Forza Motorsport 7

Last year Forza Horizon 3 was fantastic, now the time has come for Motorsport. Turn 10 has never really disappointed gamers (Arguably Forza 5 could have been better) and Forza 7 is another huge milestone in the racing genre. Turn 10 has another poleposition and every other racing game developer will have to respect the battle for the second or third place because Forza 7 is miles ahead of the competition.

THE GOOD

• Accurate or not, I feel that Forza 7 has more new stuff than ever before. That idea might be a little forced by the personal driver addition. Giving much more human personality for this racing game. Besides new cars and tracks other new stuff are the really fun racing trucks (more about that later), dynamic weather and time of day, a more structured single player campaign, a new chase cam, collector level for receiving rewards, loot crates and more.
• Forza 7 is a visual flagship for Xbox One X, the good news is that the normal Xbox One version looks absolutely gorgeous too. Without a doubt, Forza Motorsport 7 is the most beautiful game on consoles. You won’t find anything else more stunning on PS4 or Xbox.
• The main reason why Forza 7 visually overtakes and even overlaps other racing games is the mind blowing skies and the reflections. Forza Horizon 3 has the same sky-feature and Forza 7 is even more impressive. Combined with stunning lighting effects and dynamic weather, I honestly crashed my car multiple times because I was shocked how great things looked. Racing track Prague or Rio de Janeiro is a fine example for that, most impressive gaming related thing I ever saw.
• With such detail in graphics you would expect to see some performance issues. None of that, Forza 7 had perfect frame rate in all conditions. More than twenty cars on-screen, in the rain, with custom community made car liveries and a solid 60FPS. Turn 10 are tech-wizards, I’m not even sure if they are from the planet Earth.
• Project Cars 2 is too hard for most, Need for Speed is too easy for most. Forza 7 is perfect for everyone, casual and hardcore gamers. Long time Forza fans can be happy about a new difficulty A.I. called Unbeatable, I could only manage to win one race, with a little bit of luck. (and got an Achievement for it) I’m not the best in racing games but Forza improved my skill throughout the years. Why, you might ask. For me Forza has always had the perfect learning curve, with some great assists and the loved/hated rewind function. Nowadays I don’t use any assists but the rewind remains my best friend. (When the stunning environments are distracting me again)
• I don’t play many games with a headphone but for Forza I gladly make an exception. I’m not sure what should be listed as more impressive, visuals or the audio. Each car (around 700 are available to play) have realistic car sounds, changing your camera view will change the sound too. It is fantastic to drive in the new chase cam and enjoy all the terrific engine sounds. Brilliant work, brilliant.
• I have always loved the big attention for the community, making your own car designs and sharing that with your friends and the world. Downloading tunes for your favorite car or simply playing online races.  Drivatars make a return too, so you will always see your friends popping up, the other nice thing is that you get  daily credits when your own drivatar invaded a friends game.
• The brand new truck racing is far better far better than I anticipated. Much more technical driving is required for passing other racers, tracks are much more narrow too, resulting in more adrenaline moments. Overall Forza 7 is a complete racing game, it has NASCAR, Formule E, and much more. It really is a wet dream for car fans.
• Ridiculously massive and progressing towards the final car tier and single player campaign will take you at least 50-60 hours. I personally don’t like playing 10+ laps on one track, for the first time in Forza Motorsports history you can choose to shorten the laps, this makes the Driver’s Cup much more enjoyable. All the different discipline will keep the single player (and online) fresh too.

MIXED FEELINGS

• Loading times are pretty long for tracks, you can change your driver or mods while waiting, but often you are staring at your screen waiting to finally drive your car. Luckily you can do stuff while the track is loading but I wish it was a little shorter.
• What is up with all the loot crates, right?! While I love getting rewards for playing I’m not sure if loot crates is what Forza 7 really needed. You use in-game currency for buying all sorts of loot crates that contain cars, mods and driver gear. It isn’t a bad thing per se but it feels a little … unnecessary?

THE BAD

• It might be a bigger eyesore because everything else looks fantastic but Maple Valley Raceway, a fan favorite that finally makes a return on Xbox One isn’t nearly on the same visual bar as other racing tracks. The trees and vegetation is what annoyed me the most, I love racing this track but I won’t show it to friends that are still in doubt to buy Forza. In fact, trees in Forza 4 (Xbox 360) look better than what we have in Forza 7! (for real) That said, the 29 other tracks look excellent.
• Quite a few different cars have shifting animation issues. Shifting up is no problem but when you shift down it happens frequently that the animation randomly stops or doesn’t happen at all. It is a small detail but really destroys the immersion for me.

Forza Motorsport 7 is the best racing game that you can buy, no question about that. Mind-blowing gorgeous and the amount of work that Turn 10 did for the fantastic audio… crazy! If you love racing games, you need to buy Forza 7 right now!