Support NeoGAF

[jayj]

Now that it's officially the end of the year I figure I might as well share my disappointment of the year. I was always a big fan of the Forza franchise and I originally had very high expectations for this latest entry. The news about live services and car leveling definitely lowered those expectations, but I still came into it wanting to like it and hoping it would be enjoyable. Well not only did the car leveling system basically ruin the main thing that I loved about the franchise (being able to buy any car I like and instantly turn it into my ideal version of that car) but everything else about it was a complete letdown as well. The graphics for example look terrible to me after having played GT7 on my PS5 all year, the physics simply didn't live up to expectations either, and both of those were things I thought for sure they couldn't screw up despite the bad news I heard earlier. Then there's the racing, forcing practice runs before every race, making every series for the career mode feel far more tedious than they should. Honestly, everything about the game felt like a total chore, and even today, when I gave it another shot (as it's a gamepass title I can just download it whenever) it's still just as bad as I thought it was when I first played it. I honestly struggle to have anything good to say about it besides the car list being pretty good I guess. The track list could be a lot better though.

So yeah, that's my disappointment of the year, and I doubt anything in 24 can top that for me.

 

[xrnzaaas]

Yep same here, I've been playing the series since Forza Motorsport 2 and I always loved it until this newest entry. I'm struggling to enjoy this and also to find things to play because of the sp career being so short and barebones. If it wasn't for the nostalgia towards the entire series I would've dropped it for good already.

What's worse there's no big roadmap for this game so we don't know if and how they're planning to improve the current version.

 

[Monad]

Mine too.

As a hardcore Forza fan since the first Motorsport, it's terrible (minus the tyre physics, overall selection of race cars and some interesting moments in the multiplayer).

Chris Esaki and his team deserve to be impaled.

 

[jayj]

Yep same here, I've been playing the series since Forza Motorsport 2 and I always loved it until this newest entry. I'm struggling to enjoy this and also to find things to play because of the sp career being so short and barebones. If it wasn't for the nostalgia towards the entire series I would've dropped it for good already.

What's worse there's no big roadmap for this game so we don't know if and how they're planning to improve the current version.

Yeah I have been playing these games since the very first Forza dropped on the original Xbox, that's how long I have been a fan. I can definitely relate, I feel like I keep trying to get back into it because I REALLY want to find something to like about it, I really want to have an excuse to keep it around, but right now it just feels like a big waste of space on my Xbox that I could be freeing up for other games I would enjoy more. No joke the graphics are something that blows me away, how bad they are that is. I was just watching a replay for a time trial I did at Laguna Seca, and it's appalling how bad the background scenery looks. No joke I think Forza 4 could look better if they gave it an X enhanced treatment with FPS boost. Just blurry hillsides, lacking textures, felt like I was looking at a low-effort 360 title. It's like some things can look nice close up, then there's the awful looking paint that for some reason just has a terrible lighting or reflection effect that makes everything look kinda cartoonish. The whole thing just looks off to me. I'll go back to Forza 7 on my old Xbox One X and be amazed at how much better it looks all over, paint looking better, scenery looking better, it makes me feel like I have no good reason to stick with the new one outside of a few cars I can't drive elsewhere.

 

[xrnzaaas]

Yep the replays definitely don't look good. I generally like to replay the races I enjoyed and maybe take a few screenshots. I stopped doing it in this game after a few attempts. You can't even capture cool shots, because the wheels on the AI cars look like a fugly mess when you pause the replay (playing on the Series X). Can't believe this still wasn't fixed.

I'm very sad that older FM games never got the BC treatment (especially FM4), because I don't have an Xbox 360 anymore. Maybe I'll finally break and buy a used one.

 

[THE DUCK]

Personally I think it's just as good as the rest in the series, it's a solid sim racer with very good graphics.
You lose all creditbility in your entire post when you say it looks terrible vs GT7. At its worst it's slightly worse, at its best it looks slightly better, depending on the particualr track and or scene. Digital foundry did a blind pic test and most users could barely tell them apart.

