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View Full Version : Forza Motorsport (Xbox) - review / discussion



Thruster2097
19th May 2005, 12:32 AM
No matter where I look on the internet now, it is full of whiney-assed punk kids who think that "l33t" is a word. Damnit, I thought that leetspeak was invented, and immediatley killed off back in the eighties! Oh well....
Sifting through the piles of (ahem) reviews from the aforementioned whiney-assed punk kids, you would be easily led to believe that forza pwn's GT4. And to those of you who are over 12 years old, apparently Forza is better than GT4. No actual reasons why though, which is why I thought about starting this topic to find out everybody's opinion. I have got both forza and GT4, as well as a whole bunch of other driving games, two of them which I have to mention are Midnight Club 3 and NFSU2. I have to mention these because a large reason for buying forza has nothing to do with racing, more to do with pimping out your ride in the sassiest decals and paintjobs you can find. It's also a moderatley interesting race game, too, so I'm gonna divide this into two sections - forza modifying and forza racing.
Forza Modifying:
Out of the four games mentioned, forza doesnt have the amount of aftermarket parts for cars that NFSU or MC3DUB do, but it has the most powerful decal and vinyl application tool I have ever seen. Truly awesome and second to none, it allows you to actually customise your own design on the car, something unheard of to the NFSU faithful !
You have 100 layers of vinyl for the front, 100 for the back, 100 for the wing, 100 for the bonnet and roof, and a further 100 for each side of your car. 600 layers of vinyl stickers that you have full control of size, angle, pitch and colour. If you've got room, you can choose from some of the 5 pages of aftermarket tuning company logos to give your car the competitive feel.
I have already made a VXRacing VX220 out of vinyls which looks stunning and I intend to be keeping forza just for this feature.

Forza Racing:
Forza's weak point is its collision system with other cars, and car handling. It's so mind-numbingly bad I prefer to race time trials. I dont know if its just me, but I find the xbox controllers so twitchy, and also completley not progressive tike the PS2 pad. The accelerator, brake and steering almost behave like on-off switches, which is really poor considering all the working parts on the pad are either analog joysticks or progressive triggers. It should be smoother than a pint of baileys, it just so isn't. Control is better on the PS2's button style pad. Car collision system is shocking, the AI barely have to look at you and your car will be dancing toward the nearest wall.
Poor quality and intrusive HUD screen layout coupled with some of the worst tyre and environment noise do not make it a pleasurable experience. However, the in-car engine noise is a dramatic improvement to anything in GT4. At last, actual sound from inside a real car! It wasnt too much to ask for and finally it is here. The very clunky gear shift noise gets really annoying really quickly, but the engine noise is astonishing. The ferrari noise needs a bit of work, though.....

Overall, if youre into tricking out your ride, this is something you cant miss out on. However, if youre more concerned about actually getting a racing game for your money, look elsewhere.

There, I have had my bit, now let the ranting, raving and pwning take over.....

mid
19th May 2005, 10:31 AM
Actually, as pad driving goes, I found the demo of Forza (I don't have the full game yet) rather more impressive than GT4 - the increased travel on the triggers over the horrible face buttons on PS2 allowed me to feather throttle and brake far more accurately, and the sense of weight was very good. The only reason I'm still playing GT4 instead (other than cost) is that I don't have an XBox wheel.

Besides, GT4 is hardly the pinnacle of either collision physics or AI itself, and at least Forza does a good line in online competition, so AI is less of an issue anyway. I agree that a lot of the arguments between the two titles are thinly-veiled platform bias, but Forza definitely looks to be a good contender.

And it has both Ferraris and a far wider range of Lotuses. :D

zargz
19th May 2005, 10:42 AM
gonna buy it because of:

1.internet play
2.customizaiton

z out!

Manic
19th May 2005, 11:57 AM
And it has both Ferraris and a far wider range of Lotuses. :D

As if that was something good... seriously, if you want something that handles, don't go for a Lotus. Build yourself a monocoque of your own instead. Plus, Lotus cars are heavily undermotorized and damn ugly! And don't even mention the GT1 or I'll shove a ProCharger F-3 up your ass.

