Gran Turismo 7

[ThatM1key]

Ever since Forza Horizon 5 rubbed me the wrong way, I've gone down to my GT roots. GT5 and GT6 was just meh, but the series saw some hope with GT Sport, things were actually improving versus Forza just f-cking around every single year because of the monopoly they had. I can't include everything in this list because there's so much. If you want to read whats known you can go here: https://www.gtplanet.net/gran-turismo-7/

Major Points:
-Campaign Mode is back
-Over 400 cars & 34 tracks.
-Skyline and weather is accurate to the location (Some tracks)
-GT Café (Learn the history of cars).
-Used Dealership is back for 2000 and under vehicles, used prices based on today's market (UD was last seen in GT5).
-New content that includes cars and tracks (Similar to GT6 & GT Sport).
-Lots of tuning parts (Like GT6)
-GT Auto returns again
-Livery editor is back from GT Sport and you can put decals on windows
-Split screen 2-player local multiplayer


Rumors:
Engine Swaps (Volkswagen Beetle seen with a 3.8L engine)

Since this is audio forum, I'll talk about the audio:
GT5 and GT6 had the worst engine sounds in any reason (When compared to other racing games released around the same time). GT5 & GT6 engine sounds were literally comparable to vacuum cleaners and yet I seen people say "Need For Speed Shift 2" had the worst engine sounds , at least they sounded like engines. I played GT Sport many months ago and the engine sounds were good and I can imagine them being even better. Forza Horizon 5 had "improved" engine sounds over Forza Horizon 4, which is true but if you applied a better exhaust system in Forza Horizon 5, it makes the sound worse. Also the fact Playground games swapped engine sounds between some Nissan and BMW's, shows you how much love was put into GT7 then with FH5 .

2-5-22 Edit: The single-player campaign mode is only playable via an internet connection to prevent "cheating", despite it being harder to mod a ps4 than ps3. If you are a ps4 player, whatever version you get, please get the disc version. If you eventually own a ps5, you play the ps4 disc version on the ps5, you'll be offered a $10 upgrade (I know ) to the ps5 version. If you bought the digital version, your still stuck with that version (launch editions), no upgrades. If you get the 25th Anniversary Edition, you get a ps4 digital voucher and also get the ps5 disc version. You can look up what the editions include. I was disappointed to learn the soundtrack is digital only and not on a CD. I heard the music can be extracted to usb device but I think its MP3 only.

 

[ThatM1key]

GT7 Current Mini-ish Review (Base PS4)

I got my hands on the game. After 6+ hours of gameplay, I can say the game is made with love, more love than was made with Forza Horizon 5. I will probably update this in the future.

What I liked:

• Graphics look really good, everything is sharp. (1080p + HDR).
• Nice selection of tracks.
• Café is good and tied well with the single player campaign. Vehicles are handed out like candy.
• Access to all paints in the game (Via GT Auto, costs 4,000 credits). Yes there is free basic paint (Via Livery Editor).
• Lots of performance parts.
• Decent selection of visual parts (Including widebody kits).
• Car Engine sounds are improved and surround sound game engine is very good (Ex: You can hear turbos through the center channel).
• Alright car selection but has plenty of newer vehicles (Unlike Forza Horizon 5)
• The new Brand Central is a good idea (Only able to buy new vehicles from 2001 and above).
• The Map (I guess you can call it a main menu) is inspired from GT4's and looks very good.
• License Tests are balanced and fair.
• GT Auto is back
• Race payouts are pretty balanced.
• Scapes are pretty convincing and look great.
• Instead of having a mostly static interior view, it now wobbles.
• Promise of future content (Like GT5 and above).
• Livery editor feels better than Forza Horizon 5's. (Ex: You can import other peoples decals onto your custom livery).
• After each race, you can hear the engine cooling down. Nice attention to detail.