 

[Outlier]

Same. I big expectations and it all crumbled, on day one.
I put in maybe 10 hours, but I've dropped it and gone to other better games.
A 5/10 game, with it's driving physics being the only redeeming value.

 

[Senua]

Personally I think it's just as good as the rest in the series, it's a solid sim racer with very good graphics.
You lose all creditbility in your entire post when you say it looks terrible vs GT7. At its worst it's slightly worse, at its best it looks slightly better, depending on the particualr track and or scene. Digital foundry did a blind pic test and most users could barely tell them apart.

That blind test was purposefully opaque to make it more interesting, anyone can see that GT7 was the victor on that test, even if John was soft (as ever) about it.

GT7 looks quite a lot better than FM on Xbox. Maxed out on PC FM is very pretty and at night/rain shots it can look stunning

 

[BigLee74]

Stopped reading when you claimed the graphics were terrible.

 

[Senua]

This game is a tough one for me. It's definitely very disappointing. I really hoped it could be a clean slate ala Gran Turismo 3 or even Forza Motorsport 5 without the microtransactions. But it seems it's the same old Forza Motorsport, but even less polish and and personality. There is zero presentation of any note, bare bones and lifeless career mode. Uneven graphics, wonky car models still. Multiplayer is great but that's not really my bag.

Where the game does shine is the physics of the cars, even hot lapping the game is just awesome fun finding the limits of your car, and tuning to maximize lap times is funner than it's ever been. Honestly in its current state you have to make your own fun in this game. Take a slow car, go into free race and just keep racing, level the car up and slowly build it up over time and you do get a big sense of satisfaction. You have to do what the games promises but fails to deliver. The career restrictions are just way too narrow, you are forced into such a small set of cars for each event, you can basically never carry over a car you had from before into another event, so you lose all connection with that car instantly. Free play and rivals is where the game shines, which tbh isn't good enough and is a massive fail on T10s part. The game just wasn't ready bruv.

 

[Fredrik]

My interest faded when there was no VR mode and when I heard about how the campaign was made. Never even installed it.

 

[Beer Baelly]

I tried it again this week but it's such a letdown and I dont think they will change/improve the game a lot. Forza is dead to me, Horizon and Motorsport.

 

[Skifi28]

The amount of button presses, ui screens, loading, and cutscenes you have to go through just to do a simple career race shows me that nobody over there actually played the game they were making for 6 years supposedly from the ground up. No wonder most of it feels built by an AI.

 

[xrnzaaas]

The amount of button presses, ui screens, loading, and cutscenes you have to go through just to do a simple career race shows me that nobody over there actually played the game they were making for 6 years supposedly from the ground up. No wonder most of it feels built by an AI.

I think this was (at least partially) done to hide how little content there is in the game (not counting the cars) and to increase engagement numbers. So you're asked to do practice sessions (and you can't skip them until they've loaded) and you have to go through all of the pre-race and post-race screens and grid presentations to spend more time rather than just completing a 4-5 lap race and moving on.

 

[Skifi28]

I think this was (at least partially) done to hide how little content there is in the game (not counting the cars) and to increase engagement numbers. So you're asked to do practice sessions (and you can't skip them until they've loaded) and you have to go through all of the pre-race and post-race screens and grid presentations to spend more time rather than just completing a 4-5 lap race and moving on.

If this was done intentionally then shit's truly fucked, gamepass can't die soon enough if it makes developers intentionally try to piss me off with their design decisions. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now, maybe they just suck.

 

[GiganticGoat]

On Series X there are some weirdly goofy looking shadows on the cars at times.

 

[Gaiff]

Honestly, everything about the game felt like a total chore

It's not like it's a chore by design that was later readjusted when they decided against microtransactions.

