Quick Look: Gran Turismo 7

Looks like Gran's back on the menu, boys!

He's got a brand new car...

Those tires are ROUND

This and Forza Motorsport Reboot are both going to be the best looking racers of 2022!

Worth noting for people coming to this game that GT Sport and the online for this game is meant to be an 'iracing lite' sort of system. Which is great because iRacing is horrifically overpriced unless you're fully dedicated to it. GT Sport and this game has skill rating and sportmanship ratings which decide which lobbies you go to (elo style system). It has a penalty system they constantly change and update (for better or worse) that will dish out time penalties for intentional contact or cutting the track, etc. There are custom lobbies for whatever but in the real "sport" online mode - your actions will have consequences. Real racing is a non-contact sport and it's emulated here. The whole "rubbing is racing" is a nascar exclusive thing. GT Sport was very successful in this attempt (8 million copies sold) and had a great online and e-sport community. I'd recommend checking out Super GT and his videos if you want to learn more about it.

Those conversations between the talking heads reminds me of language classes way back in high school when you would be shown two people talking to one another and they'd have a super-stilted conversation because you were in a particular vocabulary unit and they needed to use specific words rather than talking like normal people.

Wow! They made a new Gran Turismo:)

Man... I was almost hype about this. But I tuned out mentally at "Menu Book" and never came back in. Sterile is quite the choice euphemism.

iLink was for connecting PS2s together for LAN-like multiplayer. GT3 supported it, I think

This just seems like a high production version of those steam unity games to me that's played by twitch streamers- with that weird writing and the people that talk to you. Really Bizarre.

Polyphony need to bring back the series that really matters - Motor Toon Gran Prix!

Jeff’s reference to Crash got a legitimate spit take from me.

o/

This game seems like a car fanatics dream but I agree with Jeff on it looking "sterile" and that it's too low-fi. I miss racing while Turbo Lover is blasting like in GT3.

The deliberate lack of bombast is one of the main reasons I prefer GT to other racing games.

Kinda feel like the "oldness" of this game is a side effect of not putting a real Gran Turismo game out since the PS3 generation.

To whom it may concern - the arrow keys on keyboard aren't skipping forward/back a few seconds. I hit left arrow and it started the video over. Using HTML5 player

This game seems to accomplish what it sets out to do, which is create a realistic racing simulation. This is why it has that "sterile" look to it, and not flashy colors, pop, and boom like from the Horizon series or the Dirt series. The cars and the environments look pretty true to life when comparing it to driving in real life.

This game feels like it's been made by "Car People" for "Car People". As someone who lives in the periphery of a few car enthusiasts I feel like I can say this: Car People are Nuts!

That museum mode is really goofy.

How wet can you get these cars?

@wibblefish: You misspelled Omega Boost :P

Rorie is rubbing and rubbing is racing.

I'm definitely over the Gran Turismo menu vibe. I greatly prefer what's going on in GRID Legends.

I also greatly appreciated Jeff's reference to Crash (1996).

Cars are better than dogs.

that selection sound in the menus sounds kinda like the ping facebook messages used to use... haven't used fb in a long time but that sound still makes me twitch.

IDK if I'm just crazy, but I really don't think this game looks very good. Like its a step behind Forza or something. Also, this game interface honestly looks like it was designed by BMW.

Thank you for the quick look.

The Cafe dialog made me sick to my stomach. Why waste the car's designer on a wedding story? Who buys this game hoping for Miata-based fornication anecdotes? They have the wikipedia timeline already to establish cultural background. It seems like this game is aimed at people who have never played a GT game before.

I think the very first Gran Torusmos was about as complicated as I could handle. The game has passed me by, ist is now something I cannever fully finish, as I did the first game.

I understand why GT is now a much more denses game - it is built for the hardcore players who are eSports driving enthusiasts. That is who Kazunori Yamauchi builds these game for, it not for 'normies'. I can admire a game buildt unapplogsitcly for a niche of players. There are few developers or publisher who makes games for niches in the console space.

