Forza Motorsport 4 Its terrific.
First of all, its the racing sim for everyone. The game is very accessible from the moment the disc is put in and the guided career mode is a smart little way of drawing players into the game. The game is exactly what you want to make it, and its super easy to change it to how you want it to play. Dont like the guided car-specific career mode? No worries, heres a grid showing every event in the game (of which there are squillions). Find the controls a bit too easy or too hard? A quick and easy to find menu lets the player nerf the game to all hell or turn it into the ultimate sim.
Car customisation is treated with the same attitude. In racing sims like Forza/GT, I have little technical knowledge of what the upgrades Im making to my car actually are and how they affect performance all I want to do is make the HP number get bigger. Ill usually race for cash, and then upgrade everything piecemeal until Ive met the entry conditions for a race/event. Forza makes that super easy with its auto-upgrade mode which does the thinking for you. Again, a higher level of granularity within car customisation is allowed for more serious players if they want it
The interface and elegantly designed career mode defines the game.
Because of that design, youll spend most of your time doing what matters most racing. Switch your brain off, mash the A button to zip through the menus, and BAM, youre on the starting grid before you know it. I havent touched Forza since FM2, but the same smooth yet gutsy racing experience is as refined as ever. Im playing with a gamepad (my wheel is broken) but somehow I feel like I have a better control over my vehicle than in previous entries. Everything runs at a silky smooth framerate with no noticeable hitches in the action. Theres bound to be myriad number of technical improvements that faithful fans of the series are sure to notice, but for me all I care is that my car goes fast when I push the accelerator and that its fun to overtake other racers. Yay Forza.
Then of course there are the custom paint jobs and online trading of vehicles which is just a part of the FM4 experience for some as is the pure racing. Within my first hour of racing, I bought the closest equivalent model of Ford Focus to my real-life ride, gave it the same white paint and five-spoke rims and went about affixing my QLD license plates from the games custom decals. Sweet, I can drive my real car in the game!
I would urge anyone who automatically overlooks the sim genre to give Forza a serious look. The beautiful thing about the game is that it disguises its high level of technicality under a cleverly put together interface that satisfies both the diehard the casual players. You might not think you like cars and motorsport, but after a few hours with Forza 4, you will.
