If you’re up for a read, this is the story of my Forza experience. I’ve been away from the forums for years, but was once a regular contributer to the race paint section. I recently purchased Horizon 2 out of nostalgia, which led me back here…but just for a little bit. My serious gaming days are behind me, but Forza has been quite the ride. Like you, I’ve had my ups and downs with this franchise. Turn10 has wowed me and disappointed me in equal measure, but my Forza career was a long one, and here’s my perspective.
Forza Motorsport –
I was a PS2 guy, didn’t play much. I played at a friend’s house, though, and was extremely impressed with this title. I grew up on Gran Turismo, but not so much that I couldn’t appreciate what went into this game. I think it had a lot to do with me buying the Xbox 360 over the PS3…
Forza Motorsport 2 –
Came with my shiny new console. Loved it. Went months and months without even thinking about buying another title, that’s how good this game was. The realism, the variety of cars…it was all there. I never even knew the FM.net community existed, though, until the end. I started paying attention. Saw the work of some of the early painters, and realized what an incredible level of depth there was to this game. I toyed with painting, sucked, but learned a few things and got better. Still never confident enough to post up my work, but I played the ever-loving crap out of this game…
Forza Motorsport 3 –
Pre-ordered and devoured this game immediately. I finally had a reason to get Xbox Live. I got better at painting and started to make a few friends in the community. Learned a bit about tuning. Tried my hand at online racing, but it was never that good. Waited forever just to get into a lobby full of people that were worse at driving than myself, even though I had a really cool-looking Audi S5… But that was ok, I loved hot-lapping and painting. I bought all the DLC and chased those three damn unicorns like a madman.
A few things were missing, though. I missed the tire tuning, and a few of the specialty cars that were absent. Still, I loved it. I even bought the Ultimate Collector’s Edition, fully acknowledging that it was a dick move by the developers, because I had to have the ’71 Cuda and the LFA. But whatever, it’s just money, right?
Forza Motorsport 4 –
Pre-ordered the LCE this time, even though Turn10 was nice enough to hook me up with a green disc. I don’t think I ever have or ever will play a game the way I played FM4. I painted like it was going out of style, taking details more and more seriously. As Forza ranked things, I was among the top 50 painters in the game. I entered community comps (I was even a Turn10 pick a few times!), hosted comps, got deeper into the forums, and paid for all the DLC that I could get my digital mitts on (and the quality of cars selected, I feel, was a MAJOR improvement over FM3). And bringing Top Gear into it?! Are you kidding?!
Rivals was awesome, the cars looked better and better – I recall being in a party with Armipotent Adam (remember him?) a few days before the game released, and all we could do was marvel at the way this game looked and felt.
But still…
There were some glaringly bad developments. Online multiplayer still sucked. People would kick you from a lobby as soon as look at you. And what was up with the lack of Porsche? Sure, not Turn10’s fault, I guess…we still got them in the end, but for the last time in the franchise, it appears.
AutoVista was a still-birth…they even redacted Clarkson’s comments on the DeLorean (or more specifically, his comments about John DeLorean himself), which was both lame and discouraging. The dark shadow of kinect had risen, and all anyone at Turn10 wanted to talk about, it seemed, was how much it contributed to the game. We all (Microsoft included, at this point) acknowledge that it was a failed marketing tool, but at the time it felt like we were being indoctrinated to use the stupid, non-functional thing.
I started to feel like the fanbase was being ignored. There were a few things I wanted to see: Paintable windows, patches to fix the paint glitches (damn Nissan R34…), a few new choices for bodykits and rims…but I was a painter, and had to admit that my wants and needs weren’t necessarily the thing that was going to sell units. I accept that, after all, you can’t make everyone happy 100% of the time. But what about the things we all wanted? Night racing. Weather. New road surfaces. We had been asking for this stuff for some time, but the timing still didn’t seem right…
Overall, FM4 was an amazing game, but a lot of us couldn’t shake the feeling that it was FM3.5 and we felt like there was potential that went unrealized. The hours I logged on this title don’t lie, though. This was the peak, at least for me.
