Do a quick survey of the clutch of car enthusiasts in the gaming community and you'll find a fierce battle between two platform exclusives striving for pole position in the racing genre. Neither of them really need much of an introduction.
The thing is, last year Gran Turismo stalled somewhat in its fifth edition leaving Turn 10's Forza franchise with a real chance to do something definitive this year.
We'll get onto Forza 4, and everything it has to offer petrol heads, soon enough but first let's take a look at the iterations that have led up to what's looking like it could be the world's greatest racing sim, check out our Forza Motorsport 4 game hub, for the review, movies and screens.
FORZA MOTORSPORT
Rather than the first Forza going up against Gran Turismo 4 in 2005, then, Xbox fans were primarily making comparisons with another racing giant of years gone by, Project Gotham Racing.
While Project Gotham Racing 2 allowed for players to jump into some pretty mean cars and start zipping around the tarmac straight from the off, Forza brought the much more measured approach that Sony had established with Gran Turismo but the Microsoft console had maybe lacked.
Forza made budding drivers work harder than most racers prior, collecting their cars, tuning them and learning how to get the best out of them before going out on to the track. It was praised for its realistic physics, with car performances that matched their real life counterparts on a sophisticated level.
Most importantly, however, it delivered more bite than Gran Turismo when it was compared to the Sony opposition. It chopped out the admin of the driving tests and put you straight into racing with aggressive, intelligent opposition.
Forza Motorsport was something of a surprise hit but the franchise would become considered one of the most well balanced racers around.
Comments
10 comments so far...
iucidium on 12 Oct '11 said:
But still: no night races - a popular feature requested by almost every Forza fan (otherwise than the restoration of Forza 2's online lobby system)
chudson9394 on 12 Oct '11 said:
Night races would be cool but I am not going to rate Forza 4 lower for not having night races or rate GT5 higher for having them.
Saying that though, does anyone remember Metropolis Street Racer on the Dreamcast? (The forerunner to Project Gotham Racing on XBOX) One the coolest features was the internal clock used for all races.
So for example, say your home country was UK and it happened to be night time when you were playing the game, every race you did on the UK courses would be a night also. But if you did one of the Japanese races or the US races, the day of the in the race would be different because of the time zone difference. It was an amazing feature and so original.
I am SO surprise no else has copied that feature since. Even Bizarre creations didn't reuse that feature for the PGR series. Shame really.
iucidium on 12 Oct '11 said:
How would you do the Lemans 24 hour race or the Nurburgring 24 event?
as for the game time/clock/track thing - i think GT5 implemented something similar
TBf they should have created an endurance track in...Alaska. they could blag the lack of night nicely.
KMakawa on 12 Oct '11 said:
He'd play the game for 24 hours straight!
SavageEvil on 13 Oct '11 said:
Who wrote this crap, why is it 4 pages? Surely you could have fit all of this on a page and a half. Top Gear is an after thought in this game as it was in GT5, Jeremy Clarkson says some odd stuff at the beginning and unless you play around with Autovista you won't hear from him again, so far during season mode I don't hear a peep from the bloke.
Only odd thing about Forza series is that original Forza had a night track which has been clearly absent since that game. I played it just a few weeks ago, man those engine sounds are obtrusively loud but night course looks decent and cars had headlights, go figure a new engine under the hood and 3 iterations later no night at all. Forza 6 better have this standard, no excuse because it can be done. Anyway as long as they keep going their own direction Forza will be fine, my only issue is there have been way too many sequels in such a short space of time, people might get a little car logged. If you played FM3 then you played FM4 to an extent, but I can't resist a shiny coat of paint. It's just too pretty to pass up, I mean really makes FM3 look ugly and cartoony.
roynluc on 13 Oct '11 said:
As you are so informed, when did they decide to skip the usual numbering formula and not make a start on Forza 5?
chudson9394 on 13 Oct '11 said:
LE Mans 24 on Dreamcast had a feature where you could chose how to the race would be in realtime, anywhere from 10mins to 24hrs. It was one of the best racers ever made, though not many people heard about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC2A9gErwKM
Looks a bit dusty now but back when it was released it was an amazing game.
Its those kinda of features I would love to see in Forza or GT5.
SavageEvil on 13 Oct '11 said:
So you quoted my entire comment just to comment on that? I'm wondering if you had a pint too many. That budweiser avatar of yours is sweet though
bendigo36 on 13 Oct '11 said:
I'm lucky enough to own both consoles ps3 and the 360,and do not have any bias either way.I own forza 3 and gran turismo as i am a racing fan,but something is beginning to get on my wick,and thats comparing forza 3 and 4 to the gran turismo that was released a year ago,gt5 has really come into its own of late,and cannot be compared to the game of a year ago,its much improved,so lets start giving a more realistic comparison and compare the games in their current state.
bendigo36 on 13 Oct '11 said:
forza holds your hand and leads you down a path,pretty forgetable and bland really,physics arnt up to much,and the tracks are a bit cartoony,a watered down racing sim.