Yeah, wheel camber and toe-in and how to set that was and is over my head, but I can appariate that level otaku depth. And, I would no change the game a bit to make ist more accessable ot more cool for dude-bros. I love when games are made for me, and I well imagine that people who like Gran Torusmos love that it is made for them.

Gran Turismo 2 got me into more "sim-like" driving games, and by the time I was interested in the genre again, there was no new Gran Turismo game, and Forza was praised as the better game at the time (around Forza 3). So I played a lot of Forza Motorsport, but never went back to Gran Turismo since.

Now, with this one, I think I'll go back into it when I am finished with my other games. I'm scared that they're gifting new cars left and right, I miss having to work to get new cars, and having a real sense of progession, but it sure seems better than Forza Horizon and more recents Forza Motorsports games in that manner. Also, as silly as the whole vibe is with Gran Turismo Café, I think I'm really into it. Seems like the kind of Japanese earnestness that I find charming.

I have to admit, eventhough that UI-design probably isn't the best user experience , it feels like coming home. The big japanese buttons, the chimes as you press them, the silly cursor. It still feels like Polyphony Digital is one of those studio's that doesn't seem to be interested in learning best practices from other studio's, but just keep on expanding on what they've been doing all along. It sort of reminds me of Sports Interactive (the Football Manager people). That's probably also why Jeff & Rorie feel like this game would probably not leave the console. This studio still seems like an outlier in Sony's portfolio that dances to it's own tune mostly. And they seem to always take a long ass time to get a product out the door, so i bet porting a game over would throw a huge spanner in the works there.

Where most games feel like they are mostly created to be enjoyable for the player, Gran Turismo almost feels like it's going all out on making sure the big brands are delighted with the representation they get. They should track how many players click on the Michelin logo and stay around for more than 30 seconds to read everything they wrote there.

It's cool to see them have the esports people in here ,but that makes me wonder if they couldn't do more to make the playerbase at large care about these top players and try to become one too. Surely they could've made specific challenges based on what happened with these folk in real tournaments. Or highlight some amazingly close races between these guys and really point out where they took risks and what made them eventually win. Really give you a sense that this racing sim matters and that you can become part of the Gran Turismo lore if you are a good enough racer and go out there to compete with these folk.

Perhaps you do some sort of challenger event where each month you can qualify to race against one of these top players. Or have a trackmania regional based ranking system to give you the feeling that you have something to fight for. I might not be able to get the world record on a track, but i might be able to be nr 1 of my province. That's fun to strive towards and these smaller goals to achieve make it easier to decide to put some time into improving.

Finally.. is it me or does this game's tone comes across somewhat similar to Shenmue's sincerity & obliviousness?

what a strange game

I've been in the mood for a driving game, and as off-putting as some of the presentation is in this, I dislike the vibe of Forza Horizon enough that this weird, badly written earnestness seems far more tolerable.

Also, I have a strange affection for the horrible licensing tests.

You know, for the wierd old schoolness of the game's menus, it really nailed the chiles for difficulty and turning off bad music individually.

@twins: Yep. GT3 battle mode was like the only reason...

I'm mostly a distant observer among the racing games but if I had to chose I might go with this over Forza at this point. It's been long enough where Forza's burning man for cars schtick is wearing pretty thin.

It's a shame that the racing etiquette stuff is treated with an eyeroll because as a motorsports fan that's where the interesting racing happens IRL. But you wouldn't necessarily get that from GT if that's all you have to go by. It feels like GT (and Forza for that matter) could do a better job incorporating that into the design somehow.

It's also funny how they kinda chide the stuffy car museum vibe when motorsports and car fandom is rotten with it, especially outside the States.

I really can't stand the colours in this game. It's so muted and pastel looking. It's like every colour they chose started off as a blue and just got twisted into a different colour against their will... But deep inside they all still feel blue....dabadee dabadoo....

Everyone keeps saying how nice this looks but all the footage I’ve seen it looks really flat and lifeless, old even?