Forza Horizon –
Pre-ordered the LCE. Waited until, like, 3am EST to download the damn demo before that. I liked what I saw, kind of…A little more arcade than previous titles, but that was to be expected and the spirit of Forza seemed intact, at least.
Honestly, I wasn’t ready for FM4 to be “over” and I think I took it out on Horizon a little. After all, what did I expect? It was an open world game with Turn10’s footprint all over it and it looked good (but not great), had a bunch of awesome cars (but not enough), and there was finally night driving! Sweet!
But at the expense of tuning? What was that about? Leaving tuning out of a Forza game was like leaving the foundation out of a building schematic. The game itself was pretty entertaining, until you finished. And then the game was finished, full stop. It was so bad that Turn10 felt the need to add a free DLC patch to increase replay value, but the 1000 club was a band-aid and never got me back into a game that seemed to be over way too quickly. I bought the season pass (and wow, that’s a whole other conversation, the way that was set up), but by the time the second month’s cars released I was ready to sell the game back. Rally mode was ok (yeah, I bought that too), but every time I played it I got an urge to just play Dirt 2. Plus, I friggin’ hate Skrillex.
Worse, around this time it looked like the forums were intent on deeper and deeper collaboration with Facebook, and that was a deal-breaker for me. I dropped out of the forums and didn’t log back on until…about now, actually. Two whole years later.
Forza Motorsport 5 –
This title would be the decision-maker. Do I buy the Xbox One or not? Not to unfairly pressure the devs, but my purchase of the new console was going to live or die based on what Turn10 showed me with FM5. I was already feeling disinclined to go with the Microsoft product. The whole kinect fiasco, the always online requirement, the emphasis on combining media…none of it appealed to me. In fact, it felt like Microsoft was marketing to an entirely different sector, other than gamers. To me, that spoke of either one of two things: A product that needed to be over-hyped to be considered marketable, or a new target audience that left gamers like me out in the cold.
But FM5 could have tipped the balance. If Turn10 wowed me, really blew my panties off, I’d put the rest of that aside and buy the One.
Didn’t happen.
A car list that was cut to the bone. No Nurburgring. Suspect, gimmicky-sounding stuff like “drivatars.” No more storefront. Fans on the forums (yeah, I still lurked a bit) clamoring for things they wanted and Turn10 maintaining radio silence. A new, $500 console, and still not enough processing power to get some rain? Gran Turismo 2 had rain!
Yeah, the open-wheel cars looked cool. In fact, the game looked beautiful. But it wasn’t enough. I passed on FM5, and on the new console as well.
Forza Horizon 2 –
It’s been some years since I’ve considered myself a gamer. Now I’ve got two jobs and part-time grad school, and I’m lucky if I’m awake long enough to finish a few laps around the FM4 ‘Ring. Earlier this week I went to Target to buy a copy of Godzilla, and saw a sign for Horizon 2. I honestly hadn’t heard a thing about it, had no idea it was releasing. And then I saw it was available for the Xbox360…was that a misprint? No, it was real. I shrugged, and bought a copy.
Horizon 2 is fun. The tracks are fun, the cars feel good, and the map seems substantial. For the first time in a long time, I found myself just kicking back to enjoy a race. That was a good feeling, and it came from my old, dusty 360 and from a franchise that I remember with some small amount of affection.
I have to admit, if I were still a “serious” gamer, the lack of DLC and support and all the other missing bits would make me grind my teeth. But for me, today, the game works fine. I’m slowly playing through it, getting my barn finds and saving up for a new hypercar…it’s a far cry from the garage packed with unicorns and hundreds of millions of FM4 credits I had been used to, but every now and then I get a few hours to myself and I play…and I enjoy it.
Thanks for reading,
NC