Shane
Replay and Rewind. With around 500 fully detailed licensed rides on offer, Forza Motorsport hits the track at full speed on Xbox Series X|S and PC.
The long running Xbox exclusive series places you in the driver seat of some beastly cars, as you develop and progress through your racing career.
First up, you’ll do a few practice runs in varying vehicle Classes. At very first load you’re at a running start. This gives you an ideal feel for the game, as it is slow paced but worthy of the necessary experience.
Then you’re ready to set yourself up. Customize your character and choose a car. On offer is one of three vehicles from Honda, Subaru and Ford.
It’s also within the initial set up that you will set up your ‘Drivatar Difficulty’. Forza Motorsport is a game designed, developed and built for novice through to expert – this said, the harder you set the Difficulty, the more in-game credits you’re likely to score.
You can also tweak settings around Club, Sport and Expert here, again this will reflect any bonuses you receive.
Admin stuff out of the way, you’re good to go.
Races have objectives, everything from gaining a high finish placement through to lap times.
While Forza Motorsport does have the look and feel of a racing simulator, there is still an arcade flavour to it too. And this is the good thing and sets this game aside from similar titles.
As you tear around the tracks your car will Level Up. Levelling up gets you ‘Car Points’. These can be spent on parts which you can equip to your vehicle to gain speed, traction, stability and more. But, as in the real world, parts that you add to your car to improve one feature, may decrease something else, which will be displayed in the PI (Performance Rating) – so kit your ride, but do it strategically.
All vehicles have a PI limitation too. So like an inventory in a RPG game, you’re limited to what you can equip.
If you’re unsure about upgrading your car and what parts to add, you can just use ‘Quick Upgrade’ and let the game optimise the vehicle for you.
As in the real world of racing, you can get penalised for bad driving.
Go off the track or collide with another racer – if it is your fault and was avoidable, expect a time penalty.
This brings me to car damage. Graphically Forza Motorsport is flawless. But if you have an unplanned fender bender or T-Bone another vehicle in a race, aesthetically the damage is minimal.
This breaks that ‘reality’ feel. True, Forza Motorsport is not Destruction Derby, so I don’t recommend getting yourself in to a metal twisting fray, but hitting another vehicle at 200 kms per hour should do some real damage. Again, Forza Motorsport has that arcade feel.
All tracks that you race on are developed from real world, and as with the licensed vehicles, meticulously detailed, including the addition of five new ones that have not been in any prior Forza game.
You can take it online, of course with multiplayer, get your racing abilities up to scratch with Practise but it is definitely the career mode where Forza Motorsport shines. It’s well paced, and gives you a real sense of progression (and satisfaction if you complete the track objective and / or score more points by completing a bonus objective).
Whether you’re a seasoned Forza racer or about ready to jump in to the virtual drivers seat, Forza Motorsport has the looks, the feel, player progression and endless replay making it the ultimate racing game for Xbox this year.
Released: October 2023
Rating: G
Platforms reviewed: Xbox Series X
Genre: Racing
Developer: Turn 10 Studios
Publisher: Microsoft