Some thoughts after sinking around 10 hours into FM6 this weekend:
It's better than Forza 5 but still feels.... weirdly unfinished. Not as unfinished as FM5, but the career progression still just feels lifeless to me compared to the earlier FM games. The series don't even seem to have leaderboards or championship winners anymore in career mode. "Why am I even doing this?" I felt myself asking already, but then I realized, I'm doing this because the driving really does feel great. 1080p 60fps with 24 cars on the track. Complete package-wise, It's still not the successor to FM4 that I've been waiting for, which is frustrating, but it is the best racing sim (to me) to come out in several years, so I guess that's enough for me. At least for now.
After they got torn apart last time, and with how well I feel like they handled the progression in Horizon 2 (different team, but still) I really was ready for them to knock it out of the park with this game and I'm just a tad disappointed. Either way, it doesn't feel like a microtransaction/credit grind like FM5 was at launch, which is an improvement. Night racing and weather effects (finally) are an improvement. Not sure why the mods exist. They seem like something that would have been a microtransaction initially but they decided to just keep it in. Maybe they are testing the waters with them to charge for them in future games. I don't think they belong in a game like this, though. I also don't know why they have left car clubs and the auction house out. I spent so much time customizing cars and selling designs in the old games but I do not like how they handle this in FM5 and 6 at all. I'm not sure why they're going out of their way to hide the community aspects of this game, which kept me coming back to the old games for months and years after release. I never felt that pull with 5 and I'm afraid that it's not going to happen with 6, either, already even after just a weekend of play.
I'm going to keep playing this and will likely play through the entire progression of the career, I just wish there were more stakes or the game felt more lively in any way. I basically want FM3/4 with updated physics and better graphics and stuff. I don't know how they've missed the mark on delivering that twice in a row now, but it's clear that they have a different vision for the franchise than what the fans want, which I feel is pretty frustrating.
I don't want to sound too down on it, because the core gameplay is still fun, and this game is an improvement from the last in almost every way, just, I guess I wish it wasn't so aimless.
