Forza Motorsport -OR- Microsoft is bad at naming things.

Forza motorsport (the new one, not the 2011 release of the same name) has announced their launch date of October 10th, 2023. It will be exclusive to the Xbox Series X/S (which is the fourth Xbox console, not to be confused with the Xbox One X, which was not the first one, but the third one (not to be confused with the Xbox 360 which was neither the third one nor the three-hundred and sixtyth one)) Why are you like this Microsoft?

Anyway I've seen precious little info on this game other than the single player mode being called builder's mode and focusing on upgrading cars.

Lke the good little comsumer I am I will finally be upgrading to a next gen console (if I can find one for sale, and figure out which one I'm supposed to buy) and pre-ordering the super ultra premium collector's whatever edition (because I learned nothing from Fallout 76) and I'm looking forward to many months of racing.

Has anybody heard anything further?

-Edit- Apparently it's also available on PC.

Someone over at The Drive had a chance to play the first few hours, I found it pretty insightful.

https://www.thedrive.com/car-reviews/forza-motorsport-hands-on-preview-review-xbox-racing-game

I have a series x. I'm pretty mad at m$ and pg after fh5 and am in no real mood to give them my $$$ for another botched racing game launch BUT- I'll play it if it shows up on gamepass and could be down to back marker a lobby full of friendlies. 

Horizon games have always been lousy but Playground doesn't have anything to do with this. This is Turn 10.

My friends and I used to meet up weekly for stupid races. we'd build to unusual specs or arbitrary numbers.

RWD, 3008 lbs and 387 hp. or who can run out of gas rhe fastest?

That sort of thing. Then we'd race and the winner would pick the rules for the following week. 

Rules lawyering was a major part of it too. I once got the group to agree to a definition of pickup truck that included a Caterham 7.

We also played virus tag with the map off. It became a game of automotive hide and seek.

Figure 8 races in limos on the top gear track.

BMW issetta races on long beach west with one player in the merc semi cab tearing around in the wrong direction.

It was good fun. During the pandemic the group sort of drifted apart, but I'm really hoping to put together a resurgence of semi-serious yeah sure let's try it mayhem in the new game.

In reply to AClockworkGarage :

We'll see how it all shakes out. I've been wrong once this year when starfield actually turned out to be pretty good- I was banking on another Bethesda game I wasn't going to like. It's been a long time since I got deep into a track game. I bought gt7 when I got a ps5, handled story mode, and realized it had gotten TOO good for me. It's pretty impossible to play well with a controller and I'm not buying a wheel. But reading colins link on the game says it's going to be on game pass, which puts my cost of entry at effectively 0- so it's worth what I put into it. 

Eh. I've read some good articles, but I'm still jaded from the previous several Forza wheel spin simulators compete with missing textures and literally thousands of useless things like character customization items. 

I get bored easily running around tracks in videogames as well. 

It'll be interesting to see, but I'm not holding my breath.

when ever i hear this about this game at its catchphrase "built from the ground up" while showing an evo 6 model from 2005 perfectly shows how much care was put in this game.

Supposedly they fixed some of the physics gremlins that made high power RWD cars sometimes nearly unplayable in FM7.  I'm planning on picking it up.

I'll need to checks system requirements and look into it for PC. 100% not picking it up on launch tho, I already have a ridiculous number of games I haven't played yet.

It's game pass day one, so no need to drop $70 to find out if it's good. I have watched some gameplay videos and I'm optimistic. I have liked pretty much all the forza motorsports games, not so much the horizon games.  With a private lobby FM should be awesome.

In reply to Racebrick :

That's my primary reason for interest. I probably wouldn't invest otherwise. 

Well after playing this game, or at least attempting to play it for the last few hours. My initial impression is that this game is absolutely terrible. It seems like it was built by Tesla owners. There are so many things I hate about it, I cannot begin to list them.

I played for about 4 hours after work last night. Got through the intro, and the first builder's cup series, then the game crashed while trying to put my Konica/All Covered livery on this beauty:

I haven't had much time to really feel out all the game mechanics so I'm not sure what Racebrick is so upset about. If it were designed for tesla owners it would have farted, announced "LOL I'm so random" then told me Elon Musk was jesus before steering itself into a pedestrian, locking me inside and bursting into flames. I digress.

I like the physics, I like the penalty system, I like the ability to choose your starting position (although a random option would be nice)

I don't like the single player track day practice session where every 5 lap race has a mandatory 3 lap practice.
I don't like the credits for cars and car points for upgrades. I shouldn't have to grind my way through hours of racing a car just to unlock upgrades, I unlocked them with a credit card when I bought the game.

One for, one against. We shall see when it comes out for us poors. 

Mndsm said:

One for, one against. We shall see when it comes out for us poors. 

Hey now, I'm poor too. Mostly because of this game...

Mndsm said:

One for, one against. We shall see when it comes out for us poors. 

