Forza Motorsport 4 Review

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Just when you thought that the racing genre had run its course, Microsoft and Turn 10 come along with Forza 4 and provide a definitive racer for a generation.

By Leo Stiles

When Forza Motorsport 3 came out in 2009, most of us fell over ourselves with praise and rightly proclaimed the racer as the best of its class. Such was the completeness of the package that it was hard to see where developer Turn 10 would go from there.

Amazingly it takes just a few hours with Forza 4 to realise that not only has everything been refined further but also that the missing feature of its predecessor was personality

That this personality comes in the blue jeans and the granddad shirt of Jeremy Clarkson and the Top Gear team is both blindingly obvious and a stroke of genius at the same time. It’s all quite subtle though and if any of you thought that this was going to turn out as a Top Gear game first and a Forza game second; then you can breath a sigh of relief as a little Clarkson has gone a long way.

This is mostly evident in the Autovista mode, which allows you to ogle the incredible car models from just about any angle. The trick hear is that instead of just gliding along outside of the car, you can open the doors and get inside, you can pop the bonnet - you can even gun the engine and wallow in the exceptional audio capture of your favorite unobtainable supercar.

Each key feature of each car has an interactive button which, when triggered, offers up a multitude of stats and engineering factoids which are neat enough but touch the Top Gear logo on each bonnet and you are treated to an introduction from the man himself, which he delivers in his own inimitable style.

Usually I can barely tolerate Clarkson but I have to concede that he is synonymous with car entertainment and these intros help define each car and form personalities, so that they are more than just another collection of painstakingly detailed cars.

The Top Gear influence continues with the inclusion of their test track and the ability to set your record in the 'Reasonably Priced Car' challenge. There are also a couple of Top Gear-themed events like car soccer to be enjoyed if you want to take a break from the pure automotive thrills offered elsewhere.

Those thrills are still the main signature of the game and Forza 4 is laden with challenges with the bulk of the game taken up with the career mode - a collection of events that should take even the most hardcore player weeks, if not months, to complete.

Everything from time trails to autocross and drift events is there to be sampled across more than 25 real life locations with each track throwing up multiple variations to keep repetition at bay.

It’s easy to feel daunted when you first dip into the game, something the Forza team seem to have thought of with the drip feed of experience and in-game currency with every event and action allowing you to fill your garage with cars in no time. Finish a race with zero damage and you score bonus points, execute perfect drifts or keep to the racing line and you score points-you get the idea.

Venture online and Forza 4 reaches the pinnacle of its achievements with a community-based approach to multiplayer that hooks you in immediately. Straight online racing is almost the supporting feature here with auctions, tune-ups, painting options and community videos and photos; all vying for your attention.

On the competitive side there are the usual race based events, but also more lighthearted stuff like Cat and Mouse and Infection modes. The jewel in the crown as far as Forza’s multiplayer is concerned is the fantastic clan support or as the game calls it; your racing club.

You can have club colours and logos, you can share cars and tune-ups and even organise your own events to challenge other clubs. Simply put, there is no better racing community offering on the Xbox 360 and that includes the glorious Autolog features of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit which wowed us all last year.

A racing game that’s hard to Kinect with.

If you are looking for negatives from me then I can tell you without reservation that the Kinect additions to the game are pointless. Voice recognition is a nice way to navigate through the menus but Turn 10 has streamlined these to the point that it hardly matters.

Head tracking and gesture based driving are a non-event with head tracking only providing a marginal realism boost at best and controller-less racing that is an unmitigated disaster. This game is about precision and reflexes and the laggy responses offered by Kinect can’t do the game justice at all.

This time last year, I was ready to give Kinect the benefit of the doubt, but now after a drought of releases and some very poor implementation (the shockingly bad Rise of Nightmares), I’m willing to concede that the tech does not have what it takes. Kinect 2 might be the way forward but for now it’s just not good enough.

Even with the dodgy Kinect features, Forza 4 can justifiably be called the best of its breed and after this sort of accomplishment I really don’t think that Turn 10 can possibly better themselves on the current hardware.

Much like the recent Gear of War 3, Forza 4 is the most refined game in the series and offers a complete and definite expression of what its developers set out to achieve in their first titles. Whatever the next Xbox may eventually be, current gamers can be assured that as far as the present goes, there isn’t a better racing experience to be had on the 360.

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