Last year’s Forza Horizon 3 proved that racing simulations can successfully skirt the thin line between arcade and realistic racing. With an addictive open game world to drive-in . Forza Motorsport 7 leaves the starting line first, ahead of Sony’s new Gran Turismo title and Namco Bandai’s Project CARS 2. It’s a perfect showcase for when the new Xbox One X hits stores.
What's it about?
Forza Motorsport 7 can be categorised as a racing simulator very much in the vein of Gran Turismo. It focuses on giving the player the most realistic experience: from the detail on the tracks to the precise handling of the cars, recreating the real-world physics of race driving.
The single player puts you behind the wheel in a long campaign to claim the Driver’s Cup for yourself. Motorsport 7 is not as out there and as much fun as Horizon, but there is still a lot of content to keep you busy for hours on end. Motorsport 7 can best be described as the Pokémon of racing, where it's all about growing your garage of cars, with over 700 to chose from. Race the exotics like Yas Marina or go to NASCAR at Daytona. There’s so much to choose from as you win races, pushing through the progression system.
How does it play?
While most simulations target the hardcore, Turn 10 has successfully cracked their special sauce, letting you enjoy the racing, arcade style, with a helpful track guide. There are also several assists working in the background to keep you glued to racing.
A few hours in, and you will find yourself rummaging through the plethora of tweaks to make sure your car aces those turns. With so many cars in Forza Motorsport 7, the game quickly becomes all about collecting as many of these beautiful machines as you can. It ploughs you into the single-player experience dangling a carrot of unlocking all the tiers so you can own, upgrade and race every car on the track. It's a formula that you've seen before in games like Gran Turismo. Things get really beautiful when you hit the tarmac, especially with the dynamic weather conditions,that change from sunny to cloudy to heavy rain.
These don't just exist as eye candy; instead they affect the world, the wet surfaces making it tricky to drive. The cars look very real with incredible lighting, with their own handling. There’s an excellent sound design, from the roar of the engines to the ambient sounds. The game looks fantastic with a smooth frame rate, especially if you have a powerful PC to handle it. For Xbox One owners, if you want the best out of the game, you should wait for when the Xbox One X Project Scorpio launches.
All of those visuals come at a steep price, taking up 99 GB of precious hard drive space, and even more precious SSD space on your PC. The loading times also do get quite impacted, so hopefully there will be patches in the future to fix these issues.
Should you get it?
If you love the idea of owning garages full of the best cars, and getting knee deep in virtual grease, then Forza Motorsport 7 is just that.
Forza Motorsport 7
Developer: Turn 10
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Price: Rs 3,999 on Windows 10 and Xbox One
(Julian Almeida is a tech and gaming enthusiast who hopes to one day finish his sci-fi novel)