marvelharvey
Member
I hate Microsoft, I really do, but it pays to have friends in the right places. A buddy of mine working there kindly sent 3 copies of Forza to my office on Friday afternoon, it took me a while to get around to playing it, as I wasn't hugely interested...
Back in September 2004, I was rejoicing at TGS after playing Enthusia for most of the afternoon, Konami had pulled an excellent (highly realistic) driving model out of their magic hat and I was counting the days until its release. After returning from TGS, I had the displeasure of playing the Forza demo and quite frankly, it felt like a joke. The handling was awful, graphically it was washed out, there were only 3 other racers on the track and the frame rate was err, well I'm sure you all know.
So, what's happened since then? Well Konami received many complaints that Enthusia was too difficult, so they spent some time making their cars easier to control and totally ruined what would have been a superb game. The Forza team were doing the opposite and were actually making their game fun. I have been a Forza non-believer until a few hours, but now I've been converted.
Now before I go any further, the handling... this is NOT Grand Prix Legends or GTR, the game's physics engine has plenty of arcade features buried under the hood to keep you on the road, even with everything turned off. I'd say it's slightly arcadier than GT4... which is an arcade game for me
Anyway, sliding occurs far too often but thankfully is much easier to catch than in the real world, however this is not a bad thing. In fact, I'm really enjoying the handling, for me, it's the best part of the game. Every corner is spent in a beautifully controlled broadside with tyres billowing smoke and slight variations in throttle adjusting the vehicle's yaw angle. They have recreated the experience of trail-braking in a far deeper manner than GT4 (which was damn good to begin with) and there is so much subtlety to play with while braking/steering at the same time. If I was stuck on a desert island and could choose one console-based physics model to take with me, it'd be Forza's. Collisions with other vehicles and trackside objects result in the cars behaving in a very believable manner, touch the rear of another car whilst it's cornering and it will spin out, hit a wall at the wrong angle and your car will be flipped around 180 degrees... GT4 doesn't do either of these.
Track design is always something I am always extremely critical of, but thankfully I don't have much to complain about with Forza, their designers have done a superb job creating a challenging group of tracks, especially one called Alpine Mountain. To be honest, I've only put about 4 hours into the game and I've probably played about 10 of the tracks, and I'm not sure of the total number.
-- Alpine Mountain - Great flowing track with a wide variety of corners
-- Tsukuba & Leguna Seca - same as GT4 but both sandier/browner.
-- Maple Valley - small track, similar feel to Autumn Ring Mini, easy to learn, first corner is exceedingly quick and easy to learn how to slide the cars.
-- Rio - A well thought-out street track, has some nasty bends that catch you out, normally I hate city tracks, but this is fun.
-- Tokyo - Night time city track - erg, this is why I hate city tracks, very narrow, 90 degree corners everywhere, doesn't flow at all.
-- Silverstone National - Great circuit from Britain, very fast but easy.
-- Road Atlanta - Cool track, not much to write here though.
-- Road America - I could drive this all day, the carousel is another corner for 10 seconds of drifting
-- New York - Suspicouly take place almost on 2/3rds of the GT4 track.
-- Blue Mountain - Feels like a copy of the Aussie track Bathurst, great!
I'm sure there's plenty more, there ever a point to point category, I haven't even looked in there yet. Apart from a couple, I'm enjoying all the tracks, the same can't be said for GT4 or Enthusia.
Graphically it's a mixed bag, generally to my usual hatred of the Xbox's washed out look that seems to creep into most renders. The bloom effect seems to make the washyness even worse. Anyway, the tracks are detailed and have plenty of scenery... although most are devoid of 300, 200, 100 braking markers, making life a touch more difficult. Road texture is highly detailed and has plenty of strong skidmarks across it... at least you can judge braking points by these markings. There seems to be a weird bug in the renderer where small gaps appear in the road at certain angles for a couple of frames, nothing serious though. Oh, and of course it runs at 30 fps, but you all know that... but like many other Xbox races, the reflection mapping runs at half that speed.
Sound overall seems pretty weak and whatever car I'm in, I can hear my competitors' engines over my own, leading to some bad gear change decisions. Also, the sound played at the moment the race starts is the game equivalent of scraping fingers on a black board.
Tried a few LAN races at work, all seems to be in order, noticed a couple of points where lagging made opponents stutter slightly, but nothing too serious. Looking forward to the studio getting some more copies of the game from Microsoft, so we can play 8 player!!
Anyway there are plenty of minor problems that are getting on my nerves, for instance if you enter a race and you need to slightly alter the car setup, you need to exit the race, exit the race selector, exit the championship selector, exit the Go Race menu, choose garage, choose car setup, do whatever you need, then step back through all the menus to return to the race + waiting for the track to load again.
Well, I've written way too much, just three thing before I go...
