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Does Forza finally deserve the title as best racing series?

Best racing series


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The biggest takeaway for me was playing Forza 4 alongside GT6 earlier this year with my new wheel.

Both games felt nice to play, but the AI in Forza 4 often came across as unpredictable and strayed irregularly from the perfect line(even occasionally making mistakes on corners leading to some slight chaos). Some cars will nudge you when getting close or try to block you out, others will pull away to avoid collisions. It's not always perfect, but you get the feeling there is some form of intelligence driving those cyber opponents.

GT6 AI is entirely nonexistent. Literally feels like the game has a single line of code forcing the pack to stay in a perfect-line and doing its best to avoid veering off that magnetic track. I didn't outright dislike GT6 as there were aspects of the game done quite well, but the racing experience was totally lethargic even if the driving model feels solid(except collisions are kind of shit in the game too). GT Sport needs to fix this to compete.

Drivatars can be pretty funny...you can actually tell its your mate whos an asshole racing you as he will try and budge you off the road....definitely a great feature
 
Have played them all and the only one that never disappointed is Motorstorm
Yes it has a rather visibile rubberband effect but was always fun and addictive
Can't say the same for other arcade racers (yeah Mario, you included)
 
Gran Turismo 3 A-spec is literally still the only racing sim I find satisfying. Arcade racers are awesome, but Forza has not given me what that game gave me in any iteration that I have tried.
 
Well no, a collection of all Forza games doesn't even stand a chance against one round of F-Zero (G)X. The best racing series is F-Zero: Fast, absolutely direct control, difficult and with an incredible track design on top, the perfect racing game.
 
Drivatars can be pretty funny...you can actually tell its your mate whos an asshole racing you as he will try and budge you off the road....definitely a great feature

Or Major Nelson...

I really like their implementation. I know some people don't like the unpredictability and sometimes erratic manoeuvres, but I enjoy that.
 
Gran turismo series has been so mismanaged that its disgusting.
Ever since the transition from ps2 to ps3 they dropped the ball.
GT5 released with so many missing features the ps2 games already had and a bizarre patchwork of mismatched assets. Even now they seem unclear what they are trying to accomplish with sport.

On the other hand Forza series has been putting on consistent high quality games year on year.

Gran Turismo does have the superior feeling driving physics for me, but sadly it has failed at being a consistent high quality game.
 
For me the only other franchises that come close are either radically different (Mario Kart) or dead (F Zero, Motorstorm, Wipeout).

Forza Motorsport 7 should be absolutely amazing as well (assuming it runs on Scorpio)
 
Gt has always been quantity over quality
And there is so much filler in their cars list.

Its so jarring going from one car which has full physics and weights modeling to another car that handles like its on a stick being turned around with the track moving around it.

For a game series thats over 20 years old you still have cars that skid around corners like its ridge racer.
The only thing GT is consistant with in the fact that it's inconsistant across the board. Some cars have the hood cam placed, y'know, on the hood, while others seem to have it placed 3ft above the roof, crappy car models mixed with good...

What you mention about the track feeling like it's rotating around the car has always felt shitty to me too. It's because the chase camera is absolutely locked on axis to the rear of the car, unlike every other racing game in the world where it has a bit of give so you see the side of the car as you turn. Makes a massive difference.

The Forza series has been the better game since FM3.
 
Considering GT has fallen off a cliff with incredibly long dev cycles and being stuck in the past with their tech, yes. Forza is king now.
 
Playing Forza 1 getting into a bad crash and breaking the front Axel and have my car stuck turning right only was a breath of fresh air from GT..
 
No one can beat Gran Turismo: The Real Bumpercar Simulator

But GT has damage now..

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Forza Motorsport is stale and stagnant, but horizon is great.

GT had totally lost it by now. I say that the Sim market is underwhelming.
 
Maybe for arcade games. But there are a lot of simulation games on PC. But people don't really care about those I guess.
 
It's not perfect but it has taken the crown from GT for sure. Console game wise, ofcourse.
Gt seems to be focussing on silly stuff and and evolves really fucking slow.
It always feel like you're playing the PS2 version of the game just with prettier cars.
 
Thor 2 taking a vacation from polls I see.

Anyway I guess the answer is possibly. It's a good series and by default seems to be the only series getting serious funding currently. I don't believe its actually a great seller outside bundling, but it's solid as a franchise and one of MS few strong IPs that gets good reviews so I presume that's why it gets continued support in the face of most racing series easing off. That said I feel they produced too many iterations at too fast a pace and have already to an extent exhausted the brand.

FH3 is pretty damn good though and with GT in some odd limbo and better games with less entries on PC (as driving sims anyway) I guess by default its the only racing series that even seems active: so its a bit of a one horse race but its as good a franchise to claim that as any currently.
 
It sounds weird to ask if we can "finally" give it the crown since its fanbase has been vocally insisting we give it the crown since Forza Motorsport 3 and almost every year since then. Before Zhuge left, seemingly for good, one of the last tidbits he shared is that Forza's acclaim and prolific output have never translated to success. He hinted that if you take away holiday bundles, the games have always been modest sellers, as in under a million each or something like that. Obviously sales do not equate quality but at this point, it's safe to say the exodus from Gran Turismo is never going to happen.

I'm always hearing these vague reasons as to why Forza's better but no one ever provides any tangible examples as to why it overcomes the massive gulf in content and features between the two. I played both one after the other at a PAX game room and it's clear just how much more robust and detailed GT has always been. I would say it's similar to comparing Civilization Revolutions series to a fully featured Civilization game.
 
Horizon is amazing. It's the best out there.

Motorsport I'm less enthusiastic about, but in general I'm not a huge fan of the track sims.
 
I think the Forza games are the best series in the sub-genre they reside. That is... the "console sim racers that aren't really sim racers, but not that far into arcade racer" genre. I haven't played other open-world racing games like Burnout Paradise, The Crew, and the Test Drive Unlimited games so I have no real opinion on those.

Basically to me, this question is about Forza vs. Gran Turismo, and yeah... I like the Forza Motorsport games more, but I haven't played a GT since 5. I would also think that the Forza games have been getting the praise they have deserved for quite some time now.

I voted Forza yesterday, but really feel ashamed I didn't go with the last option now. There are so many different kinds of sub-genres to racing games that I think it's kinda silly to call one game series "best" of them all.
 
Project Gotham Racing, namely PGR4 still is number one in my heart, but the next closest and currently active is definitely the Forza series to me. Forza Horizon series mainly, since I really don't have the time to put in the care and attention to get the most out of Forza Motorsport titles.
 
Project Gotham Racing, namely PGR4 still is number one in my heart, but the next closest and currently active is definitely the Forza series to me. Forza Horizon series mainly, since I really don't have the time to put in the care and attention to get the most out of Forza Motorsport titles.
I always preferred the PGR/MSR series to the FM/GT games. Despite have less "content", they managed to grab my attention much longer and playing online was more or less always enjoyable. The Horizon series has brought some of that back, and while I do like the Motorsport series as well, the GT series hasn't grabbed my attention for a while. I'm hoping GTS will be good, but I'm not too optimistic right now.

Also, I should add that while I have idea if any rumors are true... I'd love to see a Horizon game in Japan with bikes added to the current roster. PGR 4 was onto something with the car/bike races, but obviously didn't have a chance to build on it further.
 
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