Gotta Go Fast
HIGH It’s a super serious Forza Motorsport game with an emphasis on realism!
LOW It’s a super serious Forza Motorsport game with an emphasis on realism!
WTF Excitement from the narrator about shaving a tenth of a second off a lap. Calm down, buddy!
Licensed games have a problem. If Rockstar isn’t sliding its oily fingers into GTA IV to remove music tracks from a product players already paid for, fantastic games like Outrun 2 and Driver: San Francisco are being delisted from sale permanently after their licensing agreements expire. It’s absolute bullshit, quite frankly, and the same fate suffered by Forza Motorsport 7 two years ago when it was unceremoniously yanked from storefronts.
Well, fret no more Forza fans — the most recent release is here, and players who want to get their hands on one of the most detailed and beautiful racing franchises for the current generation of consoles can finally do so. Hooray!
Serving as a soft reboot for the series, much of the superfluous baggage from Forza Motorsport 7 is thankfully absent. All of those universally-reviled limited use skill card modifiers are thankfully absent, and the developers make strides to ensure that while there’s still a sense of progression, the good stuff is no longer locked away behind laborious grind.
The new campaign is known as the Builder’s Cup, inviting players to work through a series of four tours, each based around a different type of platform — Sport, Sedans, Muscle, the usual. Players buy a car based on the theme, choose to tinker with the terrifyingly-detailed car customization options including everything from tire pressure to engine and frame conversions… or, they can slap on optimal simulated upgrades (like I did) and then hit the tarmac across twenty real-world racetracks and around five hundred licensed cars at launch.
There’s an experience system here allowing players to unlock new parts for their vehicle as they rise through the ranks of an experience system tied to each car, and they can also choose to make things harder for themselves during each race for a credits boost. The more realistic the driving, the harder the AI and the further back they start on the grid, the higher the potential payout when they place on the podium.
Aside from that, the singleplayer content may be a little bit slim at present. The free play mode is pretty great, allowing for the usual changes to rival density, difficulty, time of day and weather effects, as well as a whole lot more if players choose to engage with the nitty gritty. Want to speed up the passage of time? Go for it! Want variable weather on the track? Awesome, no problem.
The other main draw is the Rivals mode where players race against ghost cars sourced from real players online in a bid to beat their lap times. Succeed and another, faster driver will replace them and then another and ano… honestly, this didn’t do much for me. It soon becomes repetitive, and having an inbox stuffed full of people who’ve beaten my times doesn’t appeal.
Playing online with others is a smooth and painless experience, and it’s also one that encourages safe and respectful driving. Recklessly piling into a group of cars slowing down for a turn is frowned upon, as is cutting the track to shave precious seconds. Gaining too many infractions means dangerous drivers get grouped together during matchmaking while everyone trying to simulate a real race get left in peace. It’s a good setup, although it should be noted that races are scheduled to begin at real world times rather than triggering on demand — if an event is half an hour away, that could lead to a lot of practice laps before it begins.
As should probably be expected, Forza Motorsport is a fine looking game on the Series X. More importantly, it’s a game that understands that the 60fps experience is paramount and laudably recommends this over a slightly sharper image. Even on Series S it maintains this framerate, though the image is admittedly noticeably softer on the less powerful console.
On top of extremely detailed car models, there’s an impressive amount of weather effects including day and night variations to spice up each race. I found it hypnotic jto set the options to simulate sunset on a clear day before taking the track and doing laps from sundown until sunup. It looks stunning, and that holds true whether players are hurtling along in the midst of a vision-obscuring thunderstorm or simply dealing with light drizzle.
There’s a ton of customization options regarding the user experience, from automatically braking to a safe speed when approaching a corner to ensuring the brakes don’t lock up from slamming them too hard. The optimal racing line can be visible at all times, only appear when it’s time to brake or absent entirely — which in my particular case is a bad idea, as without it I’d spend half my time spinning off track. Add to this a generous helping of accessibility and it’s clear that Microsoft and Turn 10 want to ensure as many people as possible are able to enjoy a race.
The only real qualm I have with Forza Motorsport is its overall rigidity. This is a serious racer for serious fans of the sport, and that doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room for innovations not aimed at existing car fanatics. For example, during the campaign players are required to perform multiple practice laps before a race. This mandatory timesuck can’t be skipped, and pointlessly drags each race out to an extent I’m not keen on.
That rigidity doesn’t just affect aspects of the design, it also affects the gameplay. This makes sense in context as there’s only one optimal racing line after all, so it makes sense to stick to it like glue. That said, any time I tried anything that the racing line didn’t like, it ended in disaster.
On the surface this sounds pretty par for the course in the driving genre. Going too fast or approaching a corner at weird angles results in crashing like an idiot, so it’s no surprise there. However, the margin for error is razor-thin, leading to an experience where I was either slavishly following the line at all times or going headfirst into the nearest barrier. Don’t expect Ridge Racer-style drifting to save a bad approach here. Only braking, and braking hard will do it most of the time
Forza Motorspot may not blow most players away with this latest, and indeed greatest installment, but at the same time it’s also hard not to be impressed by what’s on show here. It’s a little risk-averse, but also polished to a high sheen and laser focused on providing a realistic and detailed racing simulation to its core audience, and I think most players will be more than happy with what’s included in this package.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed by Turn 10 Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It is currently available on XBX/S and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX and XBS. Approximately 25 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the first tour of the Builder’s Cup was completed. 4 hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.
Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E. This is a racing game in which players can drive a variety of realistic cars around international tracks. Players can progress through various game modes that include Career, Free Play, and Test Drive.
Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are present.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles can be altered and/ or resized. There are no audio cues needed for successful play, so I’d say it’s fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.
The chance discovery of a muddy, burnt out copy of '50 Shades of Grey' in a hunting pit gave him an appreciation for complex plots, characters and overarching narrative, and the unexpected gift of a Spectrum 48k allowed him to indulge in these newfound sensibilities with intelligent, highbrow games such as 'flee from the badly animated spinning turquoise dolphins' or 'avoid the deadly glowing bricks of doom'.
The fusion of both these interests finally culminated with Darren teaching himself how to write by basically guessing at what words might look like when jotted down on paper as opposed to being howled inarticulately at the skies.
Now others occasionally get to read his scribblings. Lucky them.
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