► New content for Gran Turismo 7
► Aimed at hardcore motorsport fans
► Yours for £24.99
It’s hard to believe but Gran Turismo 7 was released on the PS5 and PS4 around four years ago now. Like most games nowadays its 4K and HDR visuals mean it still looks decent – but it’s been progressively upgraded throughout the years with free DLC content, too. Enter the Power Pack; a new, paid-for DLC that promises to cater towards more hardcore gamers with a chunk of extra content and races. It’s only for PS5 and PS5 Pro, mind.
It’s yours for £24.99 and promises a host of new events, along with a small collection of new cars and a dollop of in-game cash too. But is it worth the money? To find out, I tested it on a standard PS5 along with a Fanatec setup and Playseat (both of which we’ll review soon).
Pros: More stuff to do, challenging races, Sophy AI has improved
Cons: Could give you more cars and let you use your own
Should I buy the Gran Turismo 7 Power Pack DLC? Yes. I’ve played better value DLCs, but this is a decent shot in the arm for a game now approaching four years old.
If you’ve played enough of the Menu Books in the game already, the Power Pack appears on the map as a three-mast sailing ship, but jump aboard and you end up in a menu more akin to an RPG skill tree. It’s pretty unintuitive, but also very Gran Turismo – so it is what it is.
At its heart, the Power Pack is essentially about bolting on more things to do. With that in mind, you get 50 new events across 20 themes such as Japanese classic racing cars, Porsche 911s and everything in between. The big thing here though, is the fact these ‘events’ have an entry fee and also comprise of Practice, Qualifying and a Race – like a real motorsport weekend. Gran Turismo reckons this makes the racing feel a lot more realistic and better for the hardcore fans.
Races aren’t just casual sprints either, with many involving tyre, fuel and pace management to squeeze out the best result. To add to the realism, there’s no restarting these races either – get T1 wrong and you’ve got a lonely limp to last place, or a hefty salvage job.
The new pack also gets the latest version of GT Sophy which is essentially the most advanced instance yet of Sony’s AI racing brain. You can’t ratchet up the difficulty though – instead you select between one of three cars – with two slower cars effectively upping the challenge. In the Porsche round, for example this means 911 992 as the starter car and then two progressively older cuts of Pork. The worse the car, the more prize money in comparison.
Complete races, collect stars and work your way through the sprawling map. And one more thing, upon purchase of the game you also get an additional 5,000,000 of in-game credits to spend.
From the very beginning, the Power Pack lends the game a more formal, motorsport-orientated feel, but my first race was a mixed bag. Practice was useful, though felt drawn out at over an hour (though I could fast-forward) and qualifying only required two laps to put it on pole by a decent margin. Not ideal.
Jump to the race however, and a cautious start saw me bogged down to as low as 5th place in the first few corners. Being tentative simply wasn’t good enough, and I found myself having to actually drive defensive lines before even thinking of progressing forward.
In the standard (easiest) car, I was able to pick off everyone in front and cruise to a win – but it was less straightforward than the first two sessions would’ve suggested. But kick things down to one of the lesser cars and it gets really interesting.
Using the middle-spec car I was able to qualify 3rd, but fell to 7th after the start due to a few mistakes. More issues followed and I could only salvage a 6th place. Second time round I qualified 3rd, fell to 5th but battled all the way back to 4th. I think a perfect race would’ve seen me finish in the top 3 – but a win was unlikely. In these two races, the Power Pack provided the level of intensity promised. It was a level above what the standard game gives me.
So, get the difficulty level right and you’ll have some fun, battling races – regardless of the class. There are some criticisms though; the drop between the cars feels quite steep in some races and the cars themselves can’t be ones you already own. Choose the top car and you can win lights to flag, choose anything else and it’s a battling – albeit fun – drive in the midfield. There’s no way of changing the difficulty with Sophy, so this is your only option.
More annoying though, is the fact you can’t use any of your own cars or tune the ones provided. That means no tweaking, no personal liveries and therefore none of the other stuff that you also play Gran Turismo 7 for. In that way, this pack can feel a little sanitised.
Finally, there aren’t really any new cars included in this pack, either. Instead you get tuned variants of cars that often already exist in the game; the cars you’d get in a free DLC are arguably more interesting.
The Power Pack isn’t the strongest DLC I’ve ever played, but it’ll be rightly snapped up by any Gran Turismo 7 veterans. It’s basically more of the same with a small (and partly skippable) twist – but find your sweet spot of game difficulty and ability and you can have some seriously fun drives that require your best driving for every sector. Throw in the different types of race too and there’s just a bit more to do than before.
Could it be better? Most certainly – especially with some more personalisation options – but for more experienced GT7 fans it’s still probably a must buy.
Curtis Moldrich is CAR magazine’s Digital Editor and has worked for the brand for the past five years. He’s responsible for online strategy, including CAR’s website, social media channels such as X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook, and helps on wider platform strategy as CAR magazine branches out on to Apple News+ and more.
By Curtis Moldrich
CAR’s Digital Editor, F1 and sim-racing enthusiast. Partial to clever tech and sports bikes
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