Forza Motorsport 4 – Review
Platform | Release Date
X360 | October 11, 2011Developed by Turn 10 Studios
Published by Microsoft
The Pitch:
Forza Motorsport, the highest rated racing franchise of this generation, makes its return to the race track with Forza Motorsport 4. Forza Motorsport 4 brings together genre-defining, controller-based racing, the power and freedom of Kinect, and content from leading brands like Top Gear to create an automotive experience unlike anything before it.
Forza Motorsport 4 is the latest entry in Microsoft’s first party answer to Gran Turismo. It is a simulation racing game that uses its high production values to take its cars very seriously. Each car is meticulously recreated, not just for gameplay purposes with handling and speed stats but also the visual perspective from the driver’s seat and engine noise. If you are a fan of the series or sim racing in general, there have been dozens of reviews to help you decide if you should upgrade to Forza 4. This review comes from my unique perspective: I’ve always liked the idea of sim racing, but throughout the years I have not found a title that drew me in. Is this year’s Forza 4 going to put me behind the wheel?
In an egotistical twist, let’s start with a bit of background info about me.
Being a huge fan of Burnout, I have played a lot of Burnout 2, 3, and Revenge. Burnout Paradise would have received a lot more play time if not for the longtime lack of a Restart option. I like Mario Kart. I’ve played a few hours of GT on the PS1 and Forza 1 on the original Xbox, but it never really clicked. The guide line introduced in Forza 1 is an amazing feature, but there just were not enough other incentives to keep me playing.
I also know very little about cars in general. Horsepower, torque, and traction are nothing but stat bars in a video game to me. I do not have a brand loyalty and I don’t know who makes the best legal street racers or professional dragsters. I do like the oldies: the ’67 Mustang or GTO. This year’s collector’s edition of Forza caught my eye: classic muscle cars.
Alright, I’ll bite. Let’s give this a try.
The first impression Forza 4 makes is a good one. It just dumps you into a race with some fast cars in a gorgeous alpine landscape. The controls are easy to grasp and it includes a Rewind mechanic, like Prince of Persia, to help recover from mistakes. My palms sweat as I tried to move my way up the pack, taking risks and driving aggressively into competitors during a turn. This aggressive behavior, while discouraged in real life and the online community, seems to be Super Effective in the early goings. The monetary penalty is minimal and the gain will take out other drivers and get you into first place. Immediately after the race it pushes you forward with your first car and into amateur circuit racing. Like a Pop Cap game, Forza always pushes you into the next event; you’ll be severely tempted to do just one more race.
Stop. Go back to the main menu and use the menu option to “Install Disc 2”. This will prompt you to load all the standard tracks, autovistas, and 250 additional cars from Disc 2. The importance of this is every time you level up you get your choice of a free car from a sub-selection of 5-10 cars. Without the second disc, several of the cars can be removed from this sub-selection; you would never know that you were missing out. This strategy of installing game discs from within a first party title is an interesting look at the future of the Xbox 360 and could easily be used for 3+ discs. Along with the Collector’s Edition DLC and an install of Disc 1, Forza 4 will take up about 11 gigs of hdd space.
It’s simply a large game. There are over 500 cars and every event is proportionately tailored based on the car you are driving. It will be a long time before you are ever forced to repeat an event with the same car or track. While most tracks boil down to a basic asphalt road, learning to drive them without the guide line would require a massive amount of time and effort. Forza 4 is definitely bang-for-your-buck title, like Oblivion, and if you open yourself up to the online Car Clubs and daily events, challenges, and ghost rivals, you can sink as little or as much time as you want.
Forza 4’s Autovista is one of the unique additions not found in Forza 3. This new mode is a fun diversion and an interesting tech demo. While most Kinect titles use the distance from the TV to determine if you can play with 1 or 2 players, Forza uses it to determine your position to a car in the showroom floor. Want to sit inside? You’ll need to walk up to the car physically and pull open the door. Want to peek at the engine? Back away and lean to rotate around to the back. It’s clumsy in comparison to just using a controller, but it is immersive. The other main use of the Kinect is to drive with your hands while the game controls the acceleration and breaking. The ability to track very subtle hand movements is impressive but it simply isn’t very fun to race when you cannot control your speed. I found the racing unexciting without the feedback of deciding when you break or slam the pedal to the floor. Head tracking, however, is amazing for as long as it remains properly configured. Lean and your view camera view shifts to accommodate. This means leaning as you turn makes it better – for real now.
The cockpit view from Forza 4 combined with head tracking is fun. Your view is obscured by a large dashboard or hood, but the immersion value is worth it. Every car feels different and hopping into a new one is exciting just to see what it looks and plays like. The closest parallel I can think of is Wing Commander, where piloting a new ship ‘felt’ different in addition to having a new gun or flew a bit faster; the combination of a different display and specs goes a long way to give a greater feeling of variety.
I really enjoyed my time with Forza. It is a very approachable title and does a good job of introducing new players to sim racing. In the coming holiday glut of Batman and Uncharted, I’m not sure if it’ll stay at the head of the pack but with a few aggressive turns I could see it pushing its way to the front every once in awhile.
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I had no idea Forza was two discs, that’s just insane. Nice review, if I ever replace my Xbox I will have to consider picking this game up!
Well, you see, it has two discs in the box, but one of them is literally an “install disc” or data disc. You pop in disc 1 and just disc 1 to play the game.
But on the main menu, there is an option to “Install Disc 2″. Doing so unlocks a ton of content (half the cars) and installs much to the hdd (for improved performance?). It’s all done in-game and is not part of the standard microsoft “install disc” process. I believe Forza 3 had a similar option. You can then *also* install Disc 1 through the normal, built-in OS method of installing games.
I find it particularly interesting because I could see it applied to more than a single disc. An game could request multiple discs as easily as a single data disc. And with the new xbox format approaching the 8 gig barrier, that’s a lot of installed content.
Ahhh, I didn’t know that, good to know.