Gran Turismo 7 Review

"Driver Licenses"

Campaign

March 9, 2022 at 6:26pm
By Jason Stettner

This is the latest entry in the very long running racing simulation series that is Gran Turismo. The franchise celebrates its twenty-fifth year with this release and my first time having a go at the series. That was somewhat exciting going in as I’ve always heard great things about what the racing series has to offer.

It was a bit more tedious than I had anticipated where you have to slowly unlock content within a fixated story based area. I would have preferred to also have a quickplay but the only aspect close to that was a musical based mode which while neat isn’t necessarily something I think many will be enticed about.

Past that, it’s a bit of a grind to get going. It takes a couple hours or so to unlock multiplayer and many hours until you get a vehicle with a good sort of speed to it. You’re taking time in this lovely café hearing about cars which while lovely, wasn’t necessarily the most exciting thing in the world.

To top that off you’d have to get licenses to progress, which were ultra lame. I had driven for eight hours and was then told to get a license by driving in straight lines in ten different scenarios, that’s stupid. The campaign area still provides good value for giving you a sense of progression in this car game, it was just mind numbingly slow to get through.

I think this paired with just a quick race option would have been splendid. You do eventually get the option to setup races how you please, but you have to grind through the story stuff to get to that point, which again is rather tiring. For the enthusiast this is probably an appreciated mode, whereas more casual players won’t be thrilled by it. While this is a simulation racer, I do like to think of other audiences looking to get into a game.

Gameplay

While this was played on the Playstation 5 this was very clearly a cross gen experience. When inside the cockpit or looking at the car or lighting it certainly looks like a very next generation experience. When you glance to the backdrops such as the trees or people or general outer aesthetic the world did look rather dated for a racer that’s kicking off the genre on the new console.

The weathering also seemed rather tame in terms of features, there are options but again I wasn’t blown away like I had been anticipating for the first big next gen racing game to release for consoles. I was definitely expecting more when it came to the visuals. Again, the car models are insanely gorgeous and that lighting is good. Just in motion it comes across as dated at times.

There are many difficulty settings and tunings to make, so any player should feel comfy. I did feel that the intermediate mode held my hand a bit more than anticipated so keep in mind that more tuning for a personal perspective should be considered. The cars do seem to handle fine here, and there are many vehicles in play across the tracks. The performance seemed perfect across the board. We have a native 4k target in ray tracing or performance, which isn’t too shocking.

Both modes target 60fps with the replays or car showcase elements under the ray tracing mode being the only places that the effect is deployed. I would have liked to see a lower resolution ray tracing in gameplay mode, but no points off for not having one. You may see a performance dip in heavy rain scenarios, but it would be so minimal that it won’t matter so flawless performance here which again is expected. The HDR implementation is great, I’m sure that will be enjoyed.

The menus were swift, as was getting into any portion of the game as the loading is almost instant. This helped for the really stuffed menus as you move through a hub type world to customize, purchase or inspect vehicles and in general play different things. The game certainly features a lot of tuning options, but be wary as you currency could get used up fast so you’ll be less likely to be able to grab new vehicles. Though you can top off the amount of currency you have through microtransactions. There are missions outside of the regular races, you may enjoy those as extra content.

I did have some issues with the online functionality where the game would get stuck loading for up to fifteen minutes and I’d have to restart my console to fix it. I was livestreaming as well, so that was somewhat awkward. Keep in mind that this is an online experience entirely, so that may impact offline play. I can’t imagine I’ll ever be playing it offline, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Additionally, a rewind system really should be an option for modern racing titles. Perhaps not a must have, but would have been great to see here.

The Conclusion

Gran Turismo 7 is a great racing simulation experience featuring a vast amount of content with some good looking visuals. It certainly wasn’t the next generation car experience I was hoping for, but I was still impressed by what it had to offer.

It could have used some quicker pacing to make it more exciting however, as I did feel rather bored while playing it. It sort of dragged along, and I could see how some won’t like that whereas the more technical might.

Just quicker access to multiplayer and quickplay would have been nice as sometimes I just want to go out and drive. So there’s definitely a grind factor that’s part of this one; it’ll take awhile to get access to faster vehicles, quite awhile. It should be interesting to see how this one evolves over time as well, as it appears to be working towards something with long term updates.

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Gran Turismo 7 Review on Playstation 5
Review Code Provided by SIEC

Rating Overall: 7.6