Forza Motorsport was my jam, there was a time we had Project Gotham Racing, Need For Speed, Colin McRae Rally, and so on. Way back in 2005, when the first game arrived, it was already pushing boundaries. That, and it was also easily the most fun title to play for car enthusiasts.
You couldn't do a racing simulator without the accessibility, game modes, car rosters, immersion, all the high notes that Forza has done, others struggled to catch up to. Because of 4 Motorsport games, we even got Forza Horizon. That somehow changed after the transition to Xbox One generation. Trickling down content, to focusing just on the technical achievements while it runs well.
Now it's been nearly 2 decades, and I don't know where to put this reboot, so little is right, so much of it is wrong. This series is now at a baffling state. Even things promised from the trailers aren't even here. So what the hell is really going on? This mean racing games are dead?
Every Forza title has a cutscene, and introduction race where I go up against A.I. cars that drive slowly for me. It's a traditional thing. But when I got into the race, I tried changing the visual settings, and somehow it crashed. After going through another 5 minute cutscene, I just went with it.
An hour later, then I tried to change the visual settings, and knowing my PC was good enough with FSR enabled, it should be running fine. Somehow, it does 70% of the time, the other times the framerate is super choppy, especially in tight turn corners, and during the daytime when the sun is out. I dialed back the settings. There's more, but I'll come back to it later.
What I really loved about driving cars here, is that every car feels heavy to turn. Not because of this placebo realism, but how changing tires from hard to soft can make highly notable differences, the new physics employ more practical based simulation, something I got to see when colliding with other cars, and power steering in long turns.
Honestly, am not a super hardcore fan of the Motorsport games that I can dissect little vicissitudes of this and what the prior titles have done. I've watched other YT videos that noted the big differences in gameplay. However, as much as a compliment I can give to this one.
Because the rest of the issues are what really drags it down and ruins engagement. Career mode is disappointingly anemic, all the tours are based around lower tier cars for some reason, and it took a lot to progress in order to unlock cars supercars, and even hypercars. The Porsche 911 GT that I got as a gift notwithstanding. 6hrs in, and I only finished 2 tours with 2 cars.
Earning credits is super slow at first, there's tedium involved when playing both the practice and real races in any tour. I can skip practice, but for some reason, they hid that with the horrible menu UI. But the tedium is also required to level up my car, why is that? Because body modifications and parts are restricted. Want to upgrade it? Grind to earn car points.
For body parts, reach the level that unlocks them. Is this something to do with appreciating each car I own? Does that also explain why the roster of cars available are less, and yet the A.I. can easily drive future DLC cars in tracks? Speaking of tracks, they didn't even add the good ones.
Above video should wrap anyone's head around the issues regarding the poorly implemented progression system, currency rewards, and lack of content. Microsoft removed any trace of the older games from their stores, just to be this sleazy.
As for multiplayer, I haven't experienced any loopholes or system abuse yet, I got P5 in my first race clean. But one guy pushed me back to 3 spots after knocking me out. Anyone's could be a different story, because Forza online is known for all kinds of wacky happenstances, and community issues that hasn't been solved to this day. That even includes Forza Horizon 5.
We sure do live in glorious times don't we? There might be so many games to play out there, even though, some of the ones we one to try out just don't run well. I'll let you in on one interesting bit. People who've scrutinized Cyberpunk 2077 at launch, has no idea just good we had it.
Because it baffles me how Starfield is the least buggy one, but Forza Motorsport here, has serious bugs galore all over. Texture pop-ins, visual artifacting, physics glitches, and your worst nightmare, horrible performance issues. I did dial back the settings, but even at the recommended, I've experienced some hitching, and choppy framerate.
And it gets better. Remember that every Forza game uses their own proprietary engine called ForzaTech. Which dynamically adjust settings to favor hitting the performance mark. That has always worked for me, up until the last Forza. I've had issues with the draw distance.
This reboot is much worse. Already has this smeary look, like something splat on the glasses and wiping it left it visually opaque. Couple it with horrible draw distance and choppy performance. Only way I fixed it was set every setting to static, and left FSR 2.0 at 'Balanced'.
Fixed one problem, left with another. It was a nice trade off, but before that, I had to use a camera angle where it's far behind the car. I am also going to be forthcoming about the visuals, and say that the downgrade is real. Trailers lied. You've even noticed the white border in every audio and video I've recorded. It ran full screen, yet where did this even come from?
There's a video that Digital Foundry did, discussing the misleading marketing around RT. It is absurd to me, because the RT here isn't as intense as other titles out there. We're talking car reflections, lighting passing through objects, heck not even the insides of the car have anything going on.
I swear, more people who just spend money on the whim gives developers like these more excuses to botch a game, because they know they'll do more than cope with the costs of the development when it gets out. What a disappointing state of today's gaming industry.
The only reason this game is finding success is because Gran Turismo 7 didn't get released on the PC yet. And it most likely never will. Even if EA bought Codemasters, they can't touch what Forza does. Yet, without the competition pushing them around, we'll only be getting morsels.
Cutting corners, putting DLC content in the base game, but never letting us have it till we make separate purchases when it's out. Even the A.I. here is terrible. Absolute scum of the earth behavior, and I don't only blame Turn 10, Microsoft deserves that share as well. This has been quite their year, hasn't it? Except Bethesdas been carrying it while Microsoft does "other" things.
The only advise I can give is to search for other racing titles. There's plenty in Steam, Xbox systems still have a big library of car sims to look out for. Just don't give anyone who made this atrocity your money. I sure didn't, I only played it at Game Pass and now will go ahead, and uninstall.
Forza Motorsport set the standard for racing in order to get more cars. The splendor it used to give, is now backpaddled by terrible modern gaming tactics. A hollow shell of its former self. Forza community is even silenced by Turn 10. It doesn't seem like this will change anytime soon.