Gran Turismo 7 Review: ‘A Premium Racer With an Infectious Love For Cars’

Gran Turismo 7 marks the series’ 25th anniversary, and this long-awaited PS5 sequel is both a celebration of Polyphony Digital’s trailblazing GT franchise and of racing in general. The Tokyo-based studio’s love of cars is infectious; I wish I could love anything as much as they clearly love sitting behind the wheel. If this isn’t immediately evident from its lengthy, historical opening cinematic, then it most certainly is when you hit the tarmac, the intricacies of each car’s handling authentically replicated across its shockingly photo-realistic tracks.

GT for beginners

A series with 25 years under its belt yet only seven mainline iterations needs to bring both returning and new players up to speed. My experience with Gran Turismo concluded with 2010’s GT5, so there was some catching up to do. The introduction of the cafe does the trick here, providing players with a series of ‘menus’ that provide objectives to complete. This includes racing to unlock gift cars, competing in lengthier championships, and taking photos of your cars or customizing them. Completing menus also sees cafe owner Luca providing you with a brief history of the cars you’ve unlocked along the way, so be prepared to learn way more about compact cars than you were probably expecting from a video game.

But where Gran Turismo 7 most needed to bring players up to speed was with its realistic racing. It’s been a number of years since the last mainline entry, and now games like Forza Horizon have conditioned me with driving techniques that simply don’t work in Polyphony’s world. Pulling up to a corner, slamming on the brakes, and then easing back onto the accelerator will get you far in Horizon, but that isn’t the case here. Players need to precisely assess the speed at which they’re approaching each turn, how forcefully the brake should be applied, and try their damnedest to follow that all-important racing line.

It takes some getting used to, especially with the speedier cars, but the presence of on-screen racing lines, assisted braking, and ABS among other tools helps ease players into the swing of things. Given that these assists can greatly reduce your lap times, though, I’d recommend switching a bunch of them off as soon as you feel comfortable with the basics.

Even on a moderate difficulty setting, plenty of these tracks can get the better of you if you aren’t driving the correct car. Tuning and car customization are essential here, with cars measured in PP (Performance Points) that determine whether they’ll be capable of taking on certain races. However, PP isn’t all there is to consider — while you may add a muffler or a new set of tires or reduce the weight of a car to get it to a certain PP threshold, depending on the race type, that doesn’t guarantee victory. I’ve found myself bombing it around Goodwood in a Mini that doesn’t hit the PP recommendation but has nonetheless been kitted out in a way that most benefits its performance.

Pimp My Ride

You can get lost in the customization suite here, with there being a plethora of tuning and aesthetic options available. There’s an exhaustive number of paint options — over 1,200, in fact — along with 130 styles of rims and 650 aerodynamic parts to equip, along with alterations that can be made to your driving gear. In terms of tuning, options range from standard to extreme, letting you tinker around with each car to get them moving exactly how you want them to. The in-game descriptions for each car part make it easy to know what they will achieve when equipped, too, so you won’t need to be a mechanic to figure out what needs changing.

These changes in steering, braking, and speed are also impressively replicated by the PS5’s DualSense controller. Outside of Astro’s Playroom, I’ve not been sold on the use of Sony’s new tech so far, with it often feeling like I’m fighting with its adaptive triggers. Here, Polyphony has used the left trigger to uniquely mimic the brakes of each vehicle, while haptic feedback authentically makes you feel every bump on the road and each screech of the tire. It’s arguably the best use of the DualSense since the PS5’s launch.

But Gran Turismo 7 doesn’t just excel when it comes to how the wheels feel on a track. This is one of the most photo-realistic games I’ve seen and stands at the top of what is becoming an increasingly beautiful library of PS5 games. Such incredible care has been put into the level of visual detail in GT7, from the way the rain and sand spray from out of the back of your car when racing on wet roads or dirt tracks, to its dynamic clouds that look they’ve been plucked straight out of the real sky. It runs at a smooth 60 FPS in performance mode with an additional ray-tracing mode, too, with the latter providing some jaw-droppingly realistic scenes.

So many cars, so little time

The cars themselves steal the show, though, as best evidenced in its Scapes feature, which allows players to take photos of cars rendered in the in-game engine against backdrops of real photos. Put a Lamborghini Diablo in front of bright blue Icelandic waters, or park a Fiat 500 in England’s picturesque Cotswolds, and watch as the lines between video game graphics and the real world become almost indistinguishable.

And there are a lot of cars to play with, too. There are over 400 to unlock throughout the game, and while I haven’t unlocked even a quarter of that lofty number, the amount of attention to detail put into every car that I have unlocked is hugely impressive. However, the high price point of a lot of vehicles when purchased new from the auto shop does make the acquisition of new cars more difficult when compared to the likes of Forza Horizon 5. Gift cars are handed out willfully, but to purchase one of the higher-end vehicles, there’s a good amount of racing required given that many credits are inevitably spent on tuning your existing garage of cars. This is made a little tackier given that credits can be purchased from the PlayStation Store for real money.

It’s unclear how much these purchasable credits will have an impact on the game’s online modes, but given that they typically restrict vehicles to a certain PP, players hopefully won’t be able to buy their way to victory. I only got to briefly dip my toes into these online modes, but they’re divided between lobby-based races and daily ranked races as part of its GT Sport mode. The number of daily races has been extremely limited, but I’m a fan of how Gran Turismo 7 also boasts a sportsmanship rating to dissuade rival racers from crashing into their opponents. There’s even enforced driver etiquette when it comes to entering and exiting the pit.

Throwaway modes in a premium racer

For those seeking a more casual online experience, there are also Meeting Places, where you get to drive your car around on a track and chat with other racers. This mode is extremely limited to the point of it being questionable why it was even included, with participants just sitting around in their car not doing much of note, and the same can also be said for its perfunctory split-screen two-player mode, which immediately thrusts two offline players into a lifeless race around a track.

There’s also an odd emphasis on a new Music Rally mode, so much so that Gran Turismo 7 begins by forcing you to play it before you can access its main menu. This mode sees players hitting checkpoints within a time limit to the beat of a chosen song from its soundtrack — which on the whole is inoffensive if unexceptional — and is ostensibly a way for less experienced players to enjoy the game. However, considering its prominence on the main menu, it feels half-baked and a weirdly mundane introduction to an otherwise premium racing game.

Gran Turismo 7 Review: The final verdict

Despite these throwaway modes and some repetitive grinding, Gran Turismo 7 does so much right that it’s still a true comeback for the series following Gran Turismo Sport’s disappointing reception. There’s plenty to do here both for car enthusiasts and GT newcomers alike, so much so that I’d wager this will pave the way for a whole new generation of petrolheads. From its photo-realism to its pinpoint handling and extensive amount of additional features, Gran Turismo 7 is another first-party PS5 success and a new benchmark for performance and visuals on the console.

Gran Turismo 7 was reviewed by GameRevolution on PS5. Code provided by publisher.

Prior to the review, we played all of Gran Turismo 7’s single-player modes and features, including its various cafe menus and missions, along with trying out its Scapes and customization features. We did not get to play much of its online modes due to the lack of players ahead of its official release.