Last year, while the PlayStation camp awaited the much delayed Gran Turismo 5, Xbox 360 folks and soured Gran Turismo (GT) fans happily played Forza Motorsport 3 in preparation for the eventual arrival of the next installment. Granted, in some ways the two game lineages preach to two different camps of gamers. GT as a series caters to those who are more cutthroat and down to business, while not being quite as much fun for the casual gamer and/or automotive enthusiast. Forza as a series is a little more scalable in scope between the casual fans and hardened racing simulation crowd, with physically customizable aspects that let players make their cars truly unique to them.
I am agnostic to both, but I will say that for the longest time Forza was the underdog between the two competing series of games. With the 4th edition of Forza finally here, I personally feel that it finally puts the fire under the GT series as a whole, and may even convert those who are on the fence about Gran Turismo 5.
There used to be an embeded media player here, but it doesn't work anymore. We blame the Tumbeasts.
Forza Motorsport 4 set their sights high to raise the bar on console simulation racing. This was especially important due to Gran Turismo 5 impressing many reviewers around the world. I know I personally loved Gran Turismo 5, but on loading up Forza Motorsport 4 I was met with one spectacular introduction. Turn 10 also included a wonderfully narrated speech from Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear UK fame, making it a touching love letter to both the casual car fan and the motorsports fanatics. The introductory race in the Bernese Alps puts you in the seat of a Ferrari 458 Italia, pitted against a big list of other notable supercars, to give the player a taste of what’s to come in the future of your Forza Motorsport 4 career mode.
After this race, if you have a Forza Motorsport 3 save file, the game will ask if you would like to import your file over, which brings a cash bonus as well as rare cars over for use in your new career. The import is based mainly on your Driver Level in Forza Motorsport 3, and the benefits will proportional to that. In addition to the bonus, if you have any extremely rare cars — such as the unicorn-class cars — in your file, they are automatically added to your new Forza 4 file. After all that is done, you are dropped into the career mode and get to choose your starter car to begin racing. Before we get into the career mode, let’s quickly touch on the brand new Autovista mode that debuts for the first time in Forza Motorsport 4.
Autovista is a digital museum that encompasses a select 26 cars from the game’s inventory of cars and gives them a premium level of treatment where almost any door, panel, or cover can be opened. In addition to that, cars featured in this mode also have points around the interior and exterior that provide technical facts and trivia about the cars. One of those points will give the player Jeremy Clarkson’s personal commentary on the car. On some he’s a bit light-hearted; on others, extremely passionate. There are also animations of start-up sequences for each car depicted in the Autovista mode but, unfortunately, Forza 4 does not let you freely rev the engine to your heart’s delight.
After the player has completed the criteria, one of the 26 cars is actually the Halo universe Warthog vehicle, which is unfortunately not drivable in Forza Motorsport 4 at all. For the automotive buffs out there, the Autovista mode is a good deal of fun, even if it is a bit light on the cars depicted. However, it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that future updates could add more cars, or paid DLC cars if Turn 10 so wishes, to utilize the Autovista mode. Personally, I felt that Autovista is a great thing for everyone from casual car fans to people with complete obsessions over the stunning realism depicted in the digital automotive pornography. This mode alone is a great bonus for the overall package of the game.
Now, those who bought Forza 4 are mainly going to be interested in one feature of the game: the Career Mode. Even here there are changes from Forza 3 which are a good deal better, and put even Gran Turismo 5 to shame. First off, the career mode presentation is vastly refreshing. I say this with respect to both Forza 3 and Gran Turismo 5 together, as the way Forza 4 has presented the career mode doesn’t make it feel like a grind. Gran Turismo 5 relies on your driver and license levels for progression. If one of these is not up to snuff, you have to grind it out until you have the requirement done. If you have to repeat championships to get driver experience, or tests until you complete a series for the next license, it can grate on a player’s morale and motivation to progress.
In Forza 3, the player goes through seasons but they must lock in a particular championship at certain parts of a season and commit to them. While this is a little more refreshing than Gran Turismo 5‘s mechanic, if you accidentally pick a boring championship you’re completely locked in until you finish the series. Forza 4 changes this by making it so that, in every session, you are given the choice of three events to pick from for your racing season. There is usually an event within your current classification, an event with different requirements, and a manufacturer specific event, though sometimes these can vary. On top of that, there are two meters that are linked to the player: Driver Level and Manufacturer Affinity.
