Gran Turismo 7 Review: Passion Without Flair

gadgets.ndtv.com:

Gran Turismo 7, out Friday on PS4 and PS5, is a little staid. There's nothing wrong with its cars, how they drive, or how the game looks. You would expect that from the veterans at Polyphony Digital — the Sony-owned developer has made every entry in the 25-year-old Gran Turismo simulation racing game series, with the franchise present on every mainline PlayStation console generation — who spent roughly three years actively developing Gran Turismo 7. But it feels antiquated in some ways, lacking the flair and personality of modern racing titles.

For one — it might feel counterintuitive to say this, but it's not — the soundtrack isn't anything special. Gran Turismo 7 could've learnt from the best racing game in recent memory, Forza Horizon 5, which understands how crucial music is to the experience of racing in games. Firstly, the series developers Playground Games put a lot of work and thought into the tracks they pick and its radio stations, with radio jockeys weaving in and between tracks to supply commentary and make its world feel alive. Plus, Forza Horizon has always known how to work with music, editing and splicing it together to play the best parts at the biggest moments.

Gran Turismo 7 is lacking all that. Most of its chosen tracks are boring or uninspired, Polyphony Digital doesn't do anything to spice things up, and there is no voiceover here. Everything is communicated via written text in Gran Turismo 7 — which means you have to do a lot of reading. (Gran Turismo 7 is also full of white people as NPCs, despite being made by a Tokyo-headquartered studio. It tells you who the game is targeted towards, but it feels weird to mask the developers like this.) Music is also part of Gran Turismo 7's newest game mode,