At long last, Gran Turismo has truly returned. Leaving behind the interesting but ultimately incomplete GT Sport, Polyphony Digital’s latest series entries marks perhaps the most complete Gran Turismo experience since the PlayStation 2 era. Taking centre-stage is a vast single-player component, reminiscent of the old days. Gran Turismo 7 feels both true to its roots but fresh at the same time, also delivering our first taste of what this technology-focused developer can extract from PlayStation 5 hardware. It’s early days for the new generation, so we had to wonder: to what extent has Polyphony scaled beyond GT Sport’s showing on PlayStation 4 Pro?
Arguably, Gran Turismo as a complete package reached its peak in the PlayStation 2 generation – with the shift to HD on PS3, there’s the sense that Polyphony Digital struggled to transition the series to this new era and while the games that followed were well-made, a certain purity and joy had been lost. On a technological basis, there’s the argument that the studio pushed too hard, hitting hard limits in the PS3 hardware. Nigh-on flawless performance on PS2 fell short on PS3, while the menu systems were complex, friction-filled and cumbersome.
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