, PS5 has finally allowed Kazunori
Yamauchi and his team to realise that vision with Gran Turismo 7. Best of all, it doesn’t pander to modernity in the slightest, instead delivering thoroughly ’90s game design, only in exquisite detail. The main bulk of the career mode is spent outrunning slower cars in gameplay more reminiscent of Ridge Racer: Type 4. As the game goes on, the hip hop dies away, leaving guitar solos that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Sega Saturn. Yet it does this all with an abundance of class. It’s playfully silly when it wants to be, yet absolutely serious when the helmet’s on.
It’s an absolutely gargantuan game. It’s taken me about 28 hours to master all the licence tests and all of the menu books in the all-new ‘Gran Turismo Cafe’, but there are hundreds of things left to do after that, let alone play online. It’s some six hours before multiplayer opens up, with a full-on GT Sport mode, as well as split-screen, and two-player local play. Even more solo missions are locked away behind your collector level, which rises as you accumulate cars, whether by buying them or winning them. The cafe menus of automotive delights direct you towards races that will win you the cars you need, which is a great way of leading you by the hand through what would otherwise be a bewildering wealth of racing options. Progression events are clearly marked with a little yellow icon, and the gameplay itself in these races is very short - usually about 10 minutes a race.
With the ultra-fast load times of PS5 (and not actually over-long on PS4), you’ll be zipping in and out of events, making it feel like – oddly – a handheld game. It’s perfect for quick bursts of fun.
Everything that made GT Sport so good, plus everything that made early Gran Turismo games so good. A simply stunning driving game and a superb showcase for PS5.
Justin Towell