This year marks the 25th anniversary of Gran Turismo, and developer Polyphony Digital is celebrating the occasion by launching one of its best games to date. Gran Turismo 7 is an exceptional driving sim, developed by a studio operating at the peak of its ability. It looks gorgeous, it plays like a dream, and it's absolutely stuffed with modes, cars, and tracks—including some nostalgic callbacks to the series' long and storied history. It's also a game anyone can play, at any level, whether you're a gearhead who loves tweaking damping ratios, or a casual racer who just wants to scream around a pretty track in a shiny car.
Gran Turismo 7 sees the return of a proper career mode to the series, and it's superb. Beginning with a cheap entry level car (I opted for an electric blue Toyota Aqua S) you enter races, win credits, and use the money to buy better, faster vehicles to access more lucrative events—or, alternatively, spend it on upgrades to increase the power of your existing cars. You can visit dealerships, enter championships, buy parts, take your collection online in multiplayer races, earn licenses (yes, the classic license centre is back), and customise just about everything. It's the most fully featured Gran Turismo yet.
You're able to progress through the career at your own pace, choosing cars, races, and events that suit you. But even if you're a series veteran, it's worth dedicating some time to Café mode, which has been designed with new players in mind. Luca, a car-loving coffee shop owner, hands out lists of tasks called Café Menus, which act as a gentle guide through the career. These might ask you to complete a series of races to collect a list of cars from various categories—British rally, maybe, or classic Ferraris. Or it could be something simpler, like taking a photo of your favourite car or tuning it a certain way in the garage.
Café mode makes this the most approachable Gran Turismo yet. It's brilliantly paced, feeding you increasingly powerful cars, more complex tracks, and gradually more challenging races in a way that feels natural. You start out racing city cars around simple tracks, but before you know it you're drifting around the Nürburgring in the rain in an upgraded Nissan GT-R without feeling like you're in over your head. It's masterfully designed and structured, and teaches you the intricacies of the game without you ever really realising it's happening. You couldn't ask for a more perfect entry point to the series.
However, because Gran Turismo 7 encompasses so many different styles of racing, there will be points where working through Luca's seemingly endless menus can feel like a chore. I have little interest in American cars, so when he had me collecting Mustangs and Camaros, and racing Ford pick-ups on NASCAR tracks, I tuned out. But later, collecting classic Toyota Supras speeding around the Tokyo Expressway, I was hooked all over again. Luckily it doesn't take too long to complete a collection menu—and if you have the credits, you can just buy the cars Luca has requested outright instead of winning them.
But it's when you're actually driving your ever-expanding collection of cars that Gran Turismo 7 comes into its own. This is arguably the best the series has ever felt, with deep, nuanced handling, a detailed physics simulation, and a palpable sense of weight and speed. Gran Turismo has always been great at making its cars feel distinct from one another, and everything on offer here—from the lowliest hybrid hatchback to the fastest track-eating supercar—has its own unique personality on the road. The driving is precise, refined, and responsive, and getting behind the wheel just feels wonderful in your hands.
The PlayStation 5 hardware plays a part in this. During races the game maintains a rock solid 60fps, resulting in a gloriously smooth driving experience. Polyphony has also made impressive use of the DualSense controller's haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. There's a slight resistance when you squeeze the brakes and accelerator—and the amount of tension even varies between cars, depending on their power and size. You also feel the rumble of the tarmac under your tyres, with the amount of haptic feedback subtly changing in intensity based on the type of surface you're on. It's brilliantly tactile.
It's enormously customisable too, to a ridiculous degree. You can tweak almost every facet of the game's handling, AI difficulty, controls, and assists—which means it can be as challenging or forgiving as you like, depending on the experience you want. This, combined with Café mode, makes for a hugely welcoming driving sim. Even seemingly complicated simulation elements like tuning your engine are made simple through the Café Menu system, with Luca giving you tasks that explain in clear, readable terms how to increase or decrease the important PP (performance points) level of your cars.
