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evieveevee · 1 year ago

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Forza Motorsport (PC) Review

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Forza Motorsport is the game I have been looking forward to all year, particularly since I sold my PS5 to go all-in on PC. Positioned as a new starting point for Forza Motorsport as a franchise, it promises a next-gen visual experience, alongside more robust physics and multiplayer. But, does it deliver?

A Note from the Author

Hi! It’s really special to be able to review something like this, and to be one of only a few creatives based in Australia/New Zealand, not to mention one of even fewer transgender creatives, given the opportunity to do this. It’s an immense honor that I take very seriously, and I’m proud to be bringing this out for you today. If you’re interested in publishing this review on your website, please contact me directly. Enough talk though! Let’s go racing!

Lights Out and Away We Go

Let’s start with the out-of-box experience with Forza Motorsport, the first stuff that everyone’s gonna see. There’s a brief accessibility setup, including the usual settings like Subtitles, and new settings like the Blind Driving Assist and support for low vision features too. For customization minded dorks like yours truly, there’s a handy shortcut to the settings menus so you can dive deeper into things like the graphics settings on PC with a “worst case” benchmark involving a full field of 24 cars on a rainy circuit with complex lighting. Also in the settings, you’ll find comprehensive controls over the assists, including a few quick presets to base your own off. I turn off the racing line and most assists, leaving only ABS on while I shake some of the rust off. Folks who want to make sure they’re getting exactly the experience they want out of this will walk away satisfied.

However, it’s after the configuration that the trouble starts. The game loads into a practice session on Maple Valley — a returning Forza original track — in one of Forza Motorsport’s cover cars: the 2024 Corvette E-Ray. I hit the accelerator, hear the awesome engines roar to life, but then I noticed: my wheel configuration was not at all right.

In the review build I had access to, my wheel (the Logitech G29) was not properly detected, did not show appropriate inputs in the UI, and it was wildly misconfigured, requiring 10–15 minutes of messing around with the wheel settings before I hit something that approached proper handling and the sort of response I expect. Forza Motorsport also does not have support for shift indicator LEDs, continuing this trend from previous entries and the Horizon series, something which is frustrating and I would appreciate being fixed in a future update.

Check Engine Light

About now is when I began to take note of the visuals of the game. With the promise of next generation visuals in Forza Motorsport, and the additional power that the Xbox Series X is able to leverage, I was hoping that the visuals would feel like they’d taken that generational leap. In some regards, namely those related to gameplay like dynamic time of day and weather systems, the leap is absolutely there. Forza Motorsport has incredible lighting and the dynamics are incredibly solid.

However, on PC, it’s clear there are some problems.

Let’s start with one of the most obvious generational visual leaps: raytracing. If we want to showcase the generational leap in graphics, an RT implementation is the way to do it. However, it’s clear that the state of RT reflections on — at the very least — AMD RDNA3 cards like the 7900 XT is extremely poor. The RT is being done at an extremely low resolution, providing a blocky and terrible facsimile of the environment surrounding your vehicle. This issue visible on racing suits with reflective materials or on visors. RTAO seems mostly fine, but this issue is very strange, and I hope that Turn 10 and/or AMD are able to fix this issue soon and provide proper RT reflections.

It gets worse before it gets better sadly.

Building It Up

While the PC version’s apparent problems are abundant and annoying, the core of the game is extremely solid, and it’s very evident in the Career mode that Turn 10 has created: the Builder’s Cup.

The idea is relatively simple. You’ll pick from one of three cars, and you’ll carry that car through the entire series. A series is about 5 or 6 races, during which you’ll improve the car you choose, pushing it faster and faster as the rest of the field does the same to theirs. There are larger rewards up for grabs for completing a series, but each race offers plenty in the way of credits you can invest into other new cars. You’ll do at least three laps of practice before each race, with a goal time that will indicate you’re competitive against the field. You must complete practice and the race in the same session. If you exit the event after completing practice, progress is not saved and you will need to run the practice session again.

Here’s where it gets complicated. If you’re not familiar with racing games, or even if you are, I want to stress something right now: the words I am about to say are not a joke, a prank, or played as something silly in the game. They are deadly serious.

In order to build up your car, you need to level it up. You level up your car by driving well through the various sections of each track and gaining Car XP (CXP) for sections that are quick and hew close to the racing line, with bonuses for passing certain thresholds. Each section is rated on a scale from 1.0 to 10.0. I believe — but may be wrong — you also get CXP for completing events. Get enough CXP, you get a level, and each level gets you a certain number of Car Points (CP), which can be used between events to apply upgrades to that car. Your CP and CXP are only available on that specific car, meaning that even if you have multiple copies of one car, each one has its own balance of CP and CXP. Each available upgrade costs a certain amount of CP, but adding an upgrade is not a permanent choice. Instead, it’s a flexible balance that you can move around into various upgrades according to your needs. Additionally, upgrades are restricted to specific Car Levels, so you need to level up your car a specific amount to, say, unlock the ability to change your aero parts.

Look, I think this one’s gonna be controversial. In a way, this system does guide you through what’s worth upgrading and all, a great feature for people who are learning their way around the tunes. For expert players who already know what they need out of a tune or are able to pick out the weak points on a car, it’s going to mean grinding out Car XP so you can get the upgrades you need, all the while dealing with the poor tune. It means that I’m definitely turned off of cars that I can’t immediately jive with, even if I recognize their potential. I think the primary audience that cares about Forza Motorsport will be frustrated by this system, but folks trying this out through Game Pass and wanting a more casual experience out of things are likely to be happy with it.

