Gran Turismo is a car racing game series developed by the Japanese studio Polyphony Digital since the mid-90s, the first installment appeared on the first PlayStation of the name in 1997. With this car game on a closed circuit, the developers have always had the idea of offering players a visual experience that pushes towards realism while recalling driving sensations of those of real cars at the gameplay level. GT was by far one of Sony's most popular and prestigious series on PlayStation consoles in its early days.
Unfortunately, the license has lost some of its aura over the years, especially with increasingly aggressive competition in the field of automotive simulation. If GT Sport divided part of the community when it was released on PS4, the Polyphony Digital teams intend to erase the mistakes of the past to offer fans the ultimate Gran Turismo experience on PS4 and PS5. Find out what Gran Turismo 7 has under the hood, the seventh installment that marks the 25th anniversary of the series is expected on PS4 and PS5 from March 4, 2022, a game that we had the opportunity to test for many hours.
★ Note – This review was made on PS5 using a code provided by Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Before starting, note that GT7 requires a permanent internet connection. If you're not connected to the internet and PSN, the only thing you can do is arcade racing with a limited number of cars and the ability to participate in mini games like Musical Rally. The game also offers a two-player local mode which is subject to the same limitations as the offline mode. In the event of server maintenance, for example, you can only play in offline mode conditions without being able to use everything you have previously earned (vehicles, credits) until the servers return.
The first few minutes with GT7 open with a musical Rally race with an audio track that plays while you drive. You must quickly pass checkpoints to add another 30 seconds to your timer (tempo) and run as many meters as possible to the end of the track. All the difficulty of this mode lies in the fact that you must absolutely anticipate the moments when it is necessary to brake or when it is necessary to release the accelerator and the moments when you must put full throttle.
Depending on your result, you unlock a cup that ranges from bronze to gold and unlock new trials of this mini-game. There are a total of 6 such challenges at the launch of GT7 (more are apparently planned), challenges that are played on compilations of classic symphonies that have been remixed or rock and electro. After your first Musical Rally race, you can move on to the second race or really start playing the game and launching the career mode. To do this, simply open the world map of Gran Turismo 7. You then find yourself in a kind of HUB which brings together the various important places such as the GT-Café which is at the heart of the experience offered by the teams of the Polyphony Digital studio.
The GT Café, a central location in the career mode of Gran Turismo 7:
The GT Café is the place that somewhat dictates your progress in the game. Here you are given menus that you must complete to receive rewards in return or unlock new races, championships and even challenges with increased difficulty. These menus often consist of recovering a selection of cars by participating in specific races or by participating in championships when the time is right. When you select the GT Café from the Gran Turismo 7 world map, you can see your vehicle parked in the yard.
Depending on the vehicle in front of the café, a conversation may appear with an old man "a certain Chris" who then tells you some very interesting anecdotes about the car you are currently using. Sometimes, if you bring a particular vehicle past the cafe, you may even encounter more famous faces from the automotive world. Gran Turismo 7 is full of information of all kinds on the history of the automobile. Enthusiasts and fans of the genre will learn a lot about the different cars available in the game as well as the manufacturers while having fun. Moreover, the game opens with a very long video retracing the key moments in our history.
At its launch, GT7 has more than 400 cars from different car manufacturers, including Audi, Porsche, Peugeot, Mercedes, Toyota and Honda, which have been modeled with great precision outside and inside. You are initially given enough credits to buy your first used car. If the game offers many places on its map to buy new vehicles at reduced prices on occasion or brand new luxury models that are worth millions of credits, it is not really necessary to go there to acquire new cars. Indeed, towards the end of the campaign, you count more than 60 cars in your garage without even going through the purchase box. All you have to do is complete the various menus in the "GT Café" and take part in the races you are told to receive as a reward a new car to add to your personal garage in addition to credits according to your final result. The game is quite permissive since you are often asked to reach at least third place.
Receiving these cars allows you to quickly participate in the various events of the game which often ask you to present yourself on the starting line with a specific category of car. Even if your collection of free cars grows as you participate in events, this does not mean that these vehicles will be powerful enough to win an event. In addition to the delicate and rigid driving style that characterizes the Gran Turismo series, the events require that you remain focused on suggestions from "PP" who recommend a nominal power for the races. To increase the PP of a vehicle you have to go through the preparation workshop which allows you to spend your hard-earned credits to improve the different aspects of a car including, weight reduction, change of tire category and different parts. of the engine so that it gains in velocity. Generally, it is enough to have the recommended PP to ensure victory for the next event if you have a correct conduct. The AI during the races lacks aggressiveness, even at a fairly advanced level of the career it is not very difficult to take the lead of the pack. The circuit racing challenge comes after the end of the GT Café which is like a kind of big tutorial that leads you to discover all the aspects of the game.
Note that the game always starts you last, you have to overtake cars one by one to go back in line two, three or even more laps as you progress through the GT Café menus with power rating requirements higher and higher as you progress through the championships. If the circuits and the cars offer very nice driving sensations "especially in cockpit view", we regret the lack of realism during collisions or accidents... The cars are real bumper cars, they bounce when colliding with a another competitor or by hitting a guardrail… Which takes you a bit out of the general realism that emanates from Gran Turismo 7 jamming it into its late 90s arcade style…
On the other hand, the developers have done a lot of work to implement a dynamic day and night cycle which includes a weather system that simulates what is really happening in the sky helping to enhance the atmosphere of the races in which you participate. Depending on the terrain, weather and time of day, the driving characteristics of your car may change accordingly. The race can open with threatening clouds and start raining in the middle of the race completely changing the handling of your car and forcing you to adapt accordingly. You have small widgets at the bottom right of the screen which provide you with various information about the race and your car, but also to monitor the progress of the weather.
Impressive content at launch and a variety of really tough challenges:
Along with the 34 launch circuits, the game has a whole host of challenges that can take a lot of your time if you're aiming for more than a bronze cup. Reaching gold in each of these events often allows you to add a bonus car to your personal garage, which obviously pushes you to surpass yourself. We have seen each other more than once spend an hour relaunching the same challenge over and over again to beat our own record and hope to reach gold, which sometimes requires very tight times that leave no room for error. . Trying to get the gold rank can very quickly become addictive, making you forget that there are other things to see in the game as well. Obviously, the more you progress in these challenges, the more complicated they become. The game also offers the traditional "Permit" mode which allows you to unlock licenses by achieving specific objectives. If a license is obtained quite easily after obtaining the bronze rank in the 10 events necessary for a license, again you can obtain a bonus car by exceeding your own results and by trying to obtain the gold rank everywhere. Except that reaching gold is another thing!
In addition to offering better visuals on PS5, the game also offers some additional sensations in the palms of the hands thanks to a clever use of DualSense. It is possible to feel the power of the engine in the vibrations, to feel some resistance in the adaptive triggers especially when you try to brake… Certain road surfaces can be felt between the hands and many sound effects can occur from the speaker of the controller such as when you pass a checkpoint in Musical Rally. Small details that enhance the driving immersion of Gran Turismo 7.
The world map offers a variety of locations you can visit, including a photo studio where you can stage your vehicles for photo shoots. You can position the car in a previously selected setting while adjusting lighting, aperture, focus and other related parameters like speed effects. You can then choose to share these creations online with other players who can upload, like and download your content. On the map we find other places like the tuning workshop, the perfect place to change the look of a car. You can change some body elements, apply a variety of paints and why not, do real wraps with a little imagination. Here you can also choose to perform maintenance on your vehicle and change the appearance of your driver. By increasing your Collector Level, you can indeed (sometimes) obtain customization items for your character.
On the online game side, we find the Sport mode focused on competition with other players, which remains broadly unchanged from the previous game. Note that a code of conduct applies online, the game strongly encourages to remain fair with others by limiting collisions as much as possible when possible so as not to harm the experience of other players. Each competitor is assigned a rating that scales as you compete in online races and scales based on your interactions with others.
There are also more traditional multiplayer Lobbies that unlock once you complete a certain number of GT Café missions allowing you to join lobbies created by other players or create your own lobbies where you choose race and rules. During our test, there were several sessions where we were allowed to test these features, but the lack of online candidates did not allow us to fully appreciate the potential of the game at this level.
★ In conclusion Gran Turismo 7, the episode players were waiting for?
With Gran Turismo 7, the teams at Polyphony Digital have redoubled their efforts to offer fans an experience that lives up to the prestige of the series and put the much-maligned Gran Turismo Sport on PS4 behind them. The career mode is complete, there are a lot of circuits to travel, cars to unlock and things to do with a lot of room for customization and contemplation of these cars that you can stage thanks to a powerful photo mode. The studio offers us a truly complete experience at the GT7 launch. We regret, however, that the developers have made the choice of the mandatory internet connection which seems to us difficult to justify given the big single-player piece of the game. We played a little on the network during our test phases, but it is difficult to have a opinion on the subject for lack of enough candidates during our test sessions…
Gran Turismo 7
Game rating
8 