The first meter pertains to your skill level, and Turn 10 has adjusted it to make leveling up seem like less of a grind. The second one is a change from Forza 3, in that by using cars of a certain manufacturer your affinity towards them grows and provides you with discounts on parts, and even bonus cash. Their role with the variety of events is that some events will provide extra bonuses to either your cash reward payout, manufacturer affinity, or your driver XP. This allows a player to pick and choose events based on their desires. Because of being able to mix and match events throughout a season, the career mode feels fresh instead of repetitive. This almost has a feel such that a player can pick up and play whenever they like, without having to be in a boring season of racing. Also, with leveling up the Driver Level, each level-up gives the player the choice of one car from a select theme lot as a gift, which helps provide incentive to pursue the career mode. At any time the player wishes, they can also play (or replay) events from the event select mode if they wish to play a track of their choosing.
In usual Forza fashion, Forza 4 has the same typical things that can be found in the series as a whole. Rewinding portions of the race, scalable difficulty from driver aids, AI drivers with personalities, etc., are all still here. The cars look far more detailed in Forza 4 than previously, and I feel the biggest added detail is sound. Some of the cars sound one-for-one identical to their real life counterparts and as the player tunes cars up they sound progressively meaner and more savage. Combined with the highly detailed driver’s seat viewpoint, the sound makes the races feel that much closer to the real experience. I know that when I played with headphones on my driving tactics became much more aggressive, just from the immersion felt by the sights and sounds put together.
As for personalization, players have free reign over graphics and paint to express their artistic talents. Those who really want to shine can even sell and share their visual creations out for the world to see, for free or for a price. The same goes with tuning set-ups for those who know how to make a car sing to life with a proper configuration, as those set-ups can be sold or given away in the marketplace. The photo mode is back in Forza 4, but there’s a new improvement: the player can take a standard picture (which ends up being 1280 x 720 resolution) or they can take a higher resolution picture at 3840 x 2160.
The are differences between the two options other than image size. Standard pictures are stored on the hard drive of the player, as well as a downloadable JPEG file in the player’s My Forza profile on ForzaMotorsport.net, and can be uploaded to the Forza marketplace for sale. The larger, high-resolution image is uploadable to a player’s My Forza profile in a file stash and is not salable, and comes with the condition that it is only stored for 24 hours from upload. On downloading it you get a 23 – 26 MB bitmap file.
There is also the addition of Car Clubs and challenges in the Community portion of the game, making the Forza 4 experience a social one as well. Car Clubs allow friends to essentially make online clans/teams for competitive or social racing. In addition to that, Car Clubs allow the ability to share cars with the rest of your team. Players are able to share any car that is not a special gift, or covered in a locked graphic design — which helps with keeping cars unique in individual hands.
Challenges are social contests from Turn 10 that could be anything from a photo contest to track challenges. These challenges allow players to show off their various skills and take their game to a global level. In my mind, I feel the community features help to keep games like Forza Motorsport 4 fresh and alive with a tight community. The multiplayer portion of things is quite fun, and there are public and private races. Turn 10 has made different match types for racing that can be class, category, and score limited, and even more social modes such as Tag and Soccer. The options for customizing created race events is very comprehensive, and can ensure that the match is very fair and balanced for an experience with minimal griefing. Other than the social matches, Forza 4 is pretty standard compared to other racing simulations with regards to racing online.
The overall result is a racing simulation that is visually beautiful to look at, and playable from the casual to serious racing simulation junkie. Forza 4 took the path of making a truly great racing simulation and really went for the gold. There is support in Forza Motorsport 4 for the Microsoft Wireless Speed Wheel, Kinect peripheral, and Fanatec wheel & pedals…but unfortunately I do not have any of those and cannot comment on how they make the game feel. I would imagine that anyone using the Fanatec wheel & pedals will have a complete blast with the unparalleled realism.
Turn 10 Studios really did their research on nailing the details down for every drivable car in the game; even the non-drivable Warthog is just oozing with attention to detail on the most subtle things. It truly blurs the line between reality and fantasy which, in my mind, is the ultimate goal any simulation game should be striving for. Forza Motorsport 4 is available now at your local retailers for a $60 regular edition, and a Limited Collector’s Edition for $80 (where it’s still available). If you are still not sure whether or not to buy the game, there is a demo available on Xbox Live for free that gives you a taste.
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