 

[Skifi28]

One more thing that grinds my gears to no end is how the game is actively trying to discourage you from trying new cars, again no idea what they were thinking in a Forza game. Seems to be much more difficult to earn money than previous entries and in 20 hours I haven't been awarded any prize cars so that feature's probably gone too. No longer can you switch cars within a race series so no experimenting, use the same car for five 7 laps races in a row, /yawn. Where are the cool and interesting race series? There's barely any single player content, if I did everything I'd probably not have even tried 10% of the car list. Where are the events for racing cars? I could have probably designed a more interesting single player in a weekend than they did in 6 years.

Why does the game not want me to have fun?

 

[jayj]

Personally I think it's just as good as the rest in the series, it's a solid sim racer with very good graphics.
You lose all creditbility in your entire post when you say it looks terrible vs GT7. At its worst it's slightly worse, at its best it looks slightly better, depending on the particualr track and or scene. Digital foundry did a blind pic test and most users could barely tell them apart.

I'm literally just going off what I can readily see with my own two eyes playing on my PS5 and Series X on my QD-OLED TV. If some youtubers are trying to say something otherwise, well that does me no good because what I am looking at is simply ugly when it comes to Forza Motorsport. Some trees in the background will look like someone painted them with watercolors, entire hillsides will be lacking textures, other areas will be a super low-res looking blurry mess like it's straight out of a PS2 game. Sure some areas can look nice, but if I have got all this ugly looking stuff just right there in camera view, it's hard for me to take anyone seriously when they try to claim it's comparable to GT7. I don't have any of these issues when playing GT7, backgrounds always look good and detailed, car paint and lighting always looks accurate, it's just clearly a much better looking game. This is all off current up to date versions of these games as well.

I also heard people say this game doesn't look nearly as good in action as it did in previews, and after seeing previews I would have to agree, it's almost like I'm looking at a different game.

 

[Rendered Tangent]

I haven't tried it yet as it needs to be on an SSD (apparently) and I was struggling for space on mine (what with Starfield, the insane CoD storage requirements, and a few others).

 

[Companion Cube]

This is my first FM and I’m enjoying the game for what it is.

It sounds like I really missed out on peak Forza by how people talk about how it ended up.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

Huge Forza fan here and super disappointed in this as well as it feels like they intentionally tried making it a grind

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

this is a trend not a coincidence.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

Well I do agree with some of your points, I think it's a little bit better for me on PC. It's definitely not Gran Turismo 7 but if you were to ask me the bigger disappointment it would be Starfield by a long shot. And I also still think Forza horizon maps the floor as a game with Forza Motorsport

 

[Ribi]

Great another starfield thread... Wait a minute

But ye Forza felt like an afterthought this year which is odd since it was such a massive success last year

 

[xrnzaaas]

One more thing that grinds my gears to no end is how the game is actively trying to discourage you from trying new cars, again no idea what they were thinking in a Forza game. Seems to be much more difficult to earn money than previous entries and in 20 hours I haven't been awarded any prize cars so that feature's probably gone too. No longer can you switch cars within a race series so no experimenting, use the same car for five 7 laps races in a row, /yawn. Where are the cool and interesting race series? There's barely any single player content, if I did everything I'd probably not have even tried 10% of the car list. Where are the events for racing cars? I could have probably designed a more interesting single player in a weekend than they did in 6 years.

Why does the game not want me to have fun?

You earn a lot less credits, but cars are also cheaper than in past games. I think 500k is the maximum price for 1 car and you can get some really nice supercars for around 300k.

Personally I don't have an issue that you're not being awarded free cars for no accomplishments on your side, but I will definitely agree that the majority of the available cars can't be used in the career mode. Like there's 0 events for proper racing cars.

 

[Wizz-Art]

I love the game, to me the most important thing in such driving games is how it feels to drive and they nailed that part. I also think that the game looks and sounds good. While I dropped GT7 after a week or so, I still play Forza almost every day.

 

[DirtyBast8rd]

I love the game, to me the most important thing in such driving games is how it feels to drive and they nailed that part. I also think that the game looks and sounds good. While I dropped GT7 after a week or so, I still play Forza almost every day.

