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The much anticipated Gran Turismo 7 has finally released, and I get the sense that the franchise is actually living up to the hype for the first time since GT5 or even 4. If you're an adult who grew up on this series you're probably going to like 7, and if you're a newcomer to the series you're also probably going to like 7.

The new look GT mode's primary feature is the GT Cafe, which serves to give you missions to complete throughout the campaign. It's a more linear game than we're used to seeing, though it goes retain GT's traditional open-endedness in the form of additional races and activities not tied to GT Cafe progression. Beyond this, the old mainstays of GT mode are all back, from tuning parts, to a used car yard, to oil changes and car maintenance, as well as a few improvements to said features, such as the largest selection of visual customisation options yet.

A big and much needed change to races in campaign mode is the inclusion of difficulty levels and removal of rubberbanding. Whilst the races are still catch the rabbit style, the thrill of the chase is greatly enhanced by having a harder mode and not seeing the lead AI suddenly go 10 seconds a lap faster just because you're in 1st. This will tide me over until Sophy is implemented in a later update.

As for online, Sport mode makes a return largely unchanged. This was the highlight of Sport, so little change to the iRacing-lite formula was necessary for 7. There are however new features here, such as the launch week races having specific power and weight limits that players have to build their road cars around. Custom lobbies also remain available.

However it is important to point out that your options are limited at first; many features are locked until you've made some GT Cafe progress, and some circuits won't unlock for free play until the mid to late game. This could be off putting for sim racers who are used to sandbox style games and/or career modes segregated from free race options. But if one is willing to treat GT7 as a journey and enjoy slowly unlocking content rather than fret too much about a destination, you should be able to have a lot of fun with this game, and whilst it's not perfect, I believe GT7 is indeed excellent, hence the 5 star rating.

What can I say, it's definetly great and don't hesitate to give it a try

With all its flaws i still give GT7 a really good review it makes up from 6 and sport but it has alot of room to improve itself. It may not be the complete nostalgia trip i grew up with but it does keep me coming back.
ROOMS FOR IMPROVEMENT
-Qualifying for single player (it needs to happen)
-The option to add your own music (attach Spotify to use your playlist for menu and race)
-make every track have day/night and rain. (Needs to happen)
-better flag rules (full course cautions and pace car)
dont be hating on a game that just came out this isn’t battlefield 2042 updates always comes

While we had high expectations for the game when it was first announced, I think a good portion of people were expecting something like the My Team mode but from a managerial perspective. What we ended up getting was a licensed feature removed copy of Motorsport Manager.

While it may be unfair to compare those two, as MM is as much older game with plenty of mods which extend it even beyond of what this game can do, you'd expect a bit more polish from a game that costs twice the price. But I think the comparison is somewhat fair because some of the UI elements are exactly the same as the ones in MM but with a different skin on top. Car setup is the same, tire selection is the same...Apart from some specifics this game has, even the manual driver management is similar. That makes the asking price not be worth it, IMO.

Graphics wise, some of the drivers are...let's say the developers didn't quite get the skin tone correct in some. Either their skin is too dark, they look like they have a fake tan or sunburn. When some of them have facial movement, they...It's almost like the gates of hell are opening in front of your very eyes. Granted that is not so much important for a game of this genre but those assets add several GB to the game size and...You'd expect at least some polish in that regard.

As per the simulation, many aspects which are exclusive to F1 are lacking, things like briefings (which MM has to some extent in a different form), media stuff and so on. Things that My Team has. The simulation itself is also quite shallow and deterministic. Once you figure out how the thing functions, you can pretty much take any team with any combination of drivers to the points. You'd think the various differences between different cars from different teams would be well represented, but they're not.

Apart from a few small things here and there, you'd better off getting Motorsport Manager and using some F1 mod instead.

I gave up on dialling in the FFB and settled for a dull asphalt experience instead of exaggerated rattling on dirt roads. Turned off the engine vibration, and set road/suspension vibration at 25%. It can be turned up to 50% for asphalt, but I don't want to be constantly fiddling with it.