-8 cars in a race
-great damage
-I'm hooked and I'm sorry for all the Forza bashing I've done over the past few months
Back in September 2004, I was rejoicing at TGS after playing Enthusia for most of the afternoon, Konami had pulled an excellent (highly realistic) driving model out of their magic hat and I was counting the days until its release. After returning from TGS, I had the displeasure of playing the Forza demo and quite frankly, it felt like a joke. The handling was awful, graphically it was washed out, there were only 3 other racers on the track and the frame rate was err, well I'm sure you all know.
So, what's happened since then? Well Konami received many complaints that Enthusia was too difficult, so they spent some time making their cars easier to control and totally ruined what would have been a superb game. The Forza team were doing the opposite and were actually making their game fun. I have been a Forza non-believer until a few hours, but now I've been converted.
Now before I go any further, the handling... this is NOT Grand Prix Legends or GTR, the game's physics engine has plenty of arcade features buried under the hood to keep you on the road, even with everything turned off. I'd say it's slightly arcadier than GT4... which is an arcade game for me
Anyway, sliding occurs far too often but thankfully is much easier to catch than in the real world, however this is not a bad thing. In fact, I'm really enjoying the handling, for me, it's the best part of the game. Every corner is spent in a beautifully controlled broadside with tyres billowing smoke and slight variations in throttle adjusting the vehicle's yaw angle. They have recreated the experience of trail-braking in a far deeper manner than GT4 (which was damn good to begin with) and there is so much subtlety to play with while braking/steering at the same time. If I was stuck on a desert island and could choose one console-based physics model to take with me, it'd be Forza's. Collisions with other vehicles and trackside objects result in the cars behaving in a very believable manner, touch the rear of another car whilst it's cornering and it will spin out, hit a wall at the wrong angle and your car will be flipped around 180 degrees... GT4 doesn't do either of these. Track design is always something I am always extremely critical of, but thankfully I don't have much to complain about with Forza, their designers have done a superb job creating a challenging group of tracks, especially one called Alpine Mountain. To be honest, I've only put about 4 hours into the game and I've probably played about 10 of the tracks, and I'm not sure of the total number.
-- Alpine Mountain - Great flowing track with a wide variety of corners
-- Tsukuba & Leguna Seca - same as GT4 but both sandier/browner.
-- Maple Valley - small track, similar feel to Autumn Ring Mini, easy to learn, first corner is exceedingly quick and easy to learn how to slide the cars.
-- Rio - A well thought-out street track, has some nasty bends that catch you out, normally I hate city tracks, but this is fun.
-- Tokyo - Night time city track - erg, this is why I hate city tracks, very narrow, 90 degree corners everywhere, doesn't flow at all.
-- Silverstone National - Great circuit from Britain, very fast but easy.
-- Road Atlanta - Cool track, not much to write here though.
-- Road America - I could drive this all day, the carousel is another corner for 10 seconds of drifting
-- New York - Suspicouly take place almost on 2/3rds of the GT4 track.
-- Blue Mountain - Feels like a copy of the Aussie track Bathurst, great!
I'm sure there's plenty more, there ever a point to point category, I haven't even looked in there yet. Apart from a couple, I'm enjoying all the tracks, the same can't be said for GT4 or Enthusia.
Graphically it's a mixed bag, generally to my usual hatred of the Xbox's washed out look that seems to creep into most renders. The bloom effect seems to make the washyness even worse. Anyway, the tracks are detailed and have plenty of scenery... although most are devoid of 300, 200, 100 braking markers, making life a touch more difficult. Road texture is highly detailed and has plenty of strong skidmarks across it... at least you can judge braking points by these markings. There seems to be a weird bug in the renderer where small gaps appear in the road at certain angles for a couple of frames, nothing serious though. Oh, and of course it runs at 30 fps, but you all know that... but like many other Xbox races, the reflection mapping runs at half that speed.
Sound overall seems pretty weak and whatever car I'm in, I can hear my competitors' engines over my own, leading to some bad gear change decisions. Also, the sound played at the moment the race starts is the game equivalent of scraping fingers on a black board.
Tried a few LAN races at work, all seems to be in order, noticed a couple of points where lagging made opponents stutter slightly, but nothing too serious. Looking forward to the studio getting some more copies of the game from Microsoft, so we can play 8 player!!
Anyway there are plenty of minor problems that are getting on my nerves, for instance if you enter a race and you need to slightly alter the car setup, you need to exit the race, exit the race selector, exit the championship selector, exit the Go Race menu, choose garage, choose car setup, do whatever you need, then step back through all the menus to return to the race + waiting for the track to load again.
Well, I've written way too much, just three thing before I go...
-8 cars in a race
-great damage
-I'm hooked and I'm sorry for all the Forza bashing I've done over the past few months
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