Forza Motorsport review: Like stalling in traffic, it’s no crisis but far from ideal

Depending on what you seek in a racing game, Forza Motorsport may or may not scratch your itch. (Image: Sumo Digital/Turn 10 Studios/Microsoft)

Last year’s Gran Turismo 7 was always going to be the yardstick against which Forza Motorsport would be measured. And here, it’s worth pointing out that I don’t necessarily mean it was going to be the gaming community’s yardstick, but mine.

After all, for an unabashedly much bigger fan of arcade racing titles, racing simulation (or sim racing) games haven't really been on my radar. It was Gran Turismo 7 that was the first of these to really pique my curiosity and subsequently capture my attention.

Therefore, for a PlayStation gamer, who has only just forayed into Xbox experience, Polyphony Digital’s 2022 opus is the sole point of comparison. Given the Forza franchise’s formidable reputation, it’s probably a fair one. The follow-up to 2017’s Forza Motorsport 7 arrived on October 10 — developed by Turn 10 Studios and published by Microsoft Studios. Of course, as is the trend these days, buyers of the premium editions of the game are able to begin playing five days earlier.

I played the Game Pass version of Forza Motorsport on the Xbox Series X and the Alien Alienware Aurora R15 (with an NVIDIA 4090 GPU and an i9-13900KF processor). While the PC allows for all sorts of graphical tweaks, the console provides three display options: Performance (that prioritises a refresh rate of 60 fps), Visual (that seeks to give you crisp 4K visuals at 30 fps) and Performance Ray Tracing (that falls short of 60 fps and 4K, but gives you lovely reflections). Apart from the game’s overall performance being slightly better optimised for Xbox Series X than PC, I found very few major dissimilarities elsewhere.

(Image: Sumo Digital/Turn 10 Studios/Microsoft)

Moving up a gear

Jumping into the driver’s seat, one of the first things I noticed was the game’s insistence on putting me through a tutorial at the very beginning. I was happy to oblige and learn how Forza Motorsport wanted me to tackle straights, corners, congestion of opponent vehicles and so on. Such was my eagerness to be guided that I turned the level of assists — suggested lines, turning and braking assistance and so on — up to the second-highest one.

Much as with Gran Turismo 7 before it, Forza Motorsport’s gentle learning curve encouraged me to throw off the shackles of the assists after my first handful of races. I was ready to take on the career mode, and more importantly, had formed my first set of impressions.

For starters, I enjoyed the game’s streamlined approach to the history and key features of various types of cars. I recall being extremely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information being fed to me while playing Gran Turismo 7, so this came as something of a relief. The menus too were informative but concise and detailed but intuitive.

Next, playing the game with the Xbox controller on both the Xbox Series X and PC, I was pleasantly surprised by how well it was optimised for this particular form of input. For purists, a racing wheel is the only way to play racing sims but for the average gamer, there were points at which I felt the controller input was more precise and better optimised than the PlayStation 5’s DualSense with Gran Turismo 7.

Over time, I found myself imbued with a greater sense of confidence when it came to attempting sharper turns with less braking. I drove with one eye on my lap time, intent to beat my previous best with every ensuing lap, I focused on driving cleaner lines with every attempt at a track and all was well with the world. And then I dove back into Gran Turismo 7 for a spell, as well as the latest title from the more arcadey Forza sub-franchise Forza Horizon 5 and the rose-tinted glasses began to slide off.

(Image: Sumo Digital/Turn 10 Studios/Microsoft)

Flooding the engine

While I had noted that Forza Motorsport’s streamlined approach had won me over, it was after diving back into the two games mentioned in the previous paragraph that I realised this streamlining seemed to have come at the cost of drama and excitement. Forza Horizon 5 and to an extent Gran Turismo 7 feature pulse-quickening racing. For some reason I was unable to pin down, the sort of racing on offer in Forza Motorsport is a very clinical and dispassionate affair. And although I found Gran Turismo 7 to be rather gritty after a while, the difference between finishing second and first seemed far greater in that game than in Forza Motorsport. The focus here seems to be on the elegance of motorsport, rather than the drama.

And then other cracks began to appear. While the game looked perfectly passable as a current-generation offering, it was only a matter of time before I began to notice just how synthetic and artificial the cars seemed to look. With their glossy, plasticky sheen, a majority of cars that I used in Forza Motorsport seemed to more closely resemble toy cars than their real-world equivalents. While the damage suffered by cars after scrapes or collisions is depicted extremely well — and causes the same sort of heartburn real-world scratches do, the representation of environments is extremely patchy.

Rainy conditions and puddles are exceptionally well-handled and in Ray Tracing mode (particularly the Ultra setting on the PC version) reflections are largely outstanding. I say ‘largely’ because, in cockpit mode, your rearview mirrors are quite hit-or-miss and relying on them can be a mistake. Sunlight and associated lens flare do look pretty, however, dust looks strangely chunky. This seems even stranger when you consider how well the two-year-old Forza Horizon 5 modelled dust particles.

And then there are the graphical gremlins in the machine. I’m sure patches will be released in due time, but this isn’t a great look for a franchise that usually ships in prime condition. I faced the appearance of random artifacts, scenery (including but not limited to an entire bridge) going missing and reappearing at its own convenience, pop-in textures and opponent cars suddenly going blurry.

These issues emerge frequently enough in single-player mode but are amplified in online multiplayer, particularly if you are competing with 23 other players. In this regard, performance was mildly superior on the Xbox Series X with the PC version falling prey to more regular cases of trees and signs going missing.

I could probably have looked past all of this were it not for another sad realization. Playing Forza Horizon 5 brought into sharp focus just how floaty, for want of a better word, the handling of the cars in Forza Motorsport really is. Certainly, they are very responsive and respond accurately to inputs, but the overall feel of the car and its movements isn’t particularly realistic. And this was a concern I had across a majority of vehicle types and classes.

(Image: Sumo Digital/Turn 10 Studios/Microsoft)

Your mileage will vary

Being part of Game Pass means that giving Forza Motorsport a whirl is a risk-free proposition. Additionally, being part of the Forza franchise means that there are plenty who will give this title a whirl regardless. Depending on what you seek in a racing game, Forza Motorsport may or may not scratch your itch.

So while it’s far from being a bad game, for me the game doesn’t do enough (whether in terms of gameplay, graphics or as an overall experience) to keep me hooked in the way its arcade cousin Forza Horizon 5 or rival Gran Turismo 7 did. But, each to their own.