Forza Motorsport 5 — a long time fan’s review
An honest review by a guy who actually paid for this game
It’s been a week since the Xbox One was released, including one of its flagship launch titles: Forza Motorsport 5. I have owned each and every incarnation of this franchise including the very first Forza Motorsport on the original Xbox. Needless to say I’m a huge fan of the series. In fact, I’m a fan of any serious console racing simulator on both Xbox and PlayStation platforms. So just to get the false suggestion of ‘fanboy bias’ out of the way: I really love the Gran Turismo series as well and I can’t wait to see what Polyphony Digital will give us on the PS4. But, let’s talk Forza Motorsport for now!
Ever since the first E3 demo footage I have been intoxicated by the promise of a racing simulation game with cars that look as good as they do in real life, if not better. Did Turn 10 deliver on this promise? My take on the answer to that question is in this review.
Forza Motorsport 5 has received overall pretty good reviews. The game is probably the biggest star among all next-gen launch titles, including those on the PS4. Does this mean it’s perfect? Not so fast.
Visuals and sound
Let’s start with the best. Forza Motorsport 5 looks, plays, and sounds absolutely gorgeous. It’s a true love letter to all things cars and motor sport in the most glorious detail ever produced on game consoles. All 200+ cars are rendered in staggering detail, showered in gorgeous lighting, and outfitted with the most realistic sounding engine noise that’s ever graced my ears.
Unlike in Forza Motorsport 4, all cars are available in Forzavista mode which allows you to explore it on the inside and the outside. For car nuts such as myself it’s a true feast to the eye. The engine noise in this edition of Forza Motorsport is outrageously good. As far as I’m concerned it sets a new bar. Take note, Polyphony Digital. This is how it’s supposed to sound. My only gripe audio wise is the in-game music. I have not seen many reviewers pointing this out but the music is worse than the cheapest elevator music you can imagine. My advice is to turn it off and simply enjoy the amazing sounds of the various engines.
Tracks
The tracks look quite impressive as well. The lighting is great and there is a lot of detail to be found in the environments surrounding the road. There are welcome new additions such as Bathurst, Spa Francorchamps, and Yas Marina but unfortunately my all-time favorite track is painfully absent: the Nürburg Ring. Turn 10 has however hinted at extra tracks becoming available in the future so here’s to hoping the Green Hell will be among the first ones to be released. There has been a fair amount of criticism on the fact that the amount of available tracks (14) is a bit on the low side but I’m personally ok with it. I’m old enough to remember racing games that featured just one or at best a handful of tracks so I’m not complaining. That said, compared to Forza Motorsport 4 the track count has gone down considerably so it’s understandable that some people are upset about this.
It’s interesting to note that another behemoth in the console racer scene has been following a different approach here. Gran Turismo 5 contains tracks from a previous generation. While this increases the track count, it just doesn’t look and feel as good as brand new tracks produced with the latest technology. Turn 10 has chosen to be fully next-gen only which has unfortunately resulted in a lower amount of available tracks. However, there’s an opportunity here for Turn 10 to fix this issue later down the line.
Drivatars
A new innovative feature of Forza Motorsport 5 are the Drivatars. Drivatars are AI drivers modeled after real players. The more you play the game, the better your Drivatar will learn your driving style. (Upfront apology to anyone racing my ten-year-old daughter’s Drivatar.) While you’re busy doing other things than playing your Drivatar will appear in other people’s races and function as one of their opponents. They will even make you some money too. On average my Drivatar brings home about 10,000 credits per day. Not too bad.
Seeing your friend’s names show up as opponents really adds something personal to playing the career mode. Unfortunately Drivatars only adopt your driving style and not your driving skill. I would love to see them also match skill so that competing against Drivatars will be an even closer approximation of racing online with real people.
There are pros and cons to racing against Drivatars rather than traditional AI like in Forza Motorsport 4. Gone is the rubber banding and the lack of challenge to win a race once you’ve gotten ahead of the pack. New however are erratic opponents who will brake check or rear end you on a regular basis. Many of my races started out with a huge multi-car crash. If you play with damage enabled this poses quite a challenge. Increasing the Drivatar difficulty however mostly cures this problem. I have been getting very satisfactory races with Drivatar difficulty set to ‘pro’.
I believe there’s big promise in the cloud based Drivatar AI but there’s still a lot of room for improvement. Maybe Turn 10 will perfect this technology for Forza Motorsport 6.
The micro transaction controversy
Micro transactions are not new to the Forza Motorsport franchise but Forza Motorsport 5 does seem to take it to a new level. Basically everything in the game can be purchased by both in-game earned credits as well as real world money. The game also constantly advertises the possibility of accelerating earning rates by spending some real money. It’s quite annoying to be honest.
