Gran Turismo 7

Ill start with the positives: the graohics are super clean, the cars look amazing, the teacks that have elevation like Laguna Seca actually have elevation for the first time in a racing game

But

You need to be online to race single player against the AI, to do your licenses or circuit experiences.this is pointless. In reality i play Gran Turismo when the newtork is down and i can play my normal games with mates . Same for split screen multiplayer. Needs to be online!? But nore o multiplayer - i loved the assist options in gt sport thst would allow my kids to rsce me, slowly turning them off 1 by 1 until they get the hang of things. No such optons in this ga.e.kind of an ow goal for the devs too as getting them into racong sims will benefit them in the long run

My final gripes are how hard it is to earn credits to buy new cars, its clearly based around micro transactions. And the lack of single player races and modes. I go back to Gt2 with all the races from 2 laps through to 500. I don't want to do a 500lap race but the option was there

If they'd have rebuilt gt sports gameplay into this game it would've been a much better result.

**A disclaimer** I'm a hardcore PC simracing player. And it reflects on my thoughts here **

It's been almost 10 years since we've got full Gran Turismo experience. And I hate to say it - I'm slightly disappointed.

Not by content - there is a LOT of cars and activities.

When it comes to tracks it's not as good - stable selection of known tracks and way too many of imaginary ones that games tends to focus during single player campaign.

Missions, quests, licenses guide you towards progression that means new cars and track. And it is slow - after 20hrs in i'm still somewhere near the start. Of course game pushes microtransactions everywhere to remind you that it does not need to be that slow, and you can buy progress.

What is not really bad is that very often you are forced into worst possible car/track combo that is just not fun to drive. On top of that those involving "AI" are basically putting you in the end of an computer generated cars (it's not AI) that are glued to their line and don't react at all to your presence, so they end up being more of an annoyance than competition.

Multiplayer is still fun, just got turned into "find best combo of tuning parts for win" instead of be faster for win. Differences in cars are way bigger than what you will get using default setups vs custom ones in real simulators.

And what is worst - it's a failure in technical department - not graphics as those are excellent for console standards but all other aspects - want to change FOV? Forget about it - forced to sit really close to 75" TV and feel like a kid in a truck with everything out of scale and problems with judging distance and speed? Bad luck pal.

Want to adjust pedals deadzone? No way to do it.

Want to adjust details in forcefeedback? Nope Want to adjust wheel angle? Not even nope - even if you want to do it from the wheel itself on start of every race game will autoadjust to what you've set on a wheel making it virtually impossible to change.

Want to adjust UI so it does not burn out your OLED? Nah Want to move around UI elements so driver list does not impose on rear view mirror? Not here

So still a Gran Turismo game. Nothing more.

The series peaked with GT4. U fortunately the relay value on GT7 is very low. There's no way to sell cars, which was a huge part of previous games, and it basically just hands you cars for winning races.

You always start at the very back of all races so they're not actual races, rather games of catch-up. Graphically it's gorgeous, but there's more to games than just how they look. I hope they fix a LOT of these issues as the updates come out.

EDIT: They just reduced payouts for races to push microtransactions. Absolutely horrible from the bottom up.

You buy an expensive cinema ticket, you sit down, and some guy sits himself down in the seat in front, wearing a stovepipe hat. You ask him politely if he wouldn't mind taking it off, but he refuses to do so unless you give him £16.99.

"Sir," you say, "unless you desist, I shall be obliged to call the manager."

"Sir," he repies, "I _am_ the manager."

It is difficult to imagine what Sony would have to do to recover the goodwill they've burned on this one. It really is that bad. It's in the category of the way you feel about Microsoft before you switch to Linux or MacOS, the way you feel about Autodesk before you switch to Blender, the way you feel about Unity before you switch to Godot Engine. I don't care if they're the only cinema in town showing They Finally Made a 2020s Movie A Person Might Conceivably Want to See. I'll give it a miss, cos at the time of writing this operation ain't gonna see a further red cent out of me.

One of my favourite franchises but now has taken a few bad turns.

Online only now, and today all day server maintenance meant no one can play the game! Paid 100 pound for premium edition and I don't actually own anything!

Cars are priced too high and you end up buying credits with actual money!

Sad times, paying 100 quid for one game wasn't enough!