Gran Turismo 7 – test, racing game

Love is…. sheet

My fascination with cars has not broken to this day. However, I sold my last private vehicle more than 15 years ago and have not regretted it for a second. Completing nerve-racking races in games is much more environmentally friendly, cheaper and definitely much safer. As a youngster I was very enthusiastic about karting. An unpleasant encounter with a stack of tires during a training run in Denmark not only gave me a broken shoulder blade, I also said goodbye to my racing ambitions at the time. However, DTM and some Formula 1 races, which I was fortunate to experience live, were a great balance. In short: cars and racing have always fascinated me. How it squeezes you into the passenger seat when the accelerator pedal is fully depressed in a high-powered vehicle. That feeling in the pit of your stomach when driving fast over hills and through dips. And looking out the side window at the road ahead while the driver laughingly yells “Ferry across, see more!” in your ear over the engine noise are things you just never forget.

It’s no wonder that racing games immediately secured a place in my heart’s garage. After Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge on the Amiga and Super Mario Kart on the SNES, I think TOCA Touring Car Championship for the first PlayStation was the game in which my spark plugs really caught my eye because of the quality offered and the extremely understandable driving behavior for the time were made to glow. And then came Gran Turismo. Apart from the fact that it saved me from marrying the wrong woman, I was – like countless other racing fans – completely over the moon: Lots of great cars, which were shown in a quality that has rarely been seen, plus tuning, which is also had a noticeable effect on driving behavior, something I had never experienced before in front of a screen. It was love at first click! But let’s fast forward 24 years…

Gran Turismo 7 leaves the workshop

Quite a few racing fans bought a new PS5 just for the reason (or at least tried more or less desperately to do so) so that they could immediately throw themselves into the cockpit of the new Gran Turismo 7. The launch tests were also extremely positive, at the beginning only small graphical problems and the tricky menu structure were criticized. What immediately pissed me off was the absolutely stuffy and outdated career start, which – after extensive exploration of the Mexican expanses in Forza Horizon 5 – made me feel like I was transported back years. Really doing lap after lap again with some Japanese family cars like a Nissan Silvia? phew!

The word “tough” is an understatement here. After all, I was enthusiastic about the optics right from the start. At least in performance mode, which unfortunately has to do without ray tracing as a nice bonus to demonstrate “The Power of Playstation”. But good, then without ray tracing and with mostly stable 60 fps. Nevertheless, the routes and vehicles cut a dreamlike figure, which is not least due to the borderline ingenious, dynamic weather system. The different lighting moods are almost unrivaled for a racing game, the onset of rain and then slowly drying parts of the track give the frenzy the long-desired tactical spice. So almost full marks here! Only the small but annoying jerks, which funnily enough occur especially on the newly implemented routes and fan favorites Trial Mountain and Deep Forest, wrinkle the players’ foreheads. It certainly doesn’t have to be, especially not on a powerful PS5. The raised index finger of mastermind Kazunori Yamauchi, who warns that “the player should first deal with the physical properties of slower vehicles”, pushes the racing fever, which makes the adrenaline run out of your ears, in the first ten hours of the game latches. But as soon as you are able to leave these staid carrots behind, the feeling of the game changes abruptly.