Forza Motorsport 6 Review

Player(s): 1
Extra Features: Online Multiplayer (2-24), Leaderboards

Forza Motorsport 6 is a racing game developed by Turn 10 studios and published by Microsoft exclusively for the Xbox One, and is the sixth installment in the Forza Motorsport series. Having little experience with racing games, I have not played the first five in the Forza series so Forza Motorsport 6 is my introduction to the series as a whole. Just for a little background on my racing game experience, I mainly enjoy racing games that have an arcadey feel to them and I often have problems enjoying racing simulators since I find them hard to play.

Forza Motorsport 6 opens with a menu full of quality and tons of production value. This game is oozing with the fact that it took tons of money to make. To my surprise, the game is extremely welcoming to newcomers which I found to help out a great deal with my little experience with racing games. The game offers a rewind feature and there are markers on the track that give hints as to when to hit the brakes or speed up while making a turn. The markers basically show you a preferred path on the racing tracks as well.

This game is the first one where I have actually enjoyed the first-person driver's seat view over a third person view for a racing game. The first thing I do when starting up a racing game is to usually switch over to a behind-the-car view, but with Forza Motorsport 6 I got very adjusted to the overall cockpit view and found it easy to navigate from the get-go. The extra effects such as rain are sort of lost when in a third person view as well. The game is set at 1080p and 60 frames per second and it looks beautiful. When you get into a car that can go up to 200 miles per hour, you can definitely feel that speed, which is such a pleasant feel to a game. The game offers a total of 26 tracks and has a total of 450 cars to choose from. You'll get a choice of starting vehicles to choose from and you'll gain credits from racing to buy new vehicles. Some vehicles are unlocked as you level-up as well. There are tons of customization options with each car. You can choose from predetermined customization paint jobs or you can customize a vehicle's paint from scratch.

Forza offers a career mode where you go to different locations for races. The difficulty can be lowered or raised based on your skill level. I had to lower the difficulty from the start but thankfully, you can still get credits and experience for leveling up just as easily on lower difficulties. The career mode gives you several different tracks from all over the world and there is a lot of variety in each track. Some tracks have several narrow corridors making it harder to get by your opponents and some other stages have cobbled streets that make braking a bit harder. Sometimes it will rain and you'll have to worry about hydroplaning while driving over puddles. The rain effects in the game look very realistic and overall fantastic. I really loved the attention to detail in the street water - the overall look of the water on the concrete.

Before going into each race, you have the option to equip three mods that can help you out during the race. Mods come in the form of status bonuses or reward bonuses. For instance, you can have extra grip or brake reaction with the use of some mods or you can equip mods that give you an XP boost or mods that add extra credits to your total amount for winning a race. You can also tune up your car to improve your car's performance. You can adjust tire pressure, gear ratios, wheel alignment settings, suspension setting, brakes, downforce and other options. The tuning was kind of out of my league to even know what performance enhancements it provides so I didn't mess with it much.

Besides career mode, the game offers free play, test drive, multiplayer, leagues, and rivals. Free play and test drive let you race freