RipTen Review: Forza Motorsport 4 (Xbox 360)
Forza 4 is a very big game. So big, in fact, that even after completing well over 100 career races I have experienced a mere 5% of the total content on offer. If this doesn’t immediately scare you off, and if you’d like to try out one of the best vehicle-handling models in modern gaming for yourself, then Forza 4 is the racer you’ve been waiting for.
This review originally appeared on Games.on.net where Murray also contributes his sim-thusiasm.
You will start your own epic journey in the beginner series, driving compact latte-sipping European hatchbacks around short circuits. As the horsepower increases you might dally with sleeveless T-shirt wearing American muscle cars in much longer races before suiting-up and slipping into, say, a classic Aston Martin and then, finally, when you hit the big time in the R-series vehicles you’ll experience the full savagery of the top echelons of motorsport. With a singleplayer career mode so long and gruelling, it’s good to know that you will have access to a wide range of online options, a communal car-club feature, a fiendishly addictive leaderboard and a staggering array of standalone racing opportunities to keep you entertained.
Autovista is the greatest addition to Forza 4, a new feature perfectly in harmony with the aspirations of the series. You’ll be offered a selection of the finest, fastest and most expensive road machines on the planet to explore using Kinect or a controller, so you can duck inside the cockpit and smell the leather or even open the engine bay to admire the gleaming intricacies of a souped-up V12. Some vehicles require that you complete a simple challenge before being able to view them, and this idea of driving them first builds an appreciation for the exposition afterwards. It’s during the discovery phase that you’ll listen to Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson prattle out his famously bombastic exhortations on the performance, history and overall calibre of each vehicle.
No matter what you think of Clarkson, his colourful rambling in the opening video and during these Autovista segments are thematically perfect for Forza, and it’s surprising that no-one ever thought of doing this before. Clarkson only has one narration per vehicle, however, and it didn’t take long to complete them all so I’m hopeful for the release of somemore DLC in this vein. With that said, there is a fill-in narrator who provides more details relating to the power, costs and capabilities of each vehicle who is also quite informative and entertaining. Autovista offers a level of interactivity that demonstrates a real passion and enthusiasm for the subject matter, and creates a heartfelt grounding that will influence how you perceive the rest of the game.
Speaking of Top Gear, it was only this year that a certain other game about loading-screens and cars featured the Top Gear test track, and sadly it never felt like more than an afterthought. Turn 10 have taken the license and integrated it soundly from a number of angles, yet have still fallen short of the kind of experience that Top Gear fans are really looking for. You can set hotlaps on the Top Gear test track in Gumperts and Koeniggseggiggsegiseggs and then compare your performance on a leaderboard, but not on the Speedwall.
For many viewers, the Speedwall is the very essence of the program and due to the way car performance is rated, it’s impossible to get an accurate comparison of stock-supercars against each other, which was a real disappointment to me. The ‘Star In A Reasonably Priced Car’ segment however, while without it’s own celebrity speedwall, allows you to race a stock Kia and easily compare times against everyone else in the world and I expect this to get a real workout. Missing as well are Clarkson’s co-hosts Hammond (“the idiot”) and Captain Slow, nor will you get to race the Stig and, in an oversight as great as the missing speedwall, the famous Top Gear Challenges are also mysteriously absent. In their place are the Top Gear Rivals challenges where you compete in fixed vehicles against the laptime of a comparable racer in a stock car. While these are fun, they’re held on many different tracks and rather than race against celebrities, you’ll race against other players. For additional content you also have vehicular ten-pin bowling across the test track and a backdrop of the Top Gear TV studio for photographs of your favourite ride.
