Forza Motorsport Review

Racing games are available to us all in abundance and no matter whether you’re after a realistic racing experience, a futuristic experience, an off-road experience, an arcade racer, or just something a little bit wacky, there is something available to everyone, with many more arriving each year. But like anything available in abundance, there is always the best of the best, and when it comes to racing games there is usually no crown that can’t be taken by the arrival of a new Forza title, be that one from the Motorsport series or Horizon series.

Since the arrival of the Xbox Series X|S, we’ve had a new Horizon adventure that took standards to the next level, but the arrival of a new Motorsport has been a long time coming, with the last iteration arriving all the way back in 2017. Now though, Turn 10 Studios are back and it’s time for Forza Motorsport to take to the current generation of Xbox (yes they’ve dropped the numerical value), but sadly, I’m not as blown away as I hoped.

Now before I get absolutely scrutinised by the Forza faithful, let me start by saying Forza Motorsport is in no way a bad game. In fact, it’s actually very, very good at what it does. My lack of excitement for this long-awaited racer however comes from the fact that it feels more like an up-spuffed effort of previous outings with a little extra juice under the hood rather than something revitalizing for the franchise – but sure if you’re a sim racing fan, then you’ll probably be all over it like a rash, and that’s okay too as Forza Motorsport is still a good racer.

The main focus of the game and the place you’ll be spending a vast amount of time with in this latest entry is the challenge of competing for the coveted Builders Cup. Sure there are still plenty of multiplayer options to be going on with, however, this was limited during my time with the game due to not many having access and populating the servers during my time with the game, but rest assured that vehicle-specific and varied events will be present. As for the Builders Cup though, this is the Career mode goal if you like, and things start off as per every Forza Motorsport, for the past three titles at least, in a tutorial event that looks to teach newcomers what to expect, as well as point out the new and exciting additions to things this time around for veterans as well. You’ll get a feel for things and you’ll be pushed to explore the countless accessibility options available to players which does a great job of catering to all skill levels.

The Builders Cup is split up into various racing tours, with each tour providing a different type of vehicle to race, from hatchbacks to muscle, JDM legends to Super Sedans, and much more, and completing all of them is going to take a serious time sink. It’s essentially your gateway to access all of the various cars on offer in Forza Motorsport with over 500 available from the off and more to come later on. Each tour provides multiple events, and each event comes with a minimum 3-lap open practice session to get things started.

The point of these practice sessions would sound pretty obvious to any avid racing fan, but unlike most other racers, or indeed any of the Forza titles that came before this one, practice sessions here feature pushing your cars to the absolute limits and to aid in this, each track comes with live monitoring in a way, with tracks split up into segments and your times and driving precision tracked throughout each segment, with scores and car XP (CXP) given based on your performances each lap for things such as good track segments, or overtakes, all of which feels highly similar to what we saw in Project Cars 3 a few years back.

This means practice sessions are now much more important than simply learning a track because in Forza Motorsport, you can no longer simply buy a new car and upgrade it to the max from the very first instant. Instead, you’ll need to put time and effort into levelling up each car you drive to unlock the new upgrades that you’ll later apply, with each vehicle having 50 levels to climb and upgrades unlocked at each level. When you unlock said upgrades you can then use car points accrued (CP) through on-track results on upgrades, and should you decide you don’t like a change you’ve made, you can then revert your upgrades and gain back the CP you’ve earned. This means money no longer makes the wheels go round.. it just puts the shiny new rides in your garage.

Another change to race day comes from the lack of any qualifying but instead a new risk vs reward feature called Challenge the Grid which sees players given the option to start wherever they want on the grid from first to last. The bigger the risk the bigger the reward, with those who increase the difficulty and start lower down the grid before pulling off a top 3 finish earning more money than those who would start first and finish first. It’s definitely an intriguing feature, but after a few races it soon sinks in that those at the back will start shunting everyone and those at the front will be sticking to the racing line and giving you the real challenge so a mid-place grid start was my preferred option to balance a good cash pay-out with racing enjoyment.

When you’ve got to the race day and you’re off around the track the last key feature that stands out is the more prominent penalty system in place with every collision, or off-track moment looked into and either awarded a time penalty or given the green validation of no penalty.

Now I have to say that gameplay feels just as you’d hope with race day feeling fast, frantic, and a lot like the Forza Motorsport titles we’ve come to know and love, just bringing a much more refined, and modern feel to proceedings. However, whilst gameplay feels good, it has to be said that we are essentially seeing very little change in things than we’ve already had before. Yes we have some fancy dynamic weather and yes it really impacts how you drive, and all honesty I’m not really sure what I was hoping to see differently, but beyond visuals which I’ll talk about in a second, it’s only really the career mode that can really change up here and Forza Motorsport feels a lot like Forza Motorsport 7 to me in terms of career progression, just in a new look. Again I must reiterate that I’m not directly criticizing things here but it doesn’t feel like the most original experience out there either. As a fan of previous titles, I’ll certainly see it through to the end but it’s not screaming innovation.

Now onto the visuals, and let’s be honest, was that ever going to be something worthy of a complaint? Forza Motorsport looks incredible, no matter whether you’re looking at the cars or the tracks, every inch of this title looks phenomenal. Supposedly there is all that ray-tracing mumbo jumbo going on, but for me, an old-fashioned gamer who just appreciates something looking nice, I can safely say that as per usual Turn 10 has smashed it out of the park with the visual details with Photo Mode proving especially satisfying to view some of the vehicles and track details on display.

Sadly there is one glaring feature I noticed missing this time around and that was the lack of Auction House. I’m not sure if it will come back later on but right now, it appears the only way to buy cars is straight from the showroom, sure there are still flash sales on but there is nothing like the Auction House to bring the feeling of community like seeing some modified vehicles going for cheap as chips with some incredible design that someone has spent countless hours creating. As we’ve seen previously it can be something that’s added later on but it’s a glaring miss from the off.

Conclusion

Overall, if you enjoyed previous Forza Motorsport titles then you’re again going to enjoy this one too. It has plenty of racing, lots of tracks, and even more cars to be getting involved in. Forza Motorsport is slowly pushing more and more towards that sim racer but there is still plenty of the arcade feel to keep things accessible to newcomers and being an Xbox Studios title you can guarantee long after you’ve finished up the single-player content, there will be countless weekly additions of multiplayer events to keep you coming back for more should you wish to make this your number one go to racer. For me though, it’s simply just more Forza.