Zooming Away

Let’s look at the on-track experience a little closer now.

It’s worth saying that circuit racing is its own beast, and if you’re coming from Forza Horizon or Need for Speed’s open world racing experiences, you’re in for a unique, tight sort of experience. Be prepared to learn the ropes of non-contact racing though; contact is strongly discouraged in Forza Motorsport (and in real life), with penalties applied for egregious contact, or contact which nets you an advantage. Corner cutting is the same; you need to stay with two wheels within track limits at all times. Thankfully, you can turn on visible track limits in either marker (intermittent triangles) or ribbon (unbroken line) styles.

The experience of driving in Forza Motorsport is great, as you might I expect. With an appropriate vehicle and tune, you’ll be cruising from corner to corner, earning Car XP, and enjoying the intensity of competitive racing. Having full race regulations on in single-player content is great practice, and the system feels like it deals with both the AI opponents and you in very fair ways. All of this combines to make Forza Motorsport feel great, in that indescribable sort of way that driving tends to be; you kinda… just have to experience it to understand, I feel. But, I need to emphasize that this applies only when the vehicle and tune you’re driving are set up properly. It’s a bummer to see that the stock tunes are still rough, when competing sims have much more robust and good feeling tunes out of the gate. Combine that with the upgrade system locking certain parts of that tune behind levels, and it’s a recipe for pain.

As you drive, the information displayed is pleasantly minimal, but still conveys just about everything you need to keep focused on your race. In the lower right, you have a speedometer and RPM indicators, as well as indications of fuel remaining, tire life and temps, and your acceleration and braking inputs. All of this is useful information, available to you at a glance, but also reminds me that shift indicator LEDs are still not supported in Forza Motorsport, and that makes me sad. Limited customization options, besides turning them on and off, is also kind of a bummer.

Besides that, in the upper right, you’ll have visibility of your segment scores and car XP, and in the top left, you have visibility of your current lap time. All of the UI can be toggled on and off to suit your needs. However, racing enthusiasts will also note there is no radar showing nearby cars, nor weather radar to allow you to plan around the new dynamic weather systems. Much of this sort of information, as well as control over TCS and Brake Balance, is available in Gran Turismo 7’s MFD, a feature I desperately wish was in Forza Motorsport, but if they can only choose one bit of UI to take from that, I hope they add a radar, because the current system of proximity arrows (which, perplexingly, are not on by default) is not adequate, and it can make dealing with traffic on tight courses unpredictable. I also hope that the input UI can be made a bit larger, and the information about tires can be made more reliable.

Tires, worth noting, seem like one of the weak points of Forza Motorsport. Tire data was unclear to read at first: tire temps are shown on the larger real-time view, but tire wear is only shown via the small meter to the side of it. Tire life predictions are *not accurate* and will rapidly go from 3 laps to 1 lap over the course of a single lap even with clean driving. It’s super unclear if some sort of accelerated wear is on, but if it is, that information is both not exposed to the player and creating incorrect predictions about tire life, both of which are frustrating.

Star of the Show

For all that though, we still need to talk about the multiplayer experience. Before launch, I had the opportunity to play with other reviewers as well as Turn10 employees in full multiplayer lobbies, and I was extremely happy with the experience!

As you do those races, you’ll notice that each race starts at a fixed time, and that there’s time for practice before each session. This is a great change! You’ll get the chance to size up your competition, get a feel for the track, and set a qualifying time for the final race. This change continues beyond the introductory series as well, and modes like Forza GT and the Touring Car modes will always be there. There’s also a slot for a rotating featured series, and open series’ as well, allowing to show off your project cars on the track. All of these use the same structure and it makes me extremely happy; it feels more like a fleshed out version of the Sport mode in GT Sport/7.

There’s also the ability to do custom multiplayer (and singleplayer) events, just as you’d expect. You can make lobbies as desired, and race away to your heart’s content! I did not test the multiplayer side of that during my review period though, sorry about that. My focus was on the featured multiplayer, as that’s where I’m going to spend most of my time, and expect that’s where most players will be as well.

Chequered Flag

So, wrapping up here, crossing the finish line. Forza Motorsport is a pretty damn good experience, and makes meaningful improvements over previous entries (and over competing sims such as Gran Turismo 7), but it also comes with its own unique set of regressions, particularly in the PC version. However, all of my complaints about this are primarily quality-of-life (with the exception of the state of the visuals on PC, and all the sorts of things that Turn 10 can fix up with some TLC.

Career and Multiplayer are the real standouts, providing a ton of depth for players to explore and a lot of options for how they want to race, and comprehensive new systems for both of them mean that the overall experience is going to be incredible for the primary audience of the game. Hardcore racing sim fans may find aspects of it disappointing, as I did, but hopefully their feedback will help them steer the future of this title into true greatness.

For now though, I can softly recommend Forza Motorsport for PC! I hope to see improvements to it in the future but what’s here is a great package that’s likely to please fans of all stripes.

My copy of Forza Motorsport was done using a copy of the game provided to me by Xbox Australia and New Zealand (Xbox ANZ) for the purposes of review. Xbox ANZ also provides me with a subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to use as part of my streams and coverage.

#Forza Motorsport #Xbox #video games #gaming #racing

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