As for the cars themselves, there are over 400 of them, spanning decades of automotive engineering. I obviously can't list them all, but highlights from my own collection include a 1994 Nissan R32 GT-R V-Spec II that I've painted a garish shade of pearlescent orange, stuck an oversized spoiler on, and tuned so that it's absolutely monstrous on straights. I also have a 1983 Toyota Corolla Levin 1600 Apex, which I've fitted with a hydraulic handbrake and a steering angle adapter to let me pull off sick Initial D drifts. This kind of customisation gives you a nice sense of ownership over your car collection.
In the Legend Cars dealership, which sells vintage cars, there's James Bond's 1964 Aston Martin DB5 and the 1997 Castrol TOM's Supra GT500—which has one of the most recognisable liveries in racing history. In Brand Central, which sells new cars, I can pick up a Tesla Model S, a DeLorean S2, a McLaren P1 GTR, or a Red Bull X2019 Competition concept car. You get the idea. There are a lot of cars in this game, from all corners of the motoring world, and you can drive the lot. The quality of the rendering is absurd too, taking full advantage of the game's 4K resolution. You will spend a lot of time just staring at cars.
Gran Turismo 7 doesn't disappoint when it comes to circuits either. Panorama Mountain in Australia features sweeping views of New South Wales and fast, steep hills. Tokyo Expressway is home to tight, intense street races. Returning series favourite Trial Mountain ducks and weaves through a dense North American forest. Alsace, France takes you through lush green farmlands, while Switzerland's Deep Forest Raceway features some dramatic mountain scenery. There's a lot of variety here, and a range of familiar motorsport classics including Brands Hatch, Suzuka Circuit, the Nürburgring, and Interlagos.
The game's tracks are brought to life by some remarkable atmospheric lighting. It's some of the most convincing, naturalistic lighting I've seen in a video game, with an understated realism that really sells the simulation. Time also passes as you drive, so you might start a race with a balmy pink sunset in the sky, and end it under the stars with your headlights on. Rain can also sweep in, kicking up spray and forming puddles that can cause you serious headaches if you don't have the correct tyres equipped. It's a beautiful game, and a great showcase for the PS5's hardware—albeit in a restrained, non-flashy way.
Gran Turismo 7 has two graphics modes: Prioritise Frame Rate and Prioritise Ray Tracing. The implementation of ray-traced reflections is stunning, but you'll only see it in certain situations, and it's limited to 30fps. This includes showrooms, replays, photo mode, and the glory shot of your car at the beginning of a race. It's either inactive or simplified when you're actually driving, because the game always runs at 60fps when you're in a race—even if you have Prioritise Ray Tracing enabled. This might disappoint some, but I'd rather have a solid frame rate than fancy reflections I'm going too fast to see anyway.
The presentation is just as pristine as the handling, with snappy, crisp menus that take full advantage of the PS5's super fast SSD. You can swap between locations on the career screen almost instantly, and be in the thick of a race in seconds. There's no resistance at all from the UI, which is good, as between races you have to dip in and out of a lot of menus. The music here is classic Gran Turismo, with mellow, loungy jazz and remixes of classical music—although I'm disappointed to report that the in-race music is abysmal. I dunno why there's so much generic, corny emo rock on there. I just switched it off.
Otherwise, Gran Turismo 7 is hard to fault. I can't think of another racing game I've accidentally played for 5 hours straight without leaving the couch. The racing is thrilling, the cars are a joy to drive, the tracks are magnificent, and the career is well structured. I haven't even talked about the photo mode, which is one of the best I've seen in a game. All the screenshots in this review were taken with it. I haven't fully dipped into multiplayer yet either, which has the potential to spawn a thriving competitive scene. There's just so much, and I can't imagine wanting to play another racing sim any time soon.
5/5
Gran Turismo 7 launches on March 4 for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. A PS5 review code was provided by the publisher.
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