Forza 4

[DocSeuss]

From a purely metacritical perspective, Forza 4 is looking to be the best exclusive of the year so far.

I've played the demo and it's... I don't think I've ever played such a relaxing game. Not only that, but it's truly great. It may very well be the greatest racing game of all time. I'm not even a big motorhead, but... seriously, wow.

[Hot Heart]

I'd not been big into racing sims since the days of the first two Gran Turismos (although, I was really into the first one) but Forza 3 is good fun. Accessible but without sacrificing any depth. Funny thing is, it's so 'complete' for me that I've not really been moved to purchase the new game. Great series though. GT always felt a bit too sterile for my liking, and designed to get in the way of fun.

[DocSeuss]

Jeremy Clarkson is what sold Forza 4 for me. Plus, they've added in a ton of new simulation elements, like how your tires heat up as you drive and how that affects your steering.

[fuchikoma]

I loved Forza 3, but a few things about it have stopped me from getting 4. There are numerous known bugs they have done little to fix. There is no tech support for glitches and issues in the game, like corrupted data on the marketplace. The photo mode, tied to the website for the game, is now broken and has been for a long time, with no fix in sight. It's also a personal annoyance that unlike GT, you can't choose which units to use for which measurements - it's all imperial or all metric - so living in Canada, there is no way to know how powerful a car is, AND how fast it's going. We use hp, ft/lbs, and km/h, not kW, N·m, or mph, so it either makes sense in the selection screen or the race. Also, it's obviously a design decision, but there are spots on some maps that stop your car like slamming into a wall of mud. These spots are unobstructed - you're just running over grass or orange paint, but it will bog down a car so fast that any human driver would be killed instantly. That's more silly than infuriating, though nowhere near as silly as the flying cars in multiplayer mode.

 

Finally, for the completists who want all the content... tough. If you bought the game new, and bought all the DLC, the only way to get all the cars is to buy the "Ultimate Edition" in a store and start playing that instead, and buy its DLC - even though Ultimate Edition content is in the dealerships for normal Forza 3. If you try to buy it, you'll be told it costs -1 credit and you need around 4 billion more to buy it. There is no explanation of this on their site, and if you ask them, like any other inquiry, there will be no reply whatsoever. (Did I mention you need to buy a ton of DLC to get all the basic achievements?) It turns out some of this content like the "Stig's Garage Pack" was promised to existing owners, but then they changed their minds and decided to make it exclusive to the Ultimate Edition, without properly removing its vestiges from the normal game.)

 

This was enough to make me check out GT5 again even though I already decided on Forza before. Lucky for Turn 10, GT5P seems to be the only GT5 demo and I found the physics pretty absurd (but forgot how eye-popping the graphics are and how good the acoustic model is,) so for now I'm staying with Forza 3... it is a really fun game still, and I've put more hours into it than most others, but with the total lack of support and the tendency to bait & switch like that, I can't justify buying their products again... maybe in a few years when Forza 4 "Ultimate Edition" comes out. Otherwise, I can't see enough merit in switching from F3 to F4. The old maxim applies "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me." Drop $60 on the game, maybe another $30-40 minimum on DLC, then another $60 on the final version of the game? Or just wait, let the loyal customers get duped, and spend $60 for the game content I could get for $150? If I can make due with Forza 3 in the meantime, the choice seems obvious.

 

BTW, DocSeuss, as far as I know, your tires have always changed temperature as you go. In 3, there are at least 3 different lateral heat zones on each tire, and you can both momentarily heat up the surface and have it dissipate, or heat it more thoroughly throughout the tire. It definitely makes a difference for handling and can make speedway oval races tense as your outer edges overheat and get slippery - but I think they added pressure adjustments to 4? Also, in 3, you could display the relative temperature of the tires, or the overall damage to the car in a small icon on the HUD - but in the demo for 4 I couldn't find that anywhere... is that still intact somewhere?

[fuchikoma]

Well, I got F4 used anyway since I'm such a Forza junkie... I don't know if they fixed a single bug - there's still flying cars, audio slowdowns, and I ran into an F3 bug where multiplayer names vanish and all the lap stats lose their labels and become icons. It still has sticky grass and magic car-slowing zones just inches off the track in some places, some cars still have non-mirrored rearview mirrors, and it seems the car decal editor has gained some bugs like decals around one rearview mirror will appear around the other mirror as well...

 

Performance index has been greatly revamped to favour RWD cars over AWD, and especially in A class it likes to pit you against supercars that will zip half a track ahead of everyone else in the race, so you either use the same car, or fail.

 

But... like always, it's still fun to play despite its warts. I'm putting crazy hours into it hoping to actually exhaust the content before the sequel comes out this time since I was only just nearing the end of season mode in F3 when F4 came out. One great improvement is the ability to choose between a few events for each career race, not forcing you to do tedious 9-lap races in formula racers all the time at the end of the game (so far.)

 

So... does anyone else still play this? Most of my gaming friends only play Netflix now, if anything. It'd be nice to have some worthy competition once in a while!