The long wait for Forza Motorsport was worth it as this is one of the best-looking and smoothest-playing games on Xbox Series X.
If you’ve ever gotten work done on your car, you might be familiar with the weird feeling that comes with waiting for a tune-up to be finished. You don’t know how long it will take, and all you can do is hope that all of the proper adjustments are being made so it can last for the long haul, whether you’re going on a cross-country road trip or, like me, just hope to keep the car for several more years. That feeling has surrounded the Forza Motorsport series for six years.
While Forza Horizon has flourished, the mainline racing simulation Forza series has not seen a new entry since 2017. After its announcement back in 2020, a freshly rebooted Forza Motorsport is finally here. Like a car owner anxiously waiting for their baby to get out of the shop, players now get to see if that lengthy tune-up was worth it. It’s a critical moment as Developer Turn 10 Studios has clearly stated that it wants Forza Motorsport to be a platform to build on going forward, so it needed to get this revitalization right if it’s going to make it to the finish line.
Luckily, it does. Forza Motorsport cements itself as one of the best-looking and most approachable racing simulators to date. It can sometimes feel too clinical, but the core driving is perfectly fine-tuned. It’s a tremendous first-party visual showpiece that demonstrates the power of the Xbox Series X and provides a consistent sense of progression to modify the experience. The work was worth it; Forza Motorsport seems well-equipped to handle the long live service journey ahead.Back on the road
If you’ve played any racing game in the Forza series before, you’ll be familiar with this game’s basic setup. It’s all about driving well in intense races so you can collect CP. That resource can be used to upgrade vehicles and buy new ones, which allows players to drive even better and get even more CP. It’s a tight growth cycle built around incremental improvements. Forza Motorsport is a more focused simulator experience, so it functions and plays closer to a game like Gran Turismo 7 than Forza Horizon 5.
Turn 10 Studios is at the peak of its game when it comes to the fundamentals: Driving around a track in Forza Motorsport feels fantastic and it’s as intuitive as ever to play on an Xbox controller. The weather impacts handling, and the controller’s vibrations while hitting certain terrains are distinct and responsive. The same car can even feel different to drive from race to race when I adjust the wheels, the amount of gas initially taken into a race, or various other tuning options.
Its 500-plus car library and 20 track lineup is smaller than what Forza Motorsport 7 had at release, but these initially lower numbers can be forgiven as Turn 10 is already committed to adding more over time. It helps that Forza Motorsport looks gorgeous across all its visual modes on Xbox Series X, too. Performance mode makes this one of the rare console games that consistently runs at a 4K resolution and 60 frames per second 9fps).
If you’re willing to sacrifice some of that resolution quality to make the lighting even better, Performance RT mode adds ray tracing to cars and still runs near 4K at 60 fps. This was the mode I ultimately settled on, and I’d sometimes even get too distracted looking at the impressive reflection on my car and mess up in a race. Quality mode is also there for those who want ray tracing to apply to the cars and tracks at 4K, although the 30 fps trade-off was a bit too great for me.