It also takes a bit of fiddling to get the title running smoothly, but my experience from the earlier titles made this easier (keywords: 60 fps vsync). The game is more resource hungry than other titles, though, and it has the occasional small freezes. But nothing game breaking on my system, at least.

Other than this, the game is giving me a lot of fun - the stages are very good and plenty. And the cars are of course the best selection available in any game because of the license...

There is a 3rd party telemetry plugin patch available, which is a must-have for me at least.

The menus are a bit clunky but do their job. I would prefer pure keyboard navigation, rather than this keyboard/mouse hybrid solution. It's better than the WRC 9 menu system, which is a disaster on an ultra wide monitor.

As for the driving physics, they are good enough for me to enjoy the game. The car behaviour feels a bit ... simplified at times, but the driving is still very much fun.

Would absolutely recommend the game, despite its obvious flaws.

I am not gonna write anything about historical content, because thi is a really great content. But from the audiovisual and gameplay point of view, this is a massacre.

I don't have a rally car in my garage, but I've visited hundreds of WRC rally events in my life and unfortunately what the game offers in terms of sound is a mockery. This is definitely not how rally cars sound. There is nothing to comment here. It's better to turn off the sound.

Graphically, we are dealing with a regression. For comparison, I ran an old WRC7 and V-Rally 4, and rubbed my eyes with amazement. How can you release such a bad looking game when the previous games are looking so good?! And I completely do not understand why the level of historical 3D car models differs so much from the rest?! They have an awfully small amount of details and are poorly reproduced. For example Colin McRae's Subaru, it's actually some kind of Subaru. I already omit the poor quality textures and the notoriously appearing and disappearing elements of the environment during a SS. This is very easy to see when watching the replays.

And finally, the best... physics or driving model. The cars drive... that's good. And that's it. With the assists turned off, the game does not require any major skills from the player at all. Or maybe I am so good... This is very easy. Too easy... With assists turned on? This is a game for "children".

But to be honest... It's still a very enjoyable game. Such a Need for Speed Porsche...
It supposedly simulates some car's behavior on the road, but it also allows for uncompromising hands-off driving.

When I first launched the game, it looked really good. The great music and soundtrack match with the improved opening cutscene. Heading into the main menu, it was fairly basic but it got the job done and it looks quite good with the car in the background and some studio lighting,

The problem began when I first went into the control options, there weren't any true options I got to select my wheel and that's it, there were no other options. No choice of shifting, button remap, axis dead zone and linearity, nothing. If you didn't like the settings, you had to deal with them. The same goes for basically every other setting, it's all fairly shallow and not enough for fine-tuning for performance. It was incredibly jarring because the previous Heat game did at least do a decent job at allowing button remaps and setting to an acceptable degree but all of this was stripped away.

I then decided to check out the paint booth as it had previously been a weak point of the Heat games and I was expecting more of the same basic paint booth but I was pleasantly surprised. Sitting in front of me was a proper paint booth, one that resembles those from Nascar 14 or 15 and even the Nascar Thunder games from the early 2000s. There was a lot of customizability from color to decal placement and size to numbers to basically everything one could want outside of going into photoshop and creating completely custom liveries. It was incredibly powerful and I spent a solid two hours playing and creating a custom paint scheme for cars because of how fun it is to use. It is frankly an incredible experience but it is worrying that this is one of the best parts about this game, it was the paint booth and not actually the driving or career experience, of course at this point, I didn't know this but it was soon clear.

I then decided to do some driving in Single Race mode, choosing the 5 of Kyle Larson and racing at Pocono because racing at Pocono was previously an experience that was not great in the Heat games. This is where the first of many crashes happened, it just crashed to desktop after selecting.

