What a rollercoaster ride this new Forza entry has been. I’ve had all kinds of feelings in this game, ranging from excitement to disappointment, something I haven’t experienced in a Forza game since I started playing in 2012.
After finishing the career mode recently, I’m not sure what to think about what’s still to come, but hopefully the game will get better over time…
The Good
So, let’s start with what I found good about the game:
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The Driving - Fortunately, the most important thing about a racing game, the driving, was really well done, and they improved on every aspect. The feeling of the cars and handling is better than ever. This is what Forza games have always excelled for.
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The Graphics - It would be a tragedy if they didn’t improve on the graphics and didn’t take advantage of the Series X capabilities, although, if you have a big 4K TV, I suggest you forgo the Performance RT mode and just go with Performance (4K w/ 60FPS). The tracks really look gorgeous on a big TV, especially Hakone and Maple Valley, but I feel they can still improve the visuals, especially the rear-view mirrors.
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CarPG - Probably not a popular opinion, but I actually like the car levelling system. It gives me an excuse to keep playing with my favorite cars, and those that I don’t like, I won’t bother to level them. It’s nice to keep improving the car’s performance between each race, and it’s exciting to keep seeing the car’s level increase every so often. They should even allow to level up indefinitely after level 50, just like player level. No unlocks necessary after level 25, though. I understand this feature is not everyone’s cup of tea, and I don’t know why T10 didn’t make this more flexible, like allowing everyone to turn it on/off in the settings or, at least, allow players to tinker with all upgrades in the Free Race mode and share them. Free Race is supposed to give players freedom, so it’s an oversight by the developers.
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Segment Scores - This is another cool feature that adds excitement to the game. More things happening while racing that gives you extra motivation to keep racing well, following the ideal trajectory and braking patterns. I’m always trying to get perfect segment scores.
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Full Day/Night Cycle and Weather - Racing does feel more alive with this feature and no two laps are the same. It’s been a long time coming, and it’s a welcome feature.
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Challenge the Grid - This is probably another dividing feature among players, but I actually like it. I probably would prefer a proper qualifying session, but figuring out the best grid place to start is a nice welcome challenge. The race predictor is not very accurate and I like to prove it wrong by selecting a place beyond what it considers a loss for me and still winning the race. By the way, where’s the achievement for starting at the back of the pack and win a race? You win a bunch of achievements in the first hour, but not for this one… Odd choice.
The Bad
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Career Length - This is one of my biggest disappointments with the game. I play mainly single player, so that’s the main reason I keep coming back. Having a short career mode means I won’t have many reasons to keep playing after I finish, unless I replay the same races. This is probably the shortest career mode of any previous Forza games, and having only a new series per week isn’t gonna make much difference any time soon. Also, it’s quite clear why we’re not seeing any Open Class races from E, D, R, P or X classes. They’ll most likely be added slowly in weekly updates. I really hope they pick up the pace and add more at a time.
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Track Selection - This is another shortcoming of the game, which they had announced for quite a while, but it’s still a disappointment. I miss Prague and Bernese Alps. If this wasn’t bad enough already, many of the known layouts of the game’s featured tracks are missing. I’m guessing the main reason for this is that they’ll be adding these missing layouts in future updates, and this way they can still say they added another track.
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Leaderboards - No general leaderboards in other race modes except Rivals. This is another feature I’m really missing. I’m a single player guy. I don’t play multiplayer, so one of my biggest motivators to play is to challenge the leaderboards while racing. I know we have them in Rivals, but it’s not the same thing racing against a ghost. Also, only the very competitive players play Rivals, so it’s much more difficult now to reach the top 1%, like I used to in previous Forzas. I’ve also read that the reason they’re missing is to level the playfield and not make it unfair when using track features like rubber, etc… To me it just feels like an excuse. Just make two separate leaderboards and you’re all set.
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No Stats - Seriously…? This one is just sad. I always like to look at my racing stats, even on the Horizon series. This was always a feature of Forza games, so why is it missing? An intern could probably do this in a weekend. It feels empty now with no history about what I’m doing in the game. I want to see how many perfect 10.0 segments I got
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Rivals - This one is not about the mode per se, but how it’s implemented. When you go into Rivals, it’s because you want to do some hot laps. You want to start your first lap as a flying lap, right? Well, you don’t. For some odd reason, they make you start standing on the grid, so I always have to pause the game and select “Skip Lap” to start a flying lap. Doesn’t make sense.
The Buggy
There has been so many bugs reported, you’d think this is the buggiest Forza ever released. As it stands now, it probably is, even after an update has already been rolled out. I’ll just mention a few that I’ve encountered from the top of my head, but I hope they fix most of the bugs really soon.
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Crash when doing some upgrades - This still happens. Just when I was playing the new unlocked race in the Track Day series. You upgrade the car, the game hangs a bit and then crashes to the dashboard. Fortunately, when you launch the game again, it did the upgrade successfully.
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Liveries look blurry and pixelated - This is an odd one. When we should be celebrating the game’s gorgeous graphics, the cars look terrible when you see player’s liveries. This is most noticeable after racing when they show the 3 podium one by one.
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Narrator announces wrong track in Free Race - This happens all the time when I’m doing some races in Free Race. The narrator keeps announcing the first track you choose even though you moved on to other tracks.
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Colors look wrong when buying cars - Is this even a bug or a badly implemented feature? It’s quite frustrating though, as you want to see exactly which color you’re choosing. Yet, the game’s light at the showroom looks off and doesn’t show the real colors you should be seeing. Forzavista should be using a different room as well. That garage setting looks somewhat outdated.
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Player’s tunes and liveries don’t load in search mode- When looking at other player’s tunes and liveries in the search function, only the first four or five show up. The rest just keeps hanging with a loading screen. Really frustrating. This was much easier in previous Forzas, like you could choose a livery when you purchased a car. Why change something that was working well?
Some Suggestions:
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The ability to create championships or a race series. Better yet, the ability to create posters for said championships and share them among the Forza community. That would certainly bring a lot of player engagement. I know I would be thrilled and keep coming back.
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More objectives in practice mode, like “Get a perfect segment score”; Get a certain segment time; Perform a clean lap; etc…
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The ability to change parameters in Free Race mode after the first race, like weather and number of laps. As it is now, it’s only random or you have to go back and choose another track.
In Conclusion, the new Forza shows potential, but its shortcomings and lackluster campaign make it feel unfinished. It’s bare bones in almost all areas and judging by the slow content update (one race series per week), it’s gonna be a while before the game feels like a proper racer.
For now, I’ll keep making my own fun, by leveling up my favorite cars and challenge the leaderboards in Rivals in various classes. I also like to replay race series with different cars each time.
On a final note, I keep hearing people ask, “What have they been doing for 6 years?”. Well, who started saying this? It’s clear they didn’t start development right after Forza 7. It feels like this was in production for 3 years at most. I wonder if we could have a better game had they taken the usual path of 2 years development time. We would all be playing Forza 10 by now. Just food for thought.
Let’s see where they take us in another 3 years after this. Maybe then we’ll get the game we wanted. Only time will tell.
Thanks for reading and see you at the tracks 