And honestly, the cars look so beautiful, for once I don’t mind them staying that way. It rewards you with more credits for a clean race. Instead, it’s a gentlemanly affair, constantly reminding you to play nice and leave other cars room. Normally I would be up in arms about such things, but this game is not about close contact racing and spectacular crashes. You can slightly dent up the panels of your shiny car, scratch some paintwork and cause hairline cracks on headlights. However, cosmetic damage is underplayed, though it is present. The heaviest setting for this really affects your car handling and engine power, but it’s simply not used during the main game, which is odd. You can choose slipstream strength and even the option of switching on mechanical damage.

These go up to 200 laps with a maximum of 20 cars on the screen. Some tracks also have a new ‘meeting place’ where you can connect to an online lobby and use a text window to talk to other people, share photos and liveries and enjoy just driving around the track.Įvents are now collected under the banner of each racetrack, so you would select, say, Brands Hatch, and then decide whether to play an arcade race (with three difficulties), a time trial, a drift trial or a custom race. Music Replay syncs camera cuts to the music that you’re listening to, which is nice but not really worthy of a bullet point on the box. The game gives you three of these - again with Gold, Silver or Bronze awards - to play with while you wait for the full game to install, which is a nice touch, with three more when it has. Music Rally is entertaining enough as you pass checkpoints to earn more beats per minute (basically ‘more time’) on a song that’s played with a higher volume than usual, at least compared to the cars. With so many modes, talking about them all in depth would take thousands of words, so I’ll be brief.

Progression events are clearly marked with a little yellow icon, and the gameplay itself in these races is very short - usually about 10 minutes a race. The cafe menus of automotive delights direct you towards races that will win you the cars you need, which is a great way of leading you by the hand through what would otherwise be a bewildering wealth of racing options. Even more solo missions are locked away behind your collector level, which rises as you accumulate cars, whether by buying them or winning them. It’s some six hours before multiplayer opens up, with a full-on GT Sport mode, as well as split-screen, and two-player local play. It’s taken me about 28 hours to master all the license tests and all of the menu books in the all-new ‘Gran Turismo Cafe’, but there are hundreds of things left to do after that, let alone play online.

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