I then decided to just head into career mode in order to do my driving there and see what happens in career mode as well. This is where it gets worse. The F1 games share the exact same problem as this, I could choose any team to start my career with which takes away a lot of immersion because as a rookie, I wouldn't be able to sign with Hendrick or Joe Gibbs or Penske especially with the lack of Xfinity or Truck means it was shallow and you are essentially an unproven talent and you would not be able to sign with those teams. I choose Kaulig racing and my career begin with a dashboard of the dates of events and that's it. There wasn't anything else to do except being practice for the Daytona 500 so I did while expecting another crash. Thankfully it didn't happen and I was treated to this flyover view of the track, with a TV announcer introducing the event and it is a much-improved presentation from the previous games. The garage was also much improved with you now sitting in the car and your crew chief handing you a tablet where you can change the setup, look at a live leaderboard of the lap times, and go out on track. The lap time screen is fairly basic with names, car number, manufacturer, and current and best lap time but it is welcome and gets the job done. Set up screen is not overly detailed which is expected of a licensed racing game but it is much better than the previous heat games. The overall presentation feels much more realistic and immersive as a Nascar driver compare to the top-down view of the previous games. Heading out on track led me to my first problem, it put me straight onto the track without the pitlane and the transition from autopilot to manual driving was so jarring that I spun on my first try. I went back to the pit and head back out on track this time manage to catch the car. This was even worse in qualifying where the game autopilot and entire lap and since Daytona have a banked front straight, the transition was incredibly fo me to judge how much wheel I should have already turned when I got the control

The driving experience is much improved, clearly, the acquisition of Studio 397 and having the rFactor 2 physics knowledge is a massive help as the car now feels like a 4000lb stock car. They are weighted and I need to wrestle the car to make it turn but the force feedback is still lackluster, I didn't get a feel of the road condition and it wasn't entirely communicative leading to drive based on visual and audio pretty much entirely which made me quite slow on track as I was being more cautious. The physics are definitely a complete step in the right direction but the force feedback and the jarring transition of autopilot to manual driving brought down what could have been a fantastic driving experience.

The race itself was a problem. I wanted to test the caution system and starting from 16th was a great way to do that although I was in the inside line for some reason which is strange. I wanted to test the caution system so I got myself wrecked and spun to the middle of the track and saw the awesome new deformation and damage model as I wipe out half the field but there was no caution, the race stayed green which is absolutely disheartening. Stages also aren't a thing so I didn't caution there either not to mention crashing can still result in cars clipping and being launched into a low orbit. I love the driving physics but the bugs and glitches mean I did not do more than the Daytona 500 before uninstalling which makes me sad because it could have been so good but once again bugs plague this game and it just didn't allow me to have fun.

The game that wanted, the game that promised, the game that bugged off.

I didn't plan to buy FH5, as I felt it was a map-expansion to FH4, and way too costly. But when every other in my local group of gaming-friends bought it, I wasn't able to resist. (weak me).
I put in way more hours than any of my friends as I knew I would work a lot the next couple of weeks. So when I write this, I have 33 hours in-game.

It still feels like a map expansion, as the game takes the good parts from FH4, and the first expansion, merging it with Mexico. Some cars are missing, but not as much missing as other numbered sequels (yes The Sims, I am looking at you).

When the game works, and especially in convoys with friends, doing racing and fun shenanigans around on the map, it's really fun. It's good for sharing a laugh and cool stuff. We haven't experienced much issues in convoys either. Except from surprisingly many times where not every car loads in. And the occasional "Hey, everyone are just standing still" bugs in races. Those have been rare in 30+ hours of gaming though.

The one bug that is worse than any other, is the "disconnected" bug. This bug just stops your car at a blink of an eye, and you lose every kind of progress you had. A hotfix was rolled out during the early play for premium buyers, which would fix this. Well. It removed the message for "disconnected" - which didn't make sense, as every time that message came, the online racing worked fine, we could all see each other in the convoy etc. So what was disconnected, we never know.

The message was removed, the bug is still there. It's irritating at the best of times. But when one accolade you need is to score a 2million skill points chain, then a sudden random stop with no error is just game-ruining.

The bug is proudly presented here:

It sadly ruins any kind of fun experience when stuff like that happens. To channel my inner Sebastian Vettel... "Honestly, what are we doing here??"

The game has proper potential. But needs urgent bug fixing, an addition of some cars and the first expansion to the game should be larger than in FH4.

It's not the old good "GT" I was expecting. The career is quite good but the rest is still the same like in GTS. Not a true nextgen game.

EDIT: This review is outdated, but will remain as it was accurate to my feelings at the time.

Gran Turismo 7 is excellent. Probably one of the best games of the last few years.