I was just about to ask if you preordered to keep chasing livery fame

RevRico said:

Mndsm said:

One for, one against. We shall see when it comes out for us poors. 

I was just about to ask if you preordered to keep chasing livery fame

Nope. the utter toxicity of the overall community and getting burned by FH5 means I'm not paying for another forza game. I'm out. I made legendary once, that's enough. 

I think the car point system for upgrades might be all I need to know about it to just not bother. I don't understand why Forza needs to keep coming up with new dumber ideas for their in game economy just to make things worse. I think I will agree with a lot of the internet on both Forza and Gran Turismo. Just go back to doing what you did in #4 with new hardware and content. It'll be fine.

The core game is fine. The physics are fine. Full dynamic weather and daY night cycles on EVERY SINGLE TRACK is fantastic.

The cars feel good, The penalty system is slowly training me to drive better. There is a good game in here.

The AI is a bit weird. They're super touchy in packs. A bit slow, a bit heavy on the brakes. They don't tend to defend much. It's not hard to pick up 8 spots of the start. Once they're by themselves they drive better, faster. They're a bit more challenging.

Which means once you've worked your way through the pack, there's one or two cars that are just gone...

The cars are neat. There's fewer cars than the last game, but alot of the chaff is gone. We don't need a redneck golf cart side by side. The cars that are left are sometimes weird choices.

There are 2 different NA miatas, which is 3 more than you need. but there is only 1 Alfa Romeo. If you were going tk include only one alfa, which would you choose? I bet it wasn't this:

Like I said, weird choices.

I'll rant about the builders mode later, my break is over.

OK lunch time.

Builder's mode. The single player option.

There are 20 events with between, 4 and 6 races each. Each is a restricted class of cars with between 3 and 8 eligible models. Cars start out stock and will be modified between each event, allowing you to grow with the car. Each race is preceeded by a practice session that isn't qualifying. There are highlighted sections that are timed and other cars out on track, but not nessesary racing you. It would be a neat option, but forcing me to do it every single time just feels like they're padding playtime. I've heard it's skipable but I haven't figured out how yet.

Mods do not cost money. They cost car XP. You earn car XP by driving the car, overtaking other cars, driving clean sectors ect. Parts are locked behind car levels. Every single car you own has its own car level. Engine swaps unlock at level 50.

I wanted to race my camaro in the C-Class open event, but couldn't because in stock trim it's a D class and it wasn't eligible for any of the other single player races. Screw me I guess. My only option was to grind away in free play.

That's what this in now. instead of taking my winnings and building a dream car I'm competing in races I don't want to do in the hopes That I will unlock the mods to finally make this car good.

There was an event. An early hot hatch event. I can't remember all the cars but it was like A VW Rabbit, A Toyota Trueno, A Ford Festiva cars like that. Stock for stock the Omni GLH-S was the big hitter of the bunch. I chose the car I liked the most, a MKI Sirocco. The slowest of the bunch.

I lost the race. Badly. The leaderboard was filled with omnis. After about 4 races I had enough mods to be competitive, but by this point I was so far behind in series points that I couldn't win. If I want to complete the series and get the trophy, I can use any car I'd like, as long as it's an omni.

This I believe runs counter to the Forza ideals. A whole garage full of neat custom cars, nope just a handful of em.

Should I buy a new car and spend hours leveling it up or just drive one of the few that I've already leveled up to the point where they're actually Competitive? Am I gonna try something new or just look at the top of the leaderboard and just run what everybody else has.

I think the builder's mode would be a neat option for the early game to introduce new players to modding and give them a handful of tuned cars but to pass it off as the complete single player campaign is a slap in the face.

If they want this game to be successful they need to go back and fix this like now.

Also... Where the Berk is the Nordschleife?

wow. it sounds like i'm going to delete this shortly after I finish the download. That's...not ok.

Forza Motorsports...Whatever number we're on now- Filthy Casuals edition : A review. 

Today, I was greeted with FM being released on GamePass. As i'd previously sworn off giving Turn10 any more of my money after FH5, I've officially lumped myself in with the filthy casuals, destined to only play the "free" edition. No extra cars, no swanky tracks, no extra time. 

After an unreasonable download time (could be that I was playing Starfield at the same time, could be Spectrum is a pile of garbage near me, who knows) the file was completed and I was allowed to start the game, or so I though. 

I was greeted with a completely unskippable intro, that did include some accessibility options that would be excellent if I needed them, and one I do use (subtitles) because I tend to keep the sound turned down and I read faster than I hear. More on that later. Back to the intro. It was pretty enough, I guess. Didn't really knock my socks off, and I've got a pretty decent TV. Maybe i've come to expect too much of this generation, but I was more impressed with GT7's FMV. Getting dumped into the intro trials was fine, handling felt ok enough. I've played Forzas dating back to...3? Several. A lot. I'm pretty familiar at this point. This brings up my big gripe. 

