Byte-O-Rama

5 Responses to “Forza Motorsport for Xbox”

1. 

   kingb
   

   
   

   What is the pain? The fact that I now get no sleep because this game is one of the best. Its a must have for any Xbox game collection.
   Rating: 5 / 5
2. 

   Daniel M. Kaufman
   

   
   

   This game isn’t bad, but it has serious problems:

   1) No replays unless you quit a race! Makes it tough to learn by watching a turn or 2 in replay, but still be able to continue racing afterwards.
   
   2) If you quit a race to watch a replay, the controls for replays are terrible. You can’t do any seeking, fast forwarding, rewinding and you can’t manipulate the camera besides a paltry 4 not so good views. Makes replays tedious to use and not all that impressive since you can’t move the camera to get cool images of race events.
   
   3) You have to drive from one of 4 bad vantage points. Either 2 harldy different views with you floating above your car, or else 2 hardly different views from you riding with your nose scraping on the pavement. No first person view where you see the cockpit / dashboard! I know there are a lot of cars so that might have been hard, but driving as a disembodied floating viewpoint makes this feel less like driving and more like moving a camera around the track.
   
   4) The braking is terrible. Way too sensitive with no way to adjust it! There is a hair trigger on locking up your wheels – push too little on the left trigger and you don’t get much braking force at all, push too much and you come to a screeching halt. Way too fine a line (and I’m a veteran of virtual racing for 15 years of driving on PC / Xbox. I know how to do it!).
   
   5) No weather effects.
   
   6) Why do I have to play and play and play to unlock stuff I paid for? Can’t they offer a mode where I can play any car, on any track!!! It is maddening to have so few choices initially and be trapped into having to play so many races in so many cars I’m not interested in just to get to cars and tracks I want.
   
   7) I’ve played for several hours already, and the longest race offered is 3 laps! One mistake and you can’t really win. That’s way too short. Races should be long enough that you can bide your time, pass when appropriate, and recover from small driving errors. With 3 laps, you basically are done just when you feel like you are getting warmed up. And like I said above, who knows how long you have to play this game before it lets you drive longer races. After several hours, I still can’t!
   
   Game is very impersonal. There is very little personality in this game. Feels very bland playing it. Looks good, but it is ultimately very sterile and isn’t totally immersive like other racing games have been for me. Even the name – what the heck?
   
   9) There does not appear to be any weight transfer / body roll happening with regards to the vehicles. The game seems to model suspension in this manner – but on all the replays I’ve watched the car bodies never seem to react in response to weight transfer. That either means the physics aren’t as great as claimed, or they are disconnected from the visual simulation and either way that’s bad.
   
   10) Bad interface screens. Navigating around this game isn’t easy or intuitive. You have to go in and out of many layers of menus to do things, and in and out of actual races as well meaning you ares sitting through loading screens longer than you should be. In general, the whole front end of this game (what you do before you are finally on the track racing) is burdensome.

   Everyone is hyping this game. Everyone wants it to be great. Me too. I love the Xbox and I want it to have a GT4 killer. But GT4 has some of these problems too. Developers have innovated some (drivatar and dynamic racing line), but stayed too formulaic and emulative of the GT games. This game was in development a long time with a big team. Should have had more flair, better visual representation of physics, way better interfaces / menus, better music, better camera views / controls, better game saving (not even sure if you can – I’ve never yet been in a compelling enough race to care to try), weather, and more.

   It looks good. It can wow your friends. You’ll play it thinking there is more too it for a few hours, but I think it will turn out to be one of those ‘good’ games that really just sits on your shelf after a week or 2 with it. Not nearly exciting enough to play, and with serious critical flaws related to camera, interface.
   Rating: 3 / 5
3. 

   Veteran Driving Enthusiast
   

   
   

   I cannot believe what a hunk of junk this game is compared to GT4. My level of disappointment far exceeds the whopping $50 I spent of this game. Let’s be specific. Here are quantitatively some of deficiences of this game compared to GT4:

   1) Engine sound is absolutely muted and unrealistic. A porsche and a Ferrari sounds remarkably similar. I have no good sense of how fast I’m going by the engine revs, unlike GT4 where I can clearly hear the demarcation of when the engine is approaching the redline
   
   2) The car visuals are completely 2-dimensional. One of the greatest innovations in GT4 is the car dipping that occurs when you slam on the breaks. This really gives you a wonderful sense of how fast you are going on a track and how hard you are breaking. I get none that with this piece of crap Forza game.
   
   3) The road texture in Forza is completely non-distinguishing as a function of speed. In GT4 the road texture becomes rich and more detailed when you’re at slow speeds, and becomes more blurred and smoothened out at the higher speeds. Just like R.E.A.L.I.T.Y. Again, this gives you a wonderful sense of how fast you’re going. In Forza the texture is pretty much the same no matter how fast you’re going… so again, you have no feel for how fast the car is going.
   
   4) The gravel in Forza is ridiculously unrealistic. When you hit the gravel sections your speed drops ridiculously abruptly… which makes no sense. Also, in GT4, when you hit the gravel, your car bounces around like your traveling over… gravel! There is none of that bumpiness in Forza
   
   5) The scenary in Forza, although better detail than GT4, looks completely CARTOONISH. Looks like something out of a Japanese animation movie. There is absolutely no sense of being immersed in a real environment, like in GT4.
   
   6) The controller feedback vibrations in Forza is, for one nearly non-existent. Going over a candy-cane is about the same as getting into the gravel areas. In GT4, the feedback when you hit the canes is so in tune with the visual feedback of “bumpiness” and the auditory feedback of tires running over those canes. Forza has none of that, again, giving you no sense of speed, excess of speed and a general feeling of how the car is handling the road.

   Overall, even without the GT4 comparisons, this was a highly unsatisfying and unenjoyable experience. After a number of hours playing this game, not only did I find myself not ever wanting to master any of the tracks, I found myself never wanting to drive any of these tracks nor any of the cars again. When I fired up my PS2 and ran GT4, I can’t describe in words the exhilaration I felt when my passion and interest for driving simulation games was instanteously restored…

   Save your money and your frustation. Pass on Forza, and get yourself GT4.
   Rating: 2 / 5
4. 

   Gabby Rosales
   

   
   

   I received what I asked for. Perfect shipping pakage. I received my product in time.
   Rating: 5 / 5
5. 

   RKMCC
   

   
   

   After all thy hype I expected much more for my $50 bucks. the graphics were alright, x-box live was horrible as i kept getting booted and had a hard time finding matches and the lack of adjustment for controller sensitivity to help vehicle control made for less than expected gameplay. i’ll stick with colin mcrae until microsoft gets this one right.
   Rating: 3 / 5

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