Gran Turismo 7

[Zevious Zoquis]

That setting is at system level; it’ll be in the console options menu. It should already default to 1080p mode if it detects that you’re playing on a 1080p screen.

Ah OK yeah that's sorta what I was hoping - that running it on a 1080p TV might add a bit of extra performance headroom. I know it mostly already runs at 60fps anyway but there's apparently rare instances of frame drops. Maybe a holdover from my MS Flightsim 2004 days lol - I would always try and set my system up so that it could run the sim mostly at 50fps and then I'd lock the framerate to 30.

[Zevious Zoquis]

I have "the game." lol. The epic journey has begun.

Thoughts after the first 90-or-so minutes...

You really have to admire the sheer "no fucks given" chutzpa of Kaz & Team including Trial Mountain as one of the three Music Rally tracks. I mean why not? Might as well let people experience the one track in the game that has any notable performance issues before the game has even finished downloading! Rounding that first couple corners and seeing the framerate start to churn is pretty discouraging. Sure, "churn" may be hyperbole, but it was enough to cause me to almost say "ewwww" out loud lol. I'm hoping that since the game was still downloading maybe the patches are the last part of the install process and the performance issues are resolved after the full install.

I don't mind the structure of the game so far. The menu thing is kinda dumb...but it's still fun to run through the challenges and unlock things. I'm enjoying the process. I'm finding the early Circuit Experience challenges pretty difficult to gold - more so than the ones in GT Sport (which I've actually only been doing this past week so they are fresh in my memory), but that's OK. I've only done the first menu and first couple of Circuits so far - just unlocked the Licenses and will be starting on them tonight.

So far the game feels maybe slightly more ...errrr...nuanced in the physics/feel department. But it's early going and I haven't really experienced much in that regard.

Anyway, I'm liking it so far ftmp.

Edit - fuckin roulette tickets! lol

[Zevious Zoquis]

Slowly making progress here. I'm not really even trying for golds on everything...just doing what I need to do to open the game up. It's at times a very irritating process lol...I haven't really "engaged" with a GT game since probably GT2. I skipped the PS2 games completely, and GT5 & 6 and Sport I really never bothered with large portions of the content at all. I literally dont think I drove a single lap at any of the dirt or snow tracks in those games ever. Never really did the licences or anything. Also never did any online racing or really much of any racing at all. Mostly I just did what I needed to do to buy a few of my favorite cars and then I did laps at my 3 or 4 favorite tracks. I'm reasonably fast in the 2% of the game that I've actually spent time at over the past few years and everything else I kinda suck at lol. I'm going to more fully explore GT7 - well...you're sort of forced to really but I also want to. I spent some time yesterday attempting the daily challenge at Lake Louise and the best I could do was I think a couple tenths off a bronze time. The "off-road" physics are silly, but also quite a lot of fun. I also bought the Radical which is a very sweet ride. I'll be driving that a lot once the game is fully-open to me. That and the X-Bow which I also bought and has been a long-time favorite of mine since GT5.

The game sure is beautiful at times. There was one race at I think Trial Mountain I was in a 60s muscle car....Dodge I think, and the time changed from evening to night and the lighting was just absolutely gorgeous!

Edit - Oh the new Watkins is very very nice! I'll be spending a lot of time there.

[Zevious Zoquis]

"Finished" the game last night. That last race at Nurburgring was absolutely rage-inducing. Had to restart it probably a dozen times because I kept getting punted by the idiot AI when I'd try and pass. I was in 3rd place going into the race and the one time I finally managed to get through a lap I ended up in 6th so I was expecting to have to do the entire series over again start to finish but nope I still held on to 3rd position overall. Thank god lol. Still tons of stuff to complete of course but I'll go about that at a more casual pace now that all the tracks and features are open to me and I have the option to sell cars I don't want or need. Absolutely love the game. I could do without the "story mode" stuff and really wish there was a way to bypass the dialogues instead of endlessly pushing the X button line by line. It feels like a sort of wierd stubborness on the part of Poly to make the user experience things a certain way that really has no actual merit beyond "you're gonna see all this whether you like it or not!" I also think the whole roulette ticket thing is pretty ridiculous. Finishing a menu and receiving a 4 star ticket which invariably ends up being 10k credits feels basically like getting nothing relative to unlocking a track or feature in the game. On top of that, I feel like the prize for finishing menu 39 should be something like a legendary car - one of the big ones - rather than 500k credits or whatever it was. I mean I'll be playing the game a lot over the next couple years but even then I may never accumulate enough at any one time to buy a 20 mil car. I don't really care that much because I have lots of stuff to drive around in anyway but it would be nice to have one in the garage at least. But, still and all the game is amazing.

I don't even really mind some of the traditional "Gran Turismo" things that are generally considered defects. The AI for instance (not Sophy, just the regular AI). I was focused solely on getting the content unlocked so I went into the races with the mindset that I'm just going to set this up so that I can easily blow by the competition and cruise to a victory without a lot of effort, but even given that I still found a lot of the races were quite entertaining. Yeah, the AI is an idiot parade of moving obstacles...but it's still decent fun trying to get past them (aside from that last race at Nurby lol) and every once in a while you get a really thrilling little battle.

[Godson]

The last race at the ring was frustrating as hell. Those guys were driving like toddlers the first few races, then act like a platinum level driver at the end was just downright dumb.

[Godson]

My birthday present from GT7 was an AMG VGT.


I will totally take that over some others

[Zevious Zoquis]

I managed to get a low 1:23 in the Watkins TT this morning. Good for silver...I was only able to bronze the Daytona and Willow ones.

Addendum - I decided to see if I could sneak into the gold zone so I ran lap after lap last night at the Glen and couldn't even get within 4 tenths of my own pb. And it felt like I was really hitting some nice laps at times too. Weird. But luckily it's a super fun car and track combo...

Addendum 2 - Did a few more laps this morning and got a 1:22.8xx. Will I get into the gold? We shall see! At the very least the silver 1,000,000cr should be secure. I also ran the money-maker at Sardegna this morning. I thought I had it figured out in terms of being able to win it easily so as not to waste runs. This time, I had a perfect race! Got out front before my pitstop on lap 8. Moved back to third while in the pits, and then passed the AI front runners when they pitted around lap 11 or 12. So I'm in the lead by about 8 seconds with a few laps to go. Over those few laps, the fuckin 2nd place car made up the time (and like I say, I had a perfect run...nice and smooth with no mistakes) and PUNTED ME ON THE LAST FUCKING CORNER leaving me with a 2nd place finish and only 500k credits for my time! White hot rage!