As for Forza, Id rather go with GT4 any day. It's less "Pimp my Ride" and more "Monster Garage", which is exactly my style. Who cares about decals?! We want realism and speed.

Lion
19th May 2005, 12:03 PM
personally I think the lotus elise is a very beautiful car.
and the esprit was the bomb in it's day :)

Seek100
19th May 2005, 08:47 PM
The Esprit never stopped being the bomb, hell, it'd be the bomb now if they hadn't been forced to stop production because of a combination of idioticaly stringent US safety laws and the fact that the ancient gearboxes they sourced from Renault were finally going out of production.

And I'm sorry Manic but seriously what kind of nerd builds their own monocoque? Seriously, unless you're talking about in the game (I don't know as I don't have Forza) in real life people buy cars, only the geekiest of the geeky are prepared to build their own. It's the equivalent of running your house on solar panels you put up on the roof yourself.

I must say I was distressed by the almost silly at times bias towards odd-ball japanese cars no one had ever heard of in GT4 (like that 'Dome' thing that looks like a prop from Total Recall) that to top it off were completely useless in any race situation you could encounter. And of course the corresponding lack of variety in the other nationalities, but I suppose the game is intended first and foremost for the japanese market so some odd-ball is not to be unexpected.

Lance
20th May 2005, 01:24 AM
.
[offtopic: i'm the kind of nerd who prefers tube spaceframes to monocoques][and designs his own suspensions and engines]
.

mid
20th May 2005, 01:46 PM
Just to clarify,

(a) I think Lotus have made many and varied beautiful cars over the years, and
(b) what I really mean is that GT4 doesn't have the S1 bodytype, only the current S2, apart from the Motorsport Elise. I adore any Elise, but I prefer the S1 to the S2, which looks a bit too aggressive to me.

Anyway, Ferraris and Proper (i.e. non RUF chavved-up) Porsches are probably something we can all agree on as good about Forza.

Manic
22nd May 2005, 04:08 PM
Hm? How do you expect you would tune a Ferarri Enzo in GT4 then? It's already got a full-carbonfiber monocoque and body, and even though its engine is not equipped with either a turbo or a compressor, it would still be EXTREMELY hard squeezing out any more horsepower out of that engine if it did (that is without blowing the whole engine block after a few seconds).

And also, those who actually make their own parts are the serious builders in the industry. That's why it's called CUSTOM racing!

Lance
22nd May 2005, 04:24 PM
.
'tuning' also applies to selection of gear ratios, tire pressures, spring rates, front and rear ride heights, settings of adjustable aero devices, etc. this kind of tuning can be done in the videogame, 'F355 Challenge', for example.
.

mid
23rd May 2005, 04:10 PM
Tuning (the balance between accelleration, top speed, handling etc.) is fine for a WipEout game, though to some extent pointless, as that's really what you're doing when you select a different team's craft anyway.

Upgrading (adding parts to get better performance) is alien to WipEout however, as every team would make their craft as well as they can without asking you first - being unable to afford that turbo is rather dumb in the context of the background storyline to the sport.

Oh, and there's nothing at all you can do to a Ferrari Enzo in GT4 - Polyphony have never spent the necessary cash to buy a Ferrari license.

Lion
23rd May 2005, 11:02 PM
being unable to afford that turbo might work in the context of an amatuer series like the fx150

zargz
26th May 2005, 10:32 AM
was at a friends house yesterday and he surfed in to ign or similar and the ingame vdo was awsome!
also they gave it 9.1 or .2 dont remember but very high score! 8O

Manic
27th May 2005, 04:25 PM
Doesn't matter what score it got. Critics have no taste anwyay. A game which is essentially any other racing game with some cosmetics added is no better than any other.

zargz
27th May 2005, 10:46 PM
you got a point there but there are actually games that have scored high and were good as well! 8O
anyway I'm impressed by another game I think I'll get instead - Juced!!! :twisted: