#oneaday Day 1129: Vroom

Really enjoying Gran Turismo 7. I picked it up mostly out of curiosity to see how well the PS4 version compared to the PS5 version (quite well, from what I can tell) but have been very much enjoying it ever since I first fired it up. It is — and I mean this emphatically as a compliment — a game that feels like it was made 20+ years ago, only with today's graphical technology.

What do I mean by that? Mostly, the game's sense of fun. I'm planning to write more about this on Rice tomorrow, but compared to previous Gran Turismo titles I've played, there's something about this one that just feels very pleasingly… gamey. You unlock stuff. You complete objectives. You take on gradually more challenging things. It doesn't try to sell you stuff (though you can pay real money to get more in-game currency, which is a feature I wish wasn't there) and it feels like it's a complete game in its own right.

There's a lot more structure to it than the previous Gran Turismo titles I've played, too — though admittedly I think the last one I played might have been 3 on the PS2. But the "Menu Book" system this one adopts, despite having both a stupid name and concept, works really well; not only does it provide a means of you building up your car collection bit by bit, but it also gradually encourages you to check out more and more of the game and become more ambitious in the challenges you take on.

Presumably there will come a moment where you've "done" all the Menu Books, and from there it'll be up to you as to what you want to achieve, much like in the old games. But for now, the objective-based approach is working quite nicely — though I can see it frustrating some people, since it even locks off stuff like the multiplayer until you've made sufficient progress through the main game. Doesn't bother me, personally — I doubt I'll ever go online against other people — but for those who relish the idea of online racing, that might be an annoyance.

One of the things I particularly like about it is that despite it ostensibly being "The Real Driving Simulator", it doesn't forget about aspects of game-like presentation. Cinematic sweeps around your car before the countdown. Rolling starts. Arcadey musical jingles and sound effects. And music.

A while back, I played Project Cars 2 when I first got my Logitech G29 steering wheel. I like that game a lot, but it felt like it was missing a few things — like music. When I went and looked on the forums for the game to see if anyone else had asked this question — or, indeed, if I was missing something — I was confronted with some of the most snobby elitism I think I've ever seen online. Project Cars 2, it seems, is not a silly game where you have music, because you should be listening to the sound of your car. (The sounds in that game are excellent, admittedly.)

Gran Turismo 7 has none of that attitude about it. It wants you to come on in, enjoy it however you see fit — and it's going to play a selection of excellent music while you do that. There's original tracks, there's some excellent classical music remixes — including several tracks from the legendary Hooked On Classics series — and there's a track with Idris Elba mumbling about Bugattis or something.

When I wrote a bit about the game the other day — or, more accurately, I wrote a bit about the game's installer — I commented that this is the first game I've played for ages that feels like it has old-school PlayStation energy about it. And it's absolutely true. And you know why it's got that old-school PlayStation energy? Because Sony, for once, let one of its Japanese teams make a game instead of giving us drab American triple-A moroseness.

I hope they learn something from this. I absolutely positively definitely know that they won't, but it is still something worth noting.