Forza Motorsport 6 Review

The Verdict

While Forza Motorsport 5 was by no means a bad game, it felt incomplete. The track list and car list were much smaller, especially for a Forza game, which makes Forza 6 feel like a much more complete experience.

Everything you've loved about Forza is back; The accessibility, the gorgeous graphics, the 60fps framerate, an expansive list of cars and tracks, and the unpredictable Drivatars. However, the new night and rain races enhance the game in ways that at first feel very minor, but ultimately completely change up how to tackle a course. Mods are also a very fine way to alter your gameplay style, nudging you to maybe play it a little less safe in order to earn some of those bonus awards.

Of course a lot of things you hated, mainly microtransactions, are now nowhere to be found. Thankfully, Turn 10 must have realized that asking for real money just to unlock cars, and by that extent slowing down the rate at which you earn in-game currency was a really bad idea.

If you were among those that felt that Forza 5 was a small step in the wrong direction for the series, Forza 6 seems like the perfect apology letter to its dedicated fans. Everything about it, from presentation to gameplay is refined to maximize fun, and eliminate grind. If you own an Xbox One, considering yourself lucky to be able to play, what is easily the best racing simulator on the market.

The Positives

• It probably doesn't bear mentioning at this point, but once again, Turn 10 absolutely kills it in the graphics department. Forza Motorsport 6 looks amazing on and off the road. The cars are breathtakingly detailed, inside and out, and all of them can be further explored via Forzavista. The environments look damn good as well, with

• 460 vehicles to collect and drive. To put that in perspective, Forza Motorsport 5 had just over 200 cars.

• Puddles and wet surfaces! If you read the first page, you then came across my short paragraph devoted to puddles and their awesomeness. It's true, puddles completely change the way you race during rain. Previously, racing while it's raining only made the roads more slippery, meaning that the grip was lower, and there was a much heavier emphasis on braking. Puddles completely shift this, as they can now drag your car and make you hydroplane. That means on top of driving carefully in the rain, you now have to be mindful of avoiding some dangerous puddles that could potentially cause you to drive off-course. Even though the difficulty of driving during rain increases, I found those nail-biting races to be my absolute favorite.

• Racing in the night is also completely new, and forces you to change up your tactic. If you never committed a course to memory, you'll have a tougher time navigating the pitch black circuits that are only illuminated by your headlights and your competitions tail lights.

• The best thing about rain and night racing is that it effectively changes up the course you already know, providing a completely new challenge than you're used to when simply driving during a clear day.

• Stories of Motorsport, Forza 6's single player campaign is absolutely jam packed with content, taking you through various iconic and historical races, as well as a few fun Top Gear moments.

• The presentation is once again top notch, with the Forza lady narrating your experience through the game and campaign, as well as notable voices of James May, Richard Hammond, and Tanner Foust.

• Taking a cue from Titanfall's Burn Cards, Mods effectively grant bonuses for performing various driving techniques. They have a trading card game feel to them, as they're separated by rarity. Up to three can be equipped at a time, and can raise your earnings or XP based on various parameters. For instance some will grant you a Credit bonus when perfectly overtaking other cars, or perfectly navigating turns. Others will net bonuses for forcing players to utilize a certain camera view. The Mod system is perfect for nudging players to drive a little differently than they're accustomed to.

• As mentioned, the accessibility provided in the game makes it playable by nearly anyone of any skill level. Every type of assist can be toggled, giving you unprecedented control over your experience. Not to mention, it also directly affects your earnings. Turning off assists, grants a percentage bonus to your wins, always enticing players to make the game slightly harder as they get used to it.

• Drivatars are present once again, making each race much more unpredictable. For those hearing this word for the first time, Drivatars are basically computer controlled versions of your friends who also play Forza 6. It tracks how they play, and then emulates their driving directly into your game. That means you don't have other racers glued to the racing line anymore, and instead you have AI drivers make very human decisions and even mistakes. What's even better, even if your friends didn't pick up Forza Motorsport 6 yet, but have played Forza 5 or Forza Horizon 2, their Drivatars will already work in your game.

• Horizon 2's spin to win feature is back, allowing players to win a prize after each level they earn in game. It's a great way to earn bonus cash as well as brand new cars!

• As of right now, our online experience was relegated to playing on pre-release servers. Thankfully, the experience was absolutely perfect, with zero lag problems.

• No microtransactions. Hallelujah!

The Negatives

• The loading times are quite atrocious. Coming from a game like DriveClub, a game that is certainly no slouch in the graphics department, and loads in less than half the time, it makes Forza 6's long waits a bit annoying.

• While the single player portion is amazing, it does suffer from complete linearity. Grid Autosport did something similar with its single player campaign, however, there you were free to choose any category you want. Forza 6 forces you through them one by one.

• While racing in the rain is certainly the highlight, it's a fixed variable to a track. Meaning a track either has rain, or doesn't. It won't just start raining during your race. Not to mention, once you've raced through a track during rain, your subsequent races during rain will be identical.

Since 2005, Turn 10 Studios has been tasked with producing a racing simulator for Microsoft, to rival Sony's Gran Turismo. I remember playing the very first installment on the original Xbox. Now, 10 years later, on its sixth iteration, Forza Motorsport 6 is as refined as ever, offering an incredibly diverse list of cars, all of which are meticulously detailed down to the AC controls. At first glance this might seem quite daunting, especially to casual racing fans, but Turn 10 has proved that no one should be left out when it comes to playing their game.

This has been true since Forza Motorsport 3, which made its debut on the Xbox 360. Much like Forza 5 on the Xbox One, it brought a lot of refinements to the series, but the most notable, was the ability to toggle various assists. This allowed players to tailor their gameplay in ways that were never really imaginable in a racing title before. This meant hardcore sim fans could turn everything off and experience a nail biting race that relies in pure skill, and it also meant that you could give grandma the controller and turn on everything from steering to breaking assists, meaning she mostly just had to hold the gas down for most of the time. I would normally never say this about a racing simulator, but it's kind of the perfect family racing game as well.

This year though, Forza Motorsport is bigger and better than ever. With its absolute insane car roster of over 460 cars to collect (gotta catch 'em all), you'll be hard pressed to find your favorite. Not to mention that every car certainly feels different when behind the wheel, make for a truly unique experience, each time you take the track with a new purchase.

The biggest feature, which makes quite a noticeable difference in gameplay, are puddles. Yep, puddles are what Forza Motorsport 6 players will be talking about. Not the car count, the great physics, the impressive engine sounds. Puddles. It seems trivial but they completely change the way you race during rain now. You heard right people, puddles are a game changer in Forza 6.

So let's check out where Turn 10's improvements were for the better, and where some of the new design choices falter, and then our final verdict.

The Positives / The Negatives

The Verdict