Gran Turismo 7: PS5 Review

Developed by Polyphony Digital
Released by Sony Interactive Entertainment
Platform: PS5

How you feel about Gran Turismo will depend largely on how you feel about cars in general.

After all this is a game that opens with a 10 minute cinematic that celebrates the history of cars, manufacturing and also the Gran Turismo game series which hits its 25th anniversary. It's a game that also drops car-related vignettes throughout its run time as rewards for completing tasks - it's every car nut's dream.

And in many ways, it's the absolute antithesis to XBox's tremendously popular Forza Horizon series, which centres arcade style racing at the very forefront of its raison d'etre.

But if Gran Turismo 7 starts off feeling like a car enthusiasts' dream and not really for the general players, the game's at pains to try and at least increase some of its broader accessibility with things like the GT Cafe. 

The Cafe acts as a hub, with Luca, a cafe owner who assigns you various menu books of cars to collect, via races and other things to do, with each book's completion offering you a reason why all the cars are involved in the game itself.

And there's also the Music Rally, a series of mini races that start the game and will remind any players of the Outrun games as you race from checkpoint to checkpoint before the time runs out. But in the Music Rally, the timer is the BPM of the song playing in the background - make sure you pass each checkpoint before the beats run out, and hit a certain mileage to win various trophies. It's a nice light opener to the more serious elements to come in the simulator.

With around 400 cars to enter into the world of the GT7, there's a lot to collect, but it'll take time to do so.

Fortunately the racing is solid enough, with the haptic feedback helping to make you feel like you're in a car, as pressure's needed for the brake to be applied to make sure you don't overshoot. It's not like that, disappointingly, for the accelerator, but handling of the car on the track is so comfortably executed it's almost forgivable.

Graphically, the game is spot on, with rendering of the vehicles something that shines in every section. It's possibly the most important part of a simulator, and Polyphony Digital has certainly ensured the visuals match the game's desire for prestige.

At the end of the day, it's a top-notch simulator that's a little too obsessed with cars and their general history to feel completely accessible at times. But with the launch of the game and more expanded online racing, maybe that will change. For now, it's a simulator at the top of its game, and a car enthusiast's wet dream writ large.

A review code for Gran Turismo 7 was provided by PlayStation NZ.

Further review information for Gran Turismo 7 will be added after launch into this review, for a more fully rigid test of the game's online capabilities.