What felt meh to me:

• Used Dealership is back but its an online thing now. Selection is very limited and (I think) updates every 24 hours.
• Load times are kind of annoying even when the game is on an SSD.
• Daily Workout Car Roulette is gone and is replaced by a Daily Workout Star Roulette system. (Prizes ranging from money to cars). The more stars on a your "ticket", the prizes aren't that much better. 1 Star lowest price is 2,000 credits while 3 Star is 5,000 credits.
• The instrumental music is very good but the vocal songs are super annoying.
• Music Rally, drive to the beat of music (Fun-ish side thing).
• Historical cars can be bought at the Legends Dealership but its similar to the Used Dealership system.

What I don't like:

• I still don't like how you need internet just to play the game.

Overall I can describe it like this. Forza Horizon 5 is for everybody while Gran Turismo 7 is for Car People.

 

[concorde1]

I'm looking forward to this except I only play PC so I might have to borrow someone's PS5.

I played GT2 and GT4 a lot when I was a child.

 

[ThatM1key]

I'm looking forward to this except I only play PC so I might have to borrow someone's PS5.

I played GT2 and GT4 a lot when I was a child.

I think there was talks of GT7 to coming PC judging by the old leaked Nvidia list but at least you can play it on a PS4.

I played GT3, GT5, and GT6 as a kid. I later played GT4.

 

[Tks]

Microtransactional costs compared to GT Sport have increased how many fold? Quick glance math seems like 4x?

Biggest problem I have here, is this game was explicitly stated to be a PS5 exclusive, and then backtracked. Shame really.

Always-online for single-player portions can go die in a ditch, just terrible (reason for having it I think, but you will never get them to publicly admit, is telemtry gathering up the ass mainly, and also preservation of the economy, meaning if an exploit is found in a prior version to allow for easier credit farming, it can be patched and forces everyone to update to the amount of grind they want you to put up with). I think people need to stop saying the always-online is an indication of the game coming to PC (most folks for some reason use this inference as the justification, when it literally makes no sense and doesn't forward or detract from the argument that the game is coming to PC). As for payouts, they seem pretty bad in my view, but if one thinks GT Sport was good, then I can't see how these are better?

Other nitpicks is this is the same GT Sport engine (really unfortunate actually given the fact this was supposed to be heralded as a true showing of a next-gen driving game, seems the next Forza Motorsport is going to stomp this). You also have most of the returning cars from GT Sport (meaning they're recycling the higher-native assets that had to be scaled down for GT Sport, and not fully remodeled new assets), and it shows with not many newer-year car releases at all in this roster (lots of cars from the ~2016 era, and at best 2018 era on average).

Some music is nice, while others is perplexing, like the disco-mixes of classical music pieces when playing the rhythm driving mode.

In the end this looks like a game that's going to be milked to the end of this console lifecycle. Games-As-A-Service by the book with trickle releases of cars over the next few years.

 

[ThatM1key]

Its been 10+ days and so I'll do a re-review. I technically completed the current main career mode, GT Café. First off, running this game off a hard drive is dreadful and I would highly recommend installing on an SSD, external or internal. I can't speak on everything on the game like Multiplayer.


Career Mode (GT Café): GT Café guides you throughout your Single-player journey. A "Menu" is basically a main objective to get done. It's okay, car's are handed out like candy and you are able to buy the cars from the Used Car Dealership (Which I recommended doing every time you do a "Menu"). It is pretty short compared to other games.

Brand Central: Its a dealership where you can buy 2001 and newer vehicles brand new. The list doesn't feel much bigger than GT Sport's.

Used Dealership: It's worse then I thought. I was hoping it would be like GT4's where its random, Instead its tied to the server. The problem I have with it, is that it doesn't update every 1 IRL day, it updates like 1/3 to 1/4 of the list every few days. The only good thing I can say is that you can buy as many as you want of a specific vehicle, unless "stock" runs out.

Legendary Dealership: It's where you can buy used low-milage legendary cars. Same story as Used Dealership

Tuning Shop: For the most part its good, although a good chunk of vehicles cannot be upgraded with a Turbo & Supercharger which is weird. Some sought after parts like Engine Swaps are locked behind the "Roulette Ticket" System and cannot be bought. Engine swaps can only be used once on a compatible car.