First off: I'm playing the game on a PS4 Pro. It runs beautifully and looks amazing. Complaints about it not looking "Next-Gen" enough are absolute nonsense. It's a beautiful game using the best of what Next-Gen has to offer to make car lovers go absolutely nuts.

The current car selection (on release) of 424 cars might not reach prior heights of Gran Turismo, but every car is on the same level of detail, no standard or premium models here. Cars look lifelike and absolutely beautiful, with detailed interiors and amazing exteriors.

Graphics improvements from GT Sport are felt almost immediately in the much improved antialiasing and lighting. Even without Raytracing the lighting is breathtakingly beautiful and makes each Track feel alive.
All the better that the track selection is great, making racing both fun and visually pleasing.

The driving model improves from GT Sport, making it nicer to narrow down your driving style. It's forgiving if you want it to be, but can also be made fairly realistic.

The introduction via the GT Cafe is a bit long winded, but introduces you nicely to the basics of Gran Turismo. I'd appreciate an option to skip it, but it's fine as it is too.

Microtransactions are present, but non-instrusive and a case of "If you don't want them, don't buy them". Driving cleanly earns you a 50% bonus on earned credits anyway, so if you learn to not just punt the AI out of the way like you're in Forza you'll do fine money-wise.

EDIT: This review is outdated, but will remain as it was accurate to my feelings at the time.

The version released before the official release is full of bugs and very simple content. A game that had everything to be the best manager of all time, looks like another slot machine.

It should allow you to create a team in F3 and try to make it to F1, it would be majestic, it has so much licensed content on hand and it does something so shallow and simple.

Games from 20 years ago are still better in terms of management, this one only wins in terms of graphics.

Tendency for a 4.5/5 in case Codemasters fixes the AI times, stuttering and add more functionality for simracers.
The good feeling for cars especially on gravel make it super enjoyable for me though.

Has a great mix of cars and tracks, the graphics look really nice.
The whole "sim" feels alot like the dirt series (personally I like this)
Performance for me has been pretty good, I had 3 crashes in a row trying to load my championship but it seemed to resolve itself. I do have occational frame drops (maybe once or twice over a stage) but reading the recent post from the developers this should be addressed in the next patch.
I dont usually buy DLC but I think I will if its decent (UK stages please!)
Overall I think EA have hit the mark and have a great base to build upon (hopefully they dont get greedy! lol!)

I generally agree with bad comments but FFB for me is actually great after proper settings. Regarding rally drivers experiences and more experienced pl than me it should be like drifting everywhere. RBR is exaggerated from what I understand so there is a little to much grip. It is not like a glued cars. Fix your FFB first because it makes huge difference in every sim/game.

way too much grip except on snow and ice in Monaco.

I hate the game. Under the coat of flashy visuals, it's boring and repetitive.

Definitely the best WRC game yet..!
Have completed 5 seasons in the career mode and loving it!

I got it on the 4th and got all the licenses and today I got up to book 12. Still do not have Daytona, my favorite track. The whole storyline is OK for some but not me. I think developers should offer more than one version, one for people that want to go through all that BS and one for others that just want to get into it. I have been doing sims a long time and don't need to take a driving test. Kinda wish I had not spent the 60 bucks.

I've played through every iteration of the GT franchise (even the PSVita version) and I can say that this brings me back to my all-time favorite GT3: A-Spec.

I love the story mode, with all it's oddities and smooth jazzy feel. I love the enormous time sink this will be, to get even close to 100% completion. I love that I can use my full-on cockpit setup with all my Fanatec hardware (of which none is compatible with a PS-anything with a %$5 3rd party controller and a $90 drivehub.

Is it a sim? Of course not, but it comes closer (IMO) than any other previous iteration in the GT franchise. If it had a fully customizable cockpit view and AMS2/RF2 physics, I would likely forget to eat/drink/shower for days at a time.

Overall Gran Turismo 7 is a top tier game, and I think it will only get better as it ages. There are some small hitches here and there, but the game overall has incredible polish, and plenty of content to keep us entertained until they start releasing new cars and tracks. As a long time Gran Turismo fan, this gets the seal of approval from me.