Music Rally turns the opening half an hour of Gran Turismo 7 into a moment of pure, luxurious dadcore. It lets you blast around long and sweeping circuits in an array of classic cars with classic 70’s rock blaring in your ears. It is a sequence hand-crafted and precision-engineered to elicit a smile from even the most jaded dad.
Here’s what it’s actually doing: Before turning them loose on the campaign mode, Gran Turismo 7 lets players get a feel for the controls in a series of Music Rally races. Music Rally is one of Gran Turismo 7’s newest modes. Its sole innovation is modifying the classic Time Trial structure of seeing how long you can run before a countdown runs out and rebuilding it around music. Instead of being measured in seconds, the countdown is tied to the BPM of the current song. Your objective is to race until the song ends and try to cover as much track distance as you possibly can. The faster the song, the faster you’ll have to drive to keep up.
Each of the six Music Rally races you are provided with sets an extremely dadcore vibe. It’s all classic cars on wide, sweeping tracks, set against classical music and 70s-inspired funk-rock. Each new car is designed to make dads wriggle in their seats and say “Oh my god, see that?” as they realise what a vintage treat they’re about to receive.
Technically, players can opt-out of the Music Rally mode and properly start the game after they’ve completed their first race. But the dads aren’t going to want to do that.
It’s all about capturing the spirit of automotive enthusiasm – of taking a beloved old ride out on the perfect Sunday drive – and this mode does it perfectly. The logistics of race management don’t apply at all. You don’t need to worry about gaining track position or managing your tyre temperatures. It’s about the feeling of a favourite song coming on while you’re doing a hundred on the highway.
See? I told you. Dad Mode.
Sadly, Music Rally can’t plug into music streaming platforms like Spotify, which is available on the PS4 and PS5, for more personalised playlists. The door is open for something like that in the future, but for now, you’ll just have to content yourself with the songs available in-game.
Players got their first look at Music Rally during the Gran Turismo 7 State of Play in early February.
For more, you can check out our full Gran Turismo 7 review right here.
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