Forza Motorsport 4 Review

It's that time, the one that every motoring enthusiast has been waiting for, the release of Forza Motorsport 4; one of the most anticipated games of the year, but will it deliver or will Gran Turismo leave it in a cloud of tyre smoke? With the amount of time Sony spent on GT5 there should only be one winner as the developers again go head to head. Happily Microsoft and Turn 10 have created something rather special that makes Gran Turismo feel "last gen".

When you first load up Forza you are greeted by the friendly voice of Jeremy Clarkson who starts to tell you that petrol heads are a dying breed and are being replaced by eco warriors in their hybrids. After this welcome by Mr. Clarkson you are put straight into a Ferrari 458 for a race to see what level you should be racing at. To be honest this race is pointless due to you not being able to change any setting until after so for someone experienced, the race becomes more of a chore with assisted braking, ABS and Traction Control all turned on.

After this race is where the real racing begins. You can now change the racing settings and buy your first car, the choice is obviously limited to the bottom end cars like the Toyota Aygo and Vauxhall Agila. The car you choose can be one of many in your garage at the start due to Turn 10 rewarding the hard work of players on the previous installment with a number of cars depending on what level you were on Forza 3 if you still have your saved data on your Xbox.

As with every racing game there are multiple game modes for you to participate in, like quick race, hot lap and most importantly, the career mode which takes you on a journey around the world to race over 600 of the worlds best cars on the worlds most famous pieces of tarmac, from the twists and turns of the historic Nordschleife to the fast paced racing around Circuit de le Sarthe in Le Mans.

Unlike Forza 3 where the career mode was based around the world championships where you would pick and event to race in until the next championship race comes around, this installment is based around the tracks. Like the career mode in previous installments, there are experience points (XP) to be earned in every race. The higher up the field you finish, the more you will achieve. You will gain XP towards your driver level and Manufacturer level depending on what car you use.

There have been changes to the XP system from Forza 3. The Driver level now goes all the way up to level 150 instead of only going to 50, every level that you achieve up to 50 you will get a choice out of a selection of cars based on a category like historic hyper cars or American Muscle. After level 50 you will start to receive credit bonuses for every level that you achieve. The manufacturers level has also been increased from every car having 5 levels to the levels being only for manufacturers, each now having 50 levels to get though; but at level 4 every tuning part of that manufacturer becomes free. Having cars gifted to you up to level 50 and with it being so easy to get free tuning parts prize money starts to become untouched and you then start to buy silly cars that you don't really need.

The A.I. in the game have been improved to make mistakes for example they can now brake too late and go flying off into the gravel, but they do start to get annoying rather quickly especially when they brake for no reason on straights and bash in to you though the corners. With no option to increase the difficulty of the A.I. you will find yourself out front on your own most of the time and even choosing low powered cars to give yourself a challenge. With the amount of cars that you will get gifted and how easy it is to get free tuning parts, the credits that you get after every race start to stack up quite quickly so it doesn't take you that long to buy the cars that you really want in your garage.

The new mode for the offline part of the game is really to show everyone what has been achieved graphically. The autovista mode is where you can look around highly detailed cars past and present and get the opinion of each car from Mr Clarkson. Only a handful of cars are in the Autovista section but the time period that they span there will be at least one car that everyone will like and if you will never get to look around these cars in real life this is the closest that you will get as the quality of the graphics are something that I've never seen in a game.

Apart from the single player getting a revamp the online mode has some new features. The most noticeable is the introduction of the Rivals Mode. Rivals Mode allows you to send the people on your friends list challenges to beat your times, even if they are not online when you set yours. There are different disciplines in rivals mode to master from the normal hot lap and drifting to autocross when you will need to get around the track fastest by passing through cones that are placed in various setups for technical driving. Also there is a track day feature when you are on track with slower cars that are placed all around the track but not racing with you, so to get a good lap you will need to avoid the slower cars as well as concentrating on taking the corners properly.

Obviously with the introduction of the Top Gear test track it would have been a shame not to have a worldwide leaderboard of "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car". Well fear not! Turn 10 have added just that in the rivals mode so you will do laps of the track in the Kia Cee'd. Also Turn 10 haven't forgotten about the standard multiplayer modes where you can race people from around the world. But this is where you will find another Top Gear inspired event, the car football event when teams of players rev there engines to try and score more goals then there opponents. The online playability doesn't stop there as unlike the other installments of the game you can join a car club with your friends and add cars into a shared garage where if you've not got the correct car for a race you can borrow one from the Club Garage. Also the storefront, where you can buy tuning setups and liveries for your cars. And the auction house, where if you want to you can search for the car that you want to buy and hopefully pick it up cheaper then buying it new.

Overall Forza 4 is what I was expecting and more simply an automotive master class of what can be done if you get it right, right from the start where you are greeted Jeremy Clarkson to the graphical brilliance of the Autovista. The only downfall is the A.I. and the lack of driving ability which makes single player sometimes boring when you're at the front all the time by yourself. Other than that Forza is a must for any car enthusiast and turn 10 will need to do something special to top this for the next instalment.