There has been a significant amount of criticism from within the community towards Forza 5's micro transactions. I consider some of this criticism justified. One big miss was the fact that owners of the Limited Edition version of the game were to receive enough ‘car tokens’ to instantly buy any car in the game. This was however not true until very recently. The tokens that came with this version of the game would not nearly cover the purchase of any of the expensive cars in the game. Luckily Turn 10 and Microsoft took note and made various changes to the game’s economy including price reductions, increased rate at which credits are earned and several free gift cars.
The thing I’ve personally never quite agreed with is the fact that it’s supposedly too hard or too time consuming to earn enough credits to purchase an expensive car in the game. It took me personally 10 hours to make enough credits to buy several cars I needed for career progression as well as one of the hottest rides in the game: the McLaren P1. Earlier Turn 10 had pointed out in interviews that they wanted the expensive cars to have a sense of exclusivity. It shouldn’t be too easy to obtain them. I tend to agree. And what’s more, this mechanism isn’t quite exclusive to Forza Motorsport either. I remember spending countless nights of grinding in Gran Turismo 5 to make enough credits to purchase the Formula GT car which was required to progress in the game’s career. And Gran Turismo didn’t offer any kind of shortcuts to obtain this car either.
Nobody really complained about this when it comes to Gran Turismo 5. If Polyphony Digital were to have offered micro transactions to avoid this grind I think we would have seen an outrage similar to the one we’re seeing right now surrounding Forza Motorsport 5.
It’s very important to note that players do not ever need to spend any real world money in Forza Motorsport 5. It’s possible to obtain everything by simply playing the game. Is it easy or quick? No. Is it possible? Most certainly. My shiny McLaren P1 serves as evidence for this claim.
There has also been criticism concerning the day one DLC LaFerrari car pack. However it’s not the first time I’ve seen this happen. Mass Effect 3, one of my favorite video games of all time did it as well. Like it or not, DLC is here to stay.
While I’m learning to accept the reality of paid DLC, even on day one I really do hope that free-to-play style mechanisms such as the ability to circumvent earning credits in-game are not the way of the future. When having purchased a $60 game I expect it to be possible to gain access to all of it’s content with a reasonable amount of effort. Does it all need to be instantly available? No. Does it need to take hundreds of hours to get to it? Another no. Here’s to hoping that Turn 10 and other game studios will learn from this controversy and adjust things accordingly.
Is it too expensive?
I have paid $130 for Forza Motorsport 5 so far. $80 for the Limited Edition version and an additional $50 for 6 months worth of car packs. One could argue that this is quite a lot of money. It is. And it isn’t. Here’s why:
Let’s take a look at another excellent racing simulator: iRacing. This is one of the best (if not THE best) PC racing simulators. In order to play this game one has to pay $99 per year. This gets the player only seven cars and 10 tracks. Additional tracks are available for $11.95-$14.95. Additional cars are available for $11.95 each. As you can see this will quickly surpass the amount of money I spent on Forza Motorsport 5. Also, there’s a total of just 30 extra cars available. Not an awful lot and very expensive as you can see.
“But iRacing is much better!” one may say. This is probably true. How much better however, I don’t know. And what’s more, I don’t like gaming on a PC. I’m a pure console gamer. Therefore, Forza 5 is basically my iRacing. It’s the best I can get right now and it’s a LOT cheaper to play than iRacing.
So there you go, some perspective on the matter, at least from my point of view.
Wrapping up
Forza Motorsport 5 is a fantastic game. If you’re a car nut like me it’s pretty much a must-buy. Cars have never looked and sounded this good in the history of game consoles. I’d even dare to say that if you’re not really into racing games but are a car fanatic this game would still be worth purchasing. Forza Motorsport 5 is pure unadulterated car porn. It has to be experienced to fully appreciate this claim.
Forza Motorsport 5 is not perfect as a whole but the parts that are there are spot on. The cars look and sound better than ever, the tracks are amazing and the ones that are new will keep Forza veterans busy for quite a while.
The game doesn’t however match all expectations we have come to get used to from Forza Motorsport 4. There are a lot less cars and tracks. The career mode has lost quite some depth. Gone is the auction house and I’m probably forgetting a bunch of other things that have been scaled down or removed compared to Forza Motorsport 4. That said, the Xbox One is a next generation console. All of Forza Motorsport’s content is brand new. There’s been no copying and pasting from Forza Motorsport 4. Tracks and car models are either brand new or completely redone and all car models are brand new as well. And boy does it show. I respect Turn 10's decision to go truly next-gen with this title and I am willing to accept the sacrifices that come with it.
If Forza Motorsport 5 is an indicator of what’s in store for future simulation racers I’m sold.
Gentlemen, start your engines.
