After waiting and crossing an entire generation of consoles, the seventh generation of the orthodox sequel to the GT Racing series is finally overdue. Although GT Racing Sports was launched on the PS4 console, this generation focused on networking capabilities, which is clearly experimental. In GT Racing 7, we can see the online mode penetrate into the various modes of the game, and the traditional modes that players expect are also returning, and we can finally play the masterpiece of this racing game in the early days of the new generation of PS consoles.
Embrace novice players
The series has positioned itself in "real driving simulation" rather than a game from the very beginning, so the whole work is serious and solemn from beginning to end, and I even feel that it is a little disrespectful to call it "game". But such a setting is obviously not friendly enough for many new players, after all, the ultimate goal of the game is to give the player enough entertainment, but if it is too serious, there will be too much frustration and the player will quickly feel bored.
▲ Basically, the playable content of the game is presented to the player in this camp
As the orthodox sequel to the series, GT Racing 7 brings back all the traditional models of the series, including the necessary driver's license model of the past generations, as well as the information content that can be described as the level of automotive encyclopedia. This generation uses a small map similar to a campground, with the "café" as the core, with a story mission line, the core experience content of the entire game is strung together, which is convenient for players who are exposed to the game for the first time to quickly integrate into the atmosphere of car culture.
In a previous interview with Kazunori Yamauchi, he mentioned that "coffee shop" is an idea he thought of 25 years ago. From the perspective of the game, players can use this place as the starting point and transit point of the game, and the most dialogue with the player in the game is luca, the owner of the café, in addition to the beautiful assistant Sarah. In the form of collecting "catalogs", he will gradually lead players from easy to difficult into this grand garden of automobile culture.
▲ The "Catalog" mission takes players to experience the car culture step by step
In terms of overall difficulty, taking the driver's license model as an example, I personally feel that it will be slightly more difficult than previous generations, but this difficulty is mainly reflected in the gold medal requirements, if you are just to get a driver's license, the bronze standard will not be too difficult for players, but if you want to pursue the full gold medal, it will take a lot of hard work.
▲ Each level of the Super Driver's License is a complete race with almost no fault tolerance
The difficulty of the "catalog" collection task is also gradually climbing, the task given to you by Luca is generally not to create a problem for the player, but to lead the player into the world of GT Racing 7 step by step, whether it is collecting a designated model, or modifying a vehicle, or completing a special championship, the early stage is basically easy, and the later stage is the degree to which a little practice can be passed, of course, it is inevitable to spend some money to modify the vehicle in the middle.
After completing 39 Catalog collection missions, GT Racing 7 displays "Level" and plays the ending movie. But this does not mean that the game is over, there are more demanding international B licenses, international A licenses and super driver's licenses waiting for you to challenge, and there are more than 400 vehicles of various types waiting for players to collect in terms of vehicle collection.
So from this part, reduce the difficulty of getting started, in the form of dialogue and story to guide players to gradually go deeper into the game, GT Racing 7 does indeed do a very friendly way to embrace novice players, so that they will not be overwhelmed by the information and content of this modern car culture garden when they face it, I believe that many players, especially those who are in contact with this series for the first time, can more easily experience the core fun of this series.
In addition, for more players with no driving experience in racing games, the game also prepares a novice difficulty with a fully assisted mode and a musical rally mode. The former allows players to experience some driving pleasures simply by mastering basic steering without worrying about stepping on the throttle and brakes or the timing of in and out of corners, while the latter prepares a series of specific race methods (including racing and tracks) to experience the joy of racing without stress in the company of many world famous songs.
▲ The music rally mode is full of world famous songs or classic music from previous games
Next-generation features
As the first in the series to land on the PS5 console, GT Racing 7 also takes advantage of many of the advanced features of the next generation and presents them to players one by one during the gaming experience.
The first is the tactile feedback that the DualSense controller brings to the player with its delicate vibration feel. I believe that the vast majority of players are still playing with the gamepad, and with the new feature of the DualSense controller, the details of the vehicle during driving, I can even describe this feeling as "unexpected". For example, the resistance of the brakes in different driving states (straight, turning or different ground), the vibration of the body when changing gears, the bumps when driving over different roads, especially when slamming on the brakes when decelerating and starting the vehicle ABS (anti-lock) system caused by the vehicle's shaking, I believe that players who have had a real driving experience will be very impressed by the feedback provided by the handle.
At the same time, it is also strongly recommended that players wear headphones to play. In addition to the sound simulation of the vehicle itself (engine, brake, etc.), the sound simulation of the overall environment has also reached an unprecedented height. With the support of PS5 console Tempest 3D sound, when you drive from the driver's seat perspective, whether it is the wind noise of the overall vehicle, the echo of the sound when interlaced with other vehicles, and the different ambient sound performance when driving on different venues (closed field or open field), it is vividly restored.
In addition, the "ray tracing" effects brought by the next generation of hardware are also reflected to a certain extent in the game. The game offers two screen options, "Ray Tracing" and "Frame Priority", and I suggest that players can choose the former with confidence, because in this setting, whether in the camera mode, or the replay and demo screen of the game will present more realistic light and shadow picture textures. Although the game is only running at 30 frames per second at this time, entering the official game is when the player starts driving the vehicle, the game seamlessly switches to the "frame priority" state, ensuring that the player still plays the game with a smooth feel of 60 frames per second, so that high-quality graphics and a smooth game experience can be combined.
In addition, the high-speed reading characteristics of the SSD also make the game wait for the time to read the disk is greatly shortened, and the waiting is almost impossible to feel in and out of different modes in this game. Therefore, in summary, the game experience of the PS5 version will be much better than that of the PS4 version, and it is recommended that qualified players choose the PS5 version as much as possible to play.
Two-sidedness of realism
As mentioned earlier, Kazunori Yamauchi positioned this game on the "real driving simulation", which of course represents the most extreme pursuit of him, a big car player, and strives to build "GT Racing 7" to the point of infinite closeness to "real driving". But the pursuit of authenticity and fun to play (note that driving pleasure is not meant here) seems to exist at both ends of the scale, and this game is clearly more inclined to the former.
From the first to the seventh game, the core gameplay and game content of the GT Racing series have not changed substantially, and the game content provided to players basically revolves around the main axis of "obtaining a driver's license + participating in a race + collecting vehicles", of course, this is also the biggest selling point of the game. However, as a player who has played from the first generation to the present, he may feel a little fatigue for these game contents, the marginal effect brought about by the improvement of the picture is becoming more and more obvious, and the game operation itself is unlikely to have any new changes.
Driving itself is actually a very serious matter, and even though there are a lot of racing games that do a lot of things that are not possible in reality in order to make players happy, the GT Racing series is obviously not pleasing players in this way. It is no exaggeration to say that if it is not a player who is extremely obsessed with car culture, if you want to feel the real driving pleasure in this game, it is difficult to say that you have experienced the essence of the game without an immersive experience of twenty or thirty hours.
Where the essence of the game of GT Racing 7 is reflected, it seems to the disapproving player to seek the optimal route to the destination over and over again in the designated corners in pursuit of a gold license, and to play driving and racing into mathematical formulas with almost only a single solution. And this ultimate pursuit of 0.00X seconds is the insurmountable watershed between this game and other racing games, and it is a true understanding of "real driving simulation".
Compared to the raucous and refreshing racing game, GT Racing 7 is plain and unobtrusive. For example, most races are played in professional racing tracks, the player's attention is always on the cement or asphalt road, even if the game provides a rich medium and long range, even a variable lighting system, and the night scene that claims to correspond to the real starry sky, these are only qualified to appreciate after you have completed the race carefully and meticulously, and the whole process tests only your patience and concentration.
Even in the highly competitive races in the game, where the audience's perspective is full of speed and passion, there is no slack for the driver himself, every in and out of the corner, every foot throttle and brake, must be perfect to get the final victory. As GT Racing 7 itself is doing: the quest for the perfect interpretation of "real-life driving simulation" is never-ending.
Shortcomings, and summaries
In terms of this genre alone, GT Racing 7 probably doesn't have any fatal flaws. From the perspective of game content, this game returns to the most traditional and core game mode of the series, abandoning some of the seemingly "fancy" content of the previous generation (such as the six generations of go-kart mode), but it can also make players more focused.
However, as mentioned earlier, the marginal effect of picture evolution is once again highlighted, and the visual evolution of car body modeling compared with the previous work is not large, but the lighting effect (including shadows, reflections and light changes) and resolution and clarity can still be felt significantly improved. The track environment is not too fresh because of the limitations of the game mode (you can only race within the limits of the track), of course, you don't pay too much attention to the details of both the close-up and the long-range view, but the in-car rendering of the cockpit perspective still has a heavier "plastic feeling".
In addition, perhaps the most criticized point is that the game is largely online, so that the offline mode of the game can only be played in the music rally and arcade mode, the music rally has only 6 games to play, and the arcade mode has only 21 jump tracks and 13 cars to choose from. The reason for this should be that there is an in-app purchase of this game, and in order to avoid the collapse of this business model, all game content that can obtain CR (in-game currency) has to be certified online. Logically understandable, but this has to worry, if the game server goes offline in the future, the playable content of this game will be greatly reduced.
▲ In offline mode, the playable content of this game has been greatly reduced
It is undeniable that "GT Racing 7" is like a work of art in the game industry, it takes the car culture as the core and the game experience as the carrier, and presents the originally boring automotive encyclopedia to the player in a way that takes into account knowledge and fun. There is almost no threshold for getting started with this game, but to truly appreciate the core of this car culture still requires some understanding, to use a less appropriate analogy, everyone in the Louvre can walk in, but not everyone can appreciate the artistic essence of those world famous paintings.
GT Racing 7 is still a game of course, but it's becoming more and more of a serious game, and although it's taken care of novice players as much as possible, since the playable content and fun isn't as colorful as other racing games, I still recommend that players with a strong interest in car culture experience the game.