Review: Slick tracks, shiny cars drive excellent ‘Forza Motorsport 6’

(Credit: Microsoft)
(Credit: Microsoft)

The world of video game racing is broken up into two continents: simulation and arcade. Occasionally, games try to bridge the gap (Forza Horizon, Shift), but typically gamers prefer to live on one side or the other.

Ive always gravitated more to arcade games. I only need two buttons: gas and brake. I want to drive like hell in a car thats shaped like a speedboat or a rocket ship. And if I get into an accident? Then, by god, may the accident generate a big, plume-y explosion. My racing game mantra: May my explosions be plume-y and may my front bumper never come back to the ground! Praise be!

So Ive historically struggled a bit with the Forza Motorsport games. The poetry and nuance of the engines mechanics? The beauty of the elegant design of the 2017 Ford Supercar? The historic background of Daytona Speedway and Le Mans and Sonoma? Wonderful, and majestic, and where are my plume-y explosions again?

But Forza 6 turned me into a believer. In part thats because its a big improvement over 2013s anemic Forza 5, but its also because this is simply a gorgeous, detailed, and surprisingly accessible racing game.

The game is divvied up into two primary sections: Stories of Motorsport and Showcases. Stories guides you through a series of multitiered races at various tracks around the world; win, and you earn credits and access to the next race. Showcases, on the other hand, are one-off challenges that put you in certain cars and ask you to satisfy specific criteria, like passing a specific number of cars or starting at the very back of the pack and working your way to a win. Chipping away at Stories and Showcases is how you make progress in Forza 6.

Its all a bit linear, but I appreciate how Forza 6 points you in the right direction yet doesnt make a big deal about the stuff that you choose not to do. Instead of forcing you into a series of menus and sub-menus and tinkering around for 20 minutes with the transmission or the air intake valve or gas cap just to properly upgrade a car, the game instead anticipates that you might not be interested in doing this kind of thing and does it for you. I like that. A big part of the charm of Forza 6 is that it sort of functions like a pair of magical pants that adjusts your waistline size depending on how much you eat. Or in this case, obsess over cars.

(Credit: Microsoft)
(Credit: Microsoft)

Speaking of, Forza 6 corrects the mistakes of Forza 5 by offering over 400 rides (Forza 5: 200) along with a healthy 25 tracks (Forza 5: 14). And they look great, but of course they do. The cars arent quite as  transcendent as I thought theyd be maybe my expectations are too high for next-next-next-next gen games these days but if you like staring at immaculately rendered depictions of sleek cars, right down to the leather stitching, you wont be disappointed.

Forza 6 also excels in its depiction of water. This is new to the franchise, but it looks and behaves like theyve been working on it for decades. Has rain ever looked this good in a game before? It hasnt. Rain streaks across your virtual windshield in organic rivulets. More importantly, puddles on the tracks gently tug at the underside of your vehicle during races, or turn your speeding Ford into a runaway, hydroplaning disaster.

Lukcily, the game's responsive controls will help you pull out of your death spin. Thanks to excellent use of the Xbox One's gamepads rumbly bits, you feel connected to every bump in the track.

Plus, the Y button is always there to correct your wipeouts. Press it and rewind about five or six seconds of a race and try it again. Or, for more of a challenge, you can switch off the Y-button rewind feature and earn more credits. Not that youll necessarily need more credits. The game doles out a steady stream of credits even when you lose.

Plenty of video games let you customize the difficulty, but tailoring Forza 6 to your particular play style is as vital as nailing a turn at Watkins Glen. I admit, I struggled a bit at the start. I limped around tracks, resigned to the ho-hum middle of the pack. So, I lowered the games difficulty level to the lowest possible setting. I began to win. Soon, none of the races were even remotely close. One race I even lapped a few of the stragglers at the back of the pack. I may or may not have let out a Dukes of Hazard-style shout when this happened.

It was in this moment that the Forza 6 gods pointed out that I was obviously no longer being challenged. They prompted me to increase the difficulty. Fine. To my surprise, I still won. A few wins later, the game prompted me to increase the skill level again. I did. It felt right. Finding a skill level that makes the races more challenging and dramatic but still winnable is essentially to your enjoyment of Forza 6, and the game does a marvelous job convincing you to trust its judgment.

The races themselves are serious business, but developer Turn 10 wisely keeps things playful via Price Is Right-style spins of a virtual prize wheel. Prizes include credits, rare cars, and mods, another new feature. These equippable cards offer minor boosts, though theyre not nearly as useful as they sound.

(Credit: Microsoft)
(Credit: Microsoft)

Nor are the droning voices. The robotic narrator, while informative, makes Apples Siri sound like Meryl Streep. Past Forza games went big with deep Top Gear integration, but this year theyve backed off (I wonder why?), leaving a smattering of historical voiceovers from Richard Hammond and James May. Theyre fine, but still lack charisma.

As does the bulk of Forza 6. You dont expect much humanity from a video game about cars, but a little wouldnt hurt. You can see your drivers hands, you can see the reflective visor on his (or her) helmet, and you can see women holding umbrellas at the start of some of the races. And, yes, there are crowds of virtual fans, but they feel like random pixels on the screen. There are no proper faces in the game, which I guess is designed to make it easier for me to project myself into it. Instead, it makes the game feel a little cold.

But it's easy to warm to Forza 6. Experimenting with different cars helps you develop a sixth sense of where the weight is located on the vehicle, and how to use that weight to navigate trickier portions of the track. Youll learn the tracks in a way thats very different from the way you learn things in Burnout or Midnight Club. Instead of finding a shortcut downtown by driving/crashing through the baseball stadium, youll figure out the perfect recipe for turn 17 at Spa-Francorchamps (lay off the gas, tap the brake twice, then, at the apex of the turn, hit the gas again). Much of Forza 6's subtler craft reveals itself only after 15 or 20 hours. This is a long haul, not a sprint.

And despite the lack of explosions, Forza 6 is an explosive game. Whether youre a hardcore gearhead or someone just moderately interested in driving a BMW way too fast, its a ride worth taking.

What’s Hot: Great rain; great speed; suits your play style; amazing control; tons of cars and tracks

What’s Not: Still too antiseptic; mod system needs work; not a huge leap

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