GT Auto: A shop which ranges from oil changes to doing widebodies. Most cars can have widebodies, bumpers, skirts, and spoilers. This time, instead of obtaining paint colors from buying a car, you buy any paint you want (Yes even specific car model colors). If you want good basic colors that are free, the livery editor has got you covered. One thing that is missing, is custom interior gauges which was last seen in GT6.

Roulette Ticket System: Probably the most unrewarding system ever that makes Forza Wheelspins look like gold. When you complete some Menu's and/or complete your daily workout (Drive 27 miles), you get a ticket which ranges from 1 to 6 stars. Most of the time you'll win very small amounts of money which ranges from 2,000 credits to 100,000 credits. 100k credits does sound like a lot but there's a race where you can get 100k every 3 minutes, so yeah. Sometimes (If you are very lucky) you do win cars and parts. Parts won are tied to specific cars and cannot be used on a different vehicle.

Interior Wobble: When racing games feature an interior, they don't feature much of a "wobble". GT7 introduced this and it's alright. If you steer your car side to side, the wobble looks like a game mod rather then a baked feature. There is 2 wobble options and you cannot turn it off. Can you get used to it? Probably.

Tracks: Track selection is pretty good and looks great. Most of the pre-made races on these tracks, have sort of awful payouts.

I should've given this game a "rating" before, but instead of 8/10 its a 7/10. Decent amount of cars, alright single player and good tuning options but the used dealership and the roulette system is terrible (I hope that gets fixed in the future). I was hoping this game was a smash hit (to beat Forza Motorsport 8) and Overall this game needs more time in the oven. If you were wondering why this game got a lot of 9/10 professional reviews, it's because Sony won't let you publish your review if it's a "low" score. If you look on Metacritic, the overall user rating is 6.3 (Both versions).

I thought this game would make me a GT fan again but instead, its making me want to play the older GT games, similar to what Forza has done to me. I wouldn't be surprised if Forza Motorsport 8 smashes GT7 but it'll never replace the best racing game, Forza Motorsport 4.

 

[Tks]

Follow up was interesting to read. What was that about Sony not letting you publish a low review score? Sounds pretty bad if true.

Btw, I had a question about some of the Concept level cars in the game. Are there any new ones? I know GT likes to sometimes push the boundries of what they imagine in possible in the future (like in GT5 with the awesome Redbull X11, and in GT6/Sport with the SRT Tomahawk line of cars which). Are there any new concept cars since GT Sport or is it as bad as I thought it was when looking at the roster lists floating about during early release?

 

[ThatM1key]

Follow up was interesting to read. What was that about Sony not letting you publish a low review score? Sounds pretty bad if true.

Btw, I had a question about some of the Concept level cars in the game. Are there any new ones? I know GT likes to sometimes push the boundries of what they imagine in possible in the future (like in GT5 with the awesome Redbull X11, and in GT6/Sport with the SRT Tomahawk line of cars which). Are there any new concept cars since GT Sport or is it as bad as I thought it was when looking at the roster lists floating about during early release?

I would pull up the video but I don't know which youtuber it was, as it was a few days ago. I am pretty certain it's error judging by all the day-one 9/10 reviews out there.

I'm not sure if there's any new GT concept cars. It looked like most were from GT6. I kind of missed when GT would include actual new cars that are not always japanese like the C7 Corvette prototypes, Fisker Karma, etc.

For people that wanted to know what the C7 Corvette test prototype looked like:

 

[Tks]

That's pretty funny, the prototype is even wrapped up in the game.

 

[ThatM1key]

Polyphony Digital released a new update that reduces some race payouts because of "game balance".

 

[Tks]

 

[Sgt. Ear Ache]

My PS4 crapped out a few months back and I've been waiting for PS5s to become readily available here in Canada (I'm not paying more than normal retail for one) but nothing yet. Now I see frikkin PS4s are selling for double retail! I'm a GT guy from way back and really enjoyed GT Sport and I miss doing my laps around the Ring dammit!

I get tempted every once in a while to jump back into "serious" sim racing again. Back in the late 90s/early 2000s I was really into it...was in a Grand Prix Legends online racing league. I was part of the alpha/beta process for Iracing when it was being developed using a modded version of NR2003.