The results are terrible: whenever you turn around a corner, it’s the world around you that’s moving, not your car. Unlike other racing simulators, GT7 goes for a fixed, behind-the-car camera style if you choose this setting, in which the car is always positioned at the center of the screen. Regarding the gameplay, the actual main culprit, in my opinion, is Gran Turismo 7‘s awful third-person camera. There are times in which Gran Turismo 7 looks really cheap… If every other simulator in the market features cosmetic and physical damage, my conclusion is that this immersion-ruining “feature” is a deliberate decision by Polyphony Digital. It removes the sensation that you’re playing a full-fledged simulator, with things only getting worse when you realize that, for reasons beyond my comprehension, cars can still hit a wall at nearly 200mph and barely get a scratch. Sure, you can customize your controls to a nearly unnecessary degree (accelerating with X? What’s this, Mario Kart?), but having limited access to everything else is pretty sad. The stiff controls are one thing, but the limited customization of the game’s physics is another big flaw. There are so many gameplay elements that still feel like older Gran Turismo games from the PS2 era. I know some will point out that “this is the point, this is a simulation, driving cars ain’t easy”, but if Assetto Corsa Competizione, the game once touted to be “impossible” to play on a controller, is now perfectly playable on Xbox and PlayStation, there’s no excuse for a 2022 racing game to feel so… dated. Gran Turismo 6 was a stiff racing game, in which even the fastest and best performing cars were stiffer and clunkier to handle than my uncle’s 1978 Jeep. I am dead certain one of these things is the gameplay. One of the first things you’re greeted with once you boot up the game is a message that has the audacity of telling you that “many things have remained unchanged from previous versions”. Polyphony keeping the annoying tradition of making any car that isn’t Japanese extremely overpriced in this game. Then I remembered that Gran Turismo games have always been fun to look at. Gran Turismo 7 wanted to embrace me and tell me I was safe to waste as many gallons of gasoline as I wanted, with the most ludicrous of hypercars. Old pictures and clips of classic cars are intertwined with archived footage of Elvis Presley, the Titanic, the Beatles, and so on, all accompanied by a gorgeous piano ballad meant to make any car lover weep like a baby. Gran Turismo 7 starts off with an introductory (and unskippable) short film showcasing the birth of the car, the automotive industry, and racing culture. Essentially, Polyphony takes so long to develop their games, and paid so little attention to the rest of the industry, that they’re now unintentionally playing catch-up. Everything that Gran Turismo 7 is currently boasting as revolutionary features for the genre. Forza put a heavy emphasis on simulation, on automotive culture, car parts, but it always made sure to take newcomers into account with various difficulty settings, customizable physics, tuning, and most importantly, a crap ton of side content meant to introduce and educate people about the history of the automotive industry. Why am I talking so much about Forza in a GT7 review? Well, the answer is simple: those games pushed the boundaries of how a racing simulator should look, feel and play in this day and age. And the freaking mandatory driving schools. I’m not even taking the Horizon spinoffs into account, either. Forza Motorsport is en route to receive its eight iteration, considering its first game was released years after the first Gran Turismo. As previously mentioned, Polyphony took nine years to develop a sequel to Gran Turismo 6. The franchise would eventually take GT‘s place on the top of the food chain due to its more accessible nature and more frequent release schedule. That game featured the same focus on racing simulation as Gran Turismo did, but with more customizable controls and physics, as well as plenty of “pick up and play” modes to appeal to a wider audience. That used to be the rule: GT was the undisputed king to rule the entire racing landscape… until Forza Motorsport arrived back in the early 2000s. Car marques go as far as come up with brand new concept models solely for the game. Every single brand in the industry begs to show up in a billboard. Race drivers occasionally show up as guest avatars. People preorder these games way in advance. Given the fact its director and main developer is an actual racing driver with a ton of clout in the automotive industry as a whole, every single mainline release feels like an event. Gran Turismo has always been seen as the more “tasteful” of the racing simulators. Driving a Honda Fit with a DualSense shouldn’t feel harder than driving a Honda Fit in real life.
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