The GT7 update brings Grand Valley, and pits you against superhuman AI

Tuesday Gran Turismo 7 Just got an update to the biggest summon in the game’s almost year-long history. Maybe he fixed the multiplayer or which allows you to sell cars It was more impactful for other reasons, but the just released patch 1.29 adds something for everyone.

If you grow up play Gran TurismoThe return and reinterpretation of Grand Valley Speedway, a classic franchise car, has undoubtedly piqued your interest. If you are a fan of AI and are particularly good at this game, you will want to try your hand against it Sufi – An AI agent designed by Sony’s artificial intelligence arm, in collaboration with GT Dev Polyphony Digital. And if you’re a VR fan and early adopter, you’ll be glad you tried the whole experience GT7 – Split screen multiplayer aside – in PSVR2.

Here’s a big one, and that’s even before we get to know the five new cars in this update, one of which is Richie Ginter. 1965 Honda RA272 – The first Grand Prize winner to wear the badge of a Japanese automaker. It’s not as hard to drive as you might think, though it does get a lot more fun if you ditch the hard racing tires for less grippy rubber. There is also a file 901 Porsche Carrera RS 2.7And Citroen DS21 Palace And two new ones Vision Gran Turismo Concepts From Italdesign, in racetrack and off-road flavours.

I wish I could comment on how to run the game in PS VR2, but alas – I don’t have the new Sony hardware to test. It looks cool though, According to those who actually drove it. what am I Can Commenting on a lapping experience on the reimagined Grand Valley – now called Grand Valley Highway -1for reasons the photo above will likely make clear – and what Sophie wants to be racing against.

First, when we learned yesterday that Grand Valley was not returning as a permanent racetrack, as we knew it so well GT1 during GT6But opinions were as mixed as a strip of public asphalt along California’s central coast. Polyphony, of course, has been updated Trail Mountain And deep forest in a somewhat dramatic way GT7, reconfiguring certain corners and adding new sections of track entirely—but those at least remained circles, with similar geographic features to what they were in the late 1990s. By contrast, Grand Valley has been picked up and dropped in an entirely different part of the world.

As a longtime fan, this wasn’t what I expected or, frankly, didn’t want. But I warmed to it pretty quickly, once I acknowledged how amazing the new landscape was and learned the new Grand Canyon looked like a giant love letter to the California coast. Having spent more than six days in California my entire life, I didn’t immediately catch this from The trailer was released on Monday. Luckily, Photographer Eric Yue put up a helpful thread on Twitter The highlight is the many landmarks bestowed upon the Grand Valley, such as the famous Bixby Bridge, the Coronado Bridge, the Rain Rocks Tunnel, and the Ragged Point Inn.

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California is a big state of course, and in real life all of these points of interest are very far from each other. in Gran Turismo, you can visit them all on a 3.17-mile course, driving a make-up course that you may have first encountered 25 years ago. This is very neat.

Since this is Grand Valley, it’s still a dream to drive. Turn 5’s hairpin, now on the edge of the cliff, is wider in radius and more semi-circular than it was before, but the technical middle sector is as deceptively tight as ever, and the final sector—usually everyone’s least favorite part of the track—is It has now been moved closer to the former corner exit, and has been completely redesigned. These are all, in my opinion, welcome changes. south course – GT7’s The new name for what was once called the Eastern Track – is a fun explosion of low-powered machinery, with blind corners and undulating tarmac that challenge you to brake in a straight line. They are all good things.

Then there is Sophie. First, it’s important to note that this is a limited-time event that is unfortunately exclusive to the PS5 version of the game. This is unfortunate because it is one of those few aspects of GT7 It lacks generational parity, but it’s not surprising either, given that this is a cutting-edge AI that likely requires a bit more CPU than the decade-old silicon jaguars at launch the PS4 can offer.

In “Sophy Mode,” we’ll call it, you’re given the opportunity to race four computer-controlled opponents on four tracks – Tsukuba, Alsace, Trial Mountain, and Suzuka. There are three difficulty levels for each race, where your vehicle and its upgrades are predetermined. Each race begins with a very loopy rolling start in which all the cars in front of you are worse than yours, even though the purple car behind you is at least the same make and model. There is also a single mode which offers no prize money but allows you to race one Sophy in a specific race with a fixed start.

At my skill level, which I would describe as A little bit Above Intermediate, beginner and intermediate runs around Tsukuba were a piece of cake. The car I got on the lower difficulties is so much faster than you get on Expert, and I went through the field so quickly that I didn’t notice their behavior much, except for one instance when I noticed the leader Sophie swinging completely protecting the inside line around Tsukuba’s finishing hairpin. He gave in pretty quickly, resulting in a sad emoji appearing atop his deck, so I was aware of his unhappiness.

When I bumped into Expert, I started to sweat. Sophie isn’t afraid to bar or stick her elbows out, but she usually gives you that Just Enough space to keep at least half of your car on the asphalt. Nor does he tend to move more than once. It doesn’t beat you in games, it just beats you in speed. And if you give him any chance, he’ll take it.

I learned this the hard way in my Expert Tsukuba race, where the faster Sophy Violette took my moment in the corner turns second-to-last and slashed the inside, wheels on the pavement, to take the win. I would have eventually gotten the better of them in the Expert Challenge, but when it came to the 1v1 race – where you’re facing Sophie in a similar car – I was completely helpless. I only won by driving in such a way that an actual racing license would have been revoked, constantly blocking Sophie and trying to stifle her momentum by stopping my car on practically every corner of Tsukuba’s countless low-speed tracks. If I let it beat me until I hit 1, I’m gone.

In a sense, I benefited from Sophy’s clean ride and athleticism, which Sony AI engineers previously said they had to Rebuild in proxy To teach her that racing is a non-contact sport. In the cases where I drove respectfully and communicated with Sophie, there was a gap that was completely within her rights, and she tried to close the door too late. They’ve really built a competitor here that races cleanly and fast on merit—not artificial overdrive, secretly packing in extra strength or weight.

I would love to see Sophie’s strength GT7’s Artificial intelligence in more events, rather than this limited-scale demo. Maybe this is more than GT8 something. Gran Turismo The AI ​​has always been among the worst in the genre – usually too timid to race aggressively, sometimes too hard to avoid some havoc and always unable to win without cheating. This is a very encouraging taste for a racing simulator that simulates human behavior with the same care and focus as that of a car, and I’m very excited to watch it evolve.