I love the PS3/PSP/VITA era feeling of the UI though. The noises, how things move around, where things are placed. Lost art.

@bacongames said:

When it happens in real life, it's also professional drivers who know those rules and have enough driving skill to follow them consistently. I don't disagree that it's not the worst thing to try and implement into the game, but there are plenty of newer players who would probably be really frustrated with it, either because they don't understand the rules, or just aren't skilled enough at the game to avoid some of the things the game doesn't want you doing. It's been a long time, but I vaguely remember that being a big issue with GT Sport - you'd be racing and all of a sudden you'd get tagged with a penalty and have no idea why, or you'd get hit with a penalty for something it seemed like another player caused.

No, it's not just you. I don't think Poly was trying to create a good racing game as much as they were trying to make absolute hagiography for car culture. Personally, as someone who got into cars and learned things like gear ratios from GT2, I'm absolutely here for it. I totally get why Jeff et. al. would make fun of the cafe they have in the game, but at the same time that's sort of exactly the tone a lot of enthusiast culture has. A lot of the "dialogue" feels like it came straight from a PR brochure the manufacturer would send out.

Can you remove the amount of junk on the screen? Its a very old fashioned ui all over the place approach.

Hi, my name is Charlie and my favorite car is an airplane! I love school and coloring! I am 41 years old!

wow the gt1 japanese car wash music is good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnmZUOV9LXk

@entireties: This slaps

This game has a really weird boner for cars, which I suppose is par for the course with Gran Turismo. Upon boot you are greeted to an 8 minute cutscene that plays out a timeline showing everything from the first Model T to the evolution of Rock N Roll. The whole package has this weird vibe, like it was designed with assets from shutter stock. The fake village, the cafe, the realistic human NPC's who want to tell you way too much about their lives within the car village/town where they all live - the game puts all these bizarre trappings in the way of what you came here for, actual racing. I really don't understand what Polyphony was going for with all of this stuff, it gives me the same generic sterile weird vibes as "Soleana" from Sonic 06 on the Xbox 360, completely at odds with the rest of the game and completely lifeless. I wish they would have taken a page from the excellent drive club and kept it simple.

As for the graphics, the cars look great, the lighting, weather and environmental details are nice but I don't know that it looks any better than (or even as good as) Horizon 5. I think I expected more from the teams first foray into PS5 development but it is also possible the PS4 held this title back a bit visually. The handling model for the games various cars feels really good to me with a decent amount of assists to toggle on and off so you can tune it to your liking. The Dualsense features are really well done here I for one love the resistance on the triggers and how it will vary from car to car slightly. The haptic feedback gives you some very nice tactile communication that generic rumble just couldn't do, I was amazed every single time I would drive over a strip in the road and feel it in the controller where as hitting the shoulder or driving off road feels completely different. The nuance they are able to create with the haptics sets it so far apart from any other controller and adds greatly to the "feel" of the racing.

It is nice to play a circuit racer on modern hardware as they have a completely different vibe to the open world or arcade games like horizon, sterile sure - but offering what fans of this genre are looking for. The license challenges and the amount of tutorials the game has on offer genuinely feel like they are set up to make you better at racing videogames in general, I am convinced that if you grind that stuff out and go for gold you WILL get better at racing games. I am curious to see how this stacks up to the next "motorsport" game from the Forza team, the head to head will be entertaining. I would say if you are someone who really enjoys circuit racing and the sport aspect of it all you won't be disappointed in how the game plays or the multiplayer modes on offer. Anyone expecting to be blown away by the visual presentation or looking for an answer to Microsofts Horizon series though should just look elsewhere.

How can we stance

When our earth is turning

HOW DO WE JEEP

WHILE OUR BEDS ARE BURNING

Could you connect them to each other with ilink. I think that's how I played Timesplitters 2 with 8 players. It only existed on the phat models though.

iLink was a sort of system link. You needed it for 2 player Time Crisis 2.