Some people believe there are lizard people among us.

 

[nashman]

The side view mirrors are just grey blobs, zero reflection. The wheels when in motion are a dithering mess of textures. The game looks distractingly bad and I play on PC at ultra.

 

[thief183]

I dunno how to explain it but my biggest complaint about the game is that it drives different depending in you position... I don't even know if it is true, but it is what I perceive.

 

[simpatico]

You're better off with the old one. I really can't think a single reason to play the new entry. Clueless how MS fumbled that bag so badly. All they had to do was literally LESS work. Every single action MS Games has taken since the end of the 360 generation has been the wrong one. They were poised to take this mofo over.

 

[BennyBlanco]

Yeah, it stinks. It’s weird how much Motorsport has fallen off and Horizon is so good now. Maybe I’m just a casual now but the last 2 Motorsport bored me.

 

[diffusionx]

I really would love to know what Turn 10 did for six years because they spent almost 15 years consistently churning out high quality games that took advantage of their hardware and often did it in 2 years. It’s almost like the entire studio was vaporized and replaced with a much less capable and competent one.

 

[Danknugz]

it's barebones but i find myself firing it up and playing a race or two every day. the changes in handling feedback through the triggers and pad force feedback really impressed me and i love how the game feels, i might be in the minority about this but i applaud MS for their work on this game because (to me anyway) it feels like a true next gen racer in terms of actually feeling like driving a car.

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

I think it's my biggest disappointment of the year too. I was so sure this would be great and that the graphics would be a true next gen looking track racer ...I was wrong.

Now I've learned that they've fixed and improved the graphics of the PC version but not the Series X which pisses me off even more. The "ray tracing on track" on SX sucks too.

To me this is just Microsoft and Turn 10 doing what they do best this gen which is overpromising and underdelivering. Fucking bullshit that gt7 looks better than this.

 

[Gameplay Gods Bless]

Now that it's officially the end of the year I figure I might as well share my disappointment of the year. I was always a big fan of the Forza franchise and I originally had very high expectations for this latest entry. The news about live services and car leveling definitely lowered those expectations, but I still came into it wanting to like it and hoping it would be enjoyable. Well not only did the car leveling system basically ruin the main thing that I loved about the franchise (being able to buy any car I like and instantly turn it into my ideal version of that car) but everything else about it was a complete letdown as well. The graphics for example look terrible to me after having played GT7 on my PS5 all year, the physics simply didn't live up to expectations either, and both of those were things I thought for sure they couldn't screw up despite the bad news I heard earlier. Then there's the racing, forcing practice runs before every race, making every series for the career mode feel far more tedious than they should. Honestly, everything about the game felt like a total chore, and even today, when I gave it another shot (as it's a gamepass title I can just download it whenever) it's still just as bad as I thought it was when I first played it. I honestly struggle to have anything good to say about it besides the car list being pretty good I guess. The track list could be a lot better though.

So yeah, that's my disappointment of the year, and I doubt anything in 24 can top that for me.

Forza turned out to have typical "live service" launch as in is incomplete, it has bugs but hey "we'll fix it in post", it's giving me Overwatch 2 vibes. 2 years from now people will be singing from the skies about how the game finally has its shit together.

 

[Bry0]

I pulled the trigger on a psvr2 for gt7 because of this game.

I’m not sure if t10 really fixed the pc version or not, the DLSS implementation still looks busted to me. It’s a shame because it does feel good to actually drive in the game, but everything around it is more mediocre than ever.

 

[twilo99]

But what about Starfield? Please be reasonable…

 

[TheShocker]

I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve played so far. It sounds and handles better than GT7 imo. I also think it looks just as good. Playing on an LG C2. End of the day though, both games are great. I’ve got about 80 hours in GT7 for reference.

 

[Hollowpoint5557]

When you boot up the game for the first time they put you into an introductory race and I couldn't get through it. I quit and deleted it after 30 seconds. I hated how it looked, hated how it felt, and reading about the progression system before-hand had made it an easy pass. I have put hundreds of hours into each FM before it but I was put off of the new one instantly.

 

[sigrad]

Now that it's officially the end of the year I figure I might as well share my disappointment of the year. I was always a big fan of the Forza franchise and I originally had very high expectations for this latest entry. The news about live services and car leveling definitely lowered those expectations, but I still came into it wanting to like it and hoping it would be enjoyable. Well not only did the car leveling system basically ruin the main thing that I loved about the franchise (being able to buy any car I like and instantly turn it into my ideal version of that car) but everything else about it was a complete letdown as well. The graphics for example look terrible to me after having played GT7 on my PS5 all year, the physics simply didn't live up to expectations either, and both of those were things I thought for sure they couldn't screw up despite the bad news I heard earlier. Then there's the racing, forcing practice runs before every race, making every series for the career mode feel far more tedious than they should. Honestly, everything about the game felt like a total chore, and even today, when I gave it another shot (as it's a gamepass title I can just download it whenever) it's still just as bad as I thought it was when I first played it. I honestly struggle to have anything good to say about it besides the car list being pretty good I guess. The track list could be a lot better though.

So yeah, that's my disappointment of the year, and I doubt anything in 24 can top that for me.

Same here brother. After seeing that gameplay trailer I was so hyped and holy shit was it a letdown. Except for the racing part. That's really good. Everything else, disappointing.

 

[sigrad]

But what about Starfield? Please be reasonable…

To me, Starfield was great. Until I beat it. Took 144 hours. Will never pick it up again. Only Bethesda game I've beaten next to Fallout 3

 

[clarky]

Game needs another 6 months minimum, its half baked. Fuck knows what's going on over at turn10. Say what you want about MS but they gave them 6 years to fart out this.

The bones are there but that's about it.

 

[ReBurn]

I played it for a couple of hours. I found it as boring as I find every other sim racer I've ever played.

 

[DR3AM]

The amount of button presses, ui screens, loading, and cutscenes you have to go through just to do a simple career race shows me that nobody over there actually played the game they were making for 6 years supposedly from the ground up. No wonder most of it feels built by an AI.

This 100%. Let me just fucking race. Why do I have to press A 20 times, skip the boring cut scenes and 5 unnecessary loading screens just to race. Cmon man.

I still play the game but it’s pretty annoying.

 

[CuteFaceJay]

Same, Never uninstalled a game so fast.

 

[Forth]

The disappointment I have for this game and Starfield made me sell my Series X for a PS5 last month.
The hype and trailers by Microsoft for this game were nothing more than pure lies, the game is total and utter shite.

 

[Zarak]

Only Starfield was worse for me. With Forza though the devs continue to do one of the dumbest things ever. They have added new tours with the major patches but they are limited time only so they delete them. Because of this the amount of single player races actually hasn't grown at all and at this rate never will. It's fucking insane.

 

[twilo99]

To me, Starfield was great. Until I beat it. Took 144 hours. Will never pick it up again. Only Bethesda game I've beaten next to Fallout 3

ye right... xbox shill account obviously. no one can possibly like that game..

ok but seriously you will be back for the DLC and a few mods

 

[BigLee74]

When you boot up the game for the first time they put you into an introductory race and I couldn't get through it. I quit and deleted it after 30 seconds. I hated how it looked, hated how it felt, and reading about the progression system before-hand had made it an easy pass. I have put hundreds of hours into each FM before it but I was put off of the new one instantly.

30 seconds huh? Sounds like you gave it a fair crack of the whip, who can blame you?

Forza plays better than any Forza before it. Just a pity the campaign is so lazy and barebones. Once I’m through it, I can’t see me booting it up again except to check out new tracks when they are released (not good enough to be competitive in the MP - not do I have the patience to wait for races to start).