The wholly unskippable tutorial HOLY E36 M3BALLS ON A BAGUETTE. Now, I get it. I'm old. There are younger players that have never played the series before, and other filthy casuals that have GamePass that are trying it for the first time that do not understand how Forza series works. The tutorial is for them. The tutorial, is not for me. Sitting through that very nearly made me uninstall the game before I could give it a proper critique. Compound it with the fact that certain things were NOT optional (I didn't want to modify my car, thank you very much I was fine with it being stock) and I could not fast forward a single line of the narrators incessant talking- I was absolutely losing my mind by the end of that series.  The only saving grace was by the end of it they let me make myself a backmarker- that was a treat. I also didn't like how they had ALL the assists turned on to maximum dummy mode as a default- but I've come to expect that from a Forza game as a whole and dont necessarily hold that against them. Once I got out of that, Onto my first builder's cup! 

Boy oh boy do those drag the berkeley on. I bought a shiny new subaru to go with my other shiny new subaru for this one. Immediately into practice. Turn down the nannies- leave sim damage off because I still don't know what I'm going to be doing about this, and nearly 10 years of nothing but Horizon games has taught me that passing with the ass end of the car first is a viable strategy. I do however realize that this is a track game so ideally, all wheels on the black stuff in the middle is the plan. First track was....i don't know. Don't care. 3 laps of practice. Smoke the bonus time my first lap out. Now in my head this means I've won practice and I should be able to go directly to the event but no..... I still have finish practice. Passing slow ass Cadillacs and land barge Challengers is an exercise in futility- and I start getting road ragey. Remember how I said I left sim damage off? Yeah....well....rubbins' racin' y'all, and in every HPDE I've ever not attended you point the faster guy by. After what seems like enough time to age me, practice did manage to end, and I got to an actual race. AMAZING! 

Racing itself, is fine. Cars feel like Forza cars. I like how populated the track is. 24 cars feels pretty neat, especially from the back, which is my self enforced home. I like the penalty system, it does force me to pass y'know, on the track...instead of in the dirt. I'd argue that my car should be allowed to pass in the gravel, as it is a Subaru and all, but I suppose that wouldn't be fair to those that didn't pick a car with a rally pedigree. But man, after 3 laps of practice, and 3 laps of racing, I'm just....i'm over it. The rewards aren't there. Couple that with the fact that the series itself is 5 races long and you have a recipe for me just not wanting to deal with it. Maybe it was my undue frustration over that tutorial that would have been better suited to a Sesame Street game, but it just... it's not exciting. It's not grabbing me. 

I'll probably play some more as time progresses but I feel like unless someone starts up a batch racing series where I'm likely to be involved- i'm not going to put a lot of effort in here. 

Edited to add- 

I gotta say, I think PlayStation has them beat, at least graphically. I left the gt franchise back in the PS3 era. Played a little gt5? I think. Never gt6, no sport, none of that. Have gt7 and beat what I believe is their story mode. 

Maybe what ill do is boot them up side by side and compare. I have nearly identical tvs plugged in next to each other on my living room wall (one is a model year newer) so the comparison should be good enough for government work. 

One other thing I noticed, and I don't know how I feel about it- I was able to upload a vast majority of my designs from all of my previous entries. 

This includes the now infamous nesquik donk (though this time as a Buick regal, and not the 9c1 that won the contest back in fh4 or the p71 it was designed for in fh3) my merica livery that has gotten me a quarter million downloads in fh5, and my louis Vuitton. I doubt I'll get into creator mode anymore- but I've been begging for a more robust set of tools for half a dozen games now and they just won't give them to us. 

Uploading designs from previous games isn't new. FM7 allowed this. Although my game is crashing every time I try it so thats cool.

The worst part is, there is a good game under all this garbage.

In reply to AClockworkGarage :

I know the upload thing isn't new, most of my designs are pushing 10 years old. It worries me they can't give me a better vinyl interface in that time frame across half a dozen or so games and two franchises in that time frame.  As far as your issue, I wonder if that's a service issue on your side. I did all of my designs (or at least all the ones I had that were compatible across all the games) in one shot with nary an issue. 

And I think you hit the nail on the head with that last statement. I find myself actually wanting to like this game. I sort of understand the method of the builders cups, even if I don't agree with them. But they are violently frustrating. It makes me not want to crank out a bunch of racing. 

I've also discovered the AI can be wildly frustrating. I was doing whatever cup allowed a 2g DSM in it as a competitor (though it was not an option for me for...some reason) and naturally someone had painted it in the most iconic livery a 2g can wear. The AI in this particular car liked to veer out of the pit lane during the second lap of every practice session of the series and go on full attack, so I'd get center punched by the Buster while I'm trying to cut a hot lap. It's not quite as bad as it is in some of the games, but damn.