Review: Gran Turismo 7

 I didn't set out to play Gran Turismo 7. What happened was that I found a good deal on a Thrustmaster T150 for $100. Since I had a collection of racing games from PS Plus, I got it, installed it on a desk, and played Dirt 5 with the kids. Dirt 5 was a lot of fun, but the throttle kept slipping under me, and Dirt 5 had such a strong force feedback that the steering wheel would actually vibrate loose from its clamp and come off!

Pengtoh suggested that I got a FGT-lite racing chair, which looked expensive, but would solve a lot of these problems. The darn thing took me 2 hours to put together on a summer evening, dripping with sweat. It was heavy and solid but required quite a bit of tweaking to get positioning right. Once you got it setup, you never wanted to move it and I never successfully folded it. Worse, while getting it setup once in a while I would knock one thing or another out of alignment and in the middle of a game I'd fall over!

At the end of a month, Xiaoqin asked me to send it back and I didn't argue. It took another hour to take it apart and then I had to drive it to the UPS store to return it but I didn't regret it. The thing might be useful if you had a dedicated video game room, but it was simply too difficult to fold.

Finally, I got the Playseat Challenge. This wasn't a heavy duty chair, and was considerably lighter and easier to put together. It's so light that when you flip up the steering wheel to get in or out of the chair if you didn't stabilize it with your hand or body weight the chair would flip over! But this one folds nicely, and comes with a velcro strap that keeps everything together neatly. I can get it to fit myself or Boen properly, and it handles up to a 200 pound weight limit.

OK, was the steering wheel worth it? The answer is yes. I don't really enjoy racing games but this setup actually made them worth playing. When there was a Gran Turismo sale on the playstation store I picked it up and had fun --- you can actually tell the difference between cars from the feedback on the steering wheel, which is very impressive. I'm never going to buy a sports car, so this is much cheaper than the real thing. In fact, I even finished the single player campaign (called "Menus") and watched the post-game credits. It's been a long time since I actually got around to finishing the video game, so that says alot about how much fun it was.

And Boen at least enjoys it.