Forza Motorsport review: A supercar that needs some tuning

Let me start by yanking off the band-aid right away. Is Forza Motorsport, the revamped reboot of Microsoft’s semi-realistic racing game, better than Sony’s Gran Turismo 7? In my opinion, the answer is an unequivocal no, Forza Motorsport is simply too limited and rote. Does that mean the game is bad? Far from it. It’s really good, and exceptionally fun to play while you’re driving on the track, though a surprising lack of polish shows that Microsoft’s racer is only now screaming out of the starting grid.

Microsoft

A promising start

Things are off to a good start for Forza Motorsport. Gone is the weird driving feel of the seventh installment, as well as the frustrating lootbox-based setup and all the long loading times. In its place is a completely remodeled physics engine, innovative features, and smooth menus.

The star of the room is clearly the physics and the associated driving experience. Compared to its sister series Forza Horizon, Motorsport is a few notches more demanding and unforgiving. Racing lines and braking points are important, as well as not tackling opponents or cutting through corners – time penalties can sting badly at the finish line.

Microsoft

A career without finesse

But as much as Forza Motorsport shines on the track, it disappoints off it. Speed races, time trials, rivalry encounters, and a rather bare-bones career mode is what awaits. Of course, there’s also a seemingly elaborate online mode, but it’s hard to say much about it before the game’s release.

The career mode is something I expected more of; perhaps some of the imagination and variety that the Horizon series boasts, but in a more proper package. But it’s not much more than a number of cups consisting of a handful of races each. When one cup is completed, one or two others are unlocked. Repeat until you have more gold than Max Verstappen.

The cups generally have restrictions on the type of car that can be used, but otherwise they are structured in exactly the same way. And since the game only contains 20 tracks at release, it soon becomes repetitive with similar races on the same tracks. A couple of races with a completely different basic structure would have done a lot.

Level up!

The novelty that stands out most in Forza Motorsport is the requirement that cars must be “leveled up” before they can be tuned and customized. By taking turns well, beating sector and lap times, or overtaking your competitors, experience points slowly trickle into the car’s account. These points allow the car to level up, and the higher the level, the more parts can be replaced, customized and upgraded.

In a way, I like the idea. I actually feel like I’m growing with the car; putting in lap after lap in the races becomes more motivated. There isn’t as much drudgery and I have a stronger connection to the cars in the garage.

Unfortunately, the idea is not entirely well thought out. For example, I bought a couple of favorite cars to see how they felt to drive compared to other games, but without upgrades, it was worse than usual. And with no career mode races to use the cars in, there wasn’t much more to do than harp around in standalone races – which quickly got boring. My favorite cars were mothballed.

Microsoft

Races at the top

Continuing with the theme of “interesting ideas that may not fully work,” mention must be made of the races themselves. Each race consists of a couple of practice laps and the race itself – no qualification in other words. Instead, I get to choose my own starting position between 24th and 4th place.

The further back I start, the more money I get in the event of a podium finish. Starting far back also means experience points for each overtaking, but also increases the risk of penalties for crashes or derailments.

But whether I chose to start last, in the center, or a little further back, the majority of the races played out in much the same way, climbing up to third to fifth place in the first few laps of the race and then staying there until the checkered flag waved. No threat from behind and no chance to catch the cars in front, no matter how well I drove.

Going up in level and trimming the car doesn’t help much because the opponents’ cars are also updated. This means that it is also not possible to go back to previously completed tournaments to play with a highly tuned car and win all the gold medals.

Microsoft

Can’t trust the system

The computer drivers’ driving skills are something I often think about while I’m speeding around in Forza Motorsport. At times they behave very strangely. They can drive inhumanly perfect, they can drive reasonably well, they can make minor mistakes. They can also make huge deviations on straight stretches (!), tackle me and each other, or decide to drive slowly on the track.

The unreliable opponents also mess up the unreliable penalty system. Drive off the track or cut in, get a time penalty. Collision with an opponent, penalty. Obvious, to everyone but the referee in Forza Motorsport.

Driving outside the track limits is something the virtual judges have a decent handle on, but the penalties for collisions are more or less a random generator. Bowling out five opponents in the first turn may go unpunished, but mercy me if I scrape another car’s bumper a little lightly – or get hit myself for that matter. Expulsion!

The unreliable penalty system makes it difficult to play without Forza Motorsport’s rewind function activated. This is something I usually dislike in more realistic racing games because it takes away some of the nerve of the race, but I don’t want to worry about stupid penalties lowering my finishing position.

Microsoft

Superb but unexpectedly unfinished racing

With a whopping six years of development time, instead of the usual two, “unfinished” was not a word I thought would sum up my time with Forza Motorsport. But with too few tracks, weird AI opponents, questionable penalty system, some graphics bugs, and a general lack of varied content – these are exactly the kind of thoughts that keep running through my brain.

I’m confident that Turn 10 will stick to its future plan and continually add cars, tracks, and races while refining a number of big and small details. Here and now, Forza Motorsport is a game with the feeling in the right place, but where most things around it are actually a bit of a disappointment. Not least the structure of the career mode.

Fortunately, it is much easier to build on a well-functioning foundation than to have to completely renovate a broken engine. So the future looks bright.

Forza Motorsport

Tested: October 2023
Genre: Racing
Developer: Turn 10
Publisher: Microsoft
Platform: Xbox Series, PC
Tested on: Xbox Series X
Size: 130 GB
Price: 69.99

This review was translated from Swedish to English and originally appeared on m3.se.