Gran Turismo 7

Taking a BMW i3 through the field..

I’ve been playing the new Gran Turismo game for a couple of hours this morning. So of course I can now write the definitive review. Actually, I’ve been playing the game since version one on the original PlayStation, when we took a lowly Nissan to dizzying heights of success by a combination of a lot of tuning and bashing all the other cars off the road in the corners.

The new game is very true to the heritage of the older ones, even to the point of being a bit “up itself” with slow motion videos of the Wright Brothers and Einstein at the start. You even get to do qualifying races. Remember them? When the game first came out it was as if it was testing you to see if you were worthy to play it. It still feels like that.

Anyhoo, there are some new flourishes. There’s this strange music mode thing which you seem to have to do for a while before you get to the main game. There’s also a café where you can go and get menus of things to do. Everything loads pretty much instantly. This is literally a game changer. It means that you are tempted to have a go at shaving a few fractions of a second off that time, just because you know that you will be put back into the driving seat instantly when you retry. The graphics are better than real. I don’t think you could get these images with a camera.

Stopping for a coffee.

There are lots of races, hundreds of cars (including my beloved BMW i3) and tuning and detailing options galore. The driving experience is sublime with a special shoutout for the weather effects. There are lots and lots of things to do. You could go and live in this game. And with the state of the world today, I reckon it would be a pretty good option.

If you like Gran Turismo you’ll love it. If you’ve played a lot of Forza Horizons you might wonder what all the fuss is about, and ask why you can only race around tracks and not just drive anywhere. You might also question why the soundtrack is so bland and ask about missions. But these things are kind of beside the point. Gran Turismo really is about the driving and cars, not about narratives. And in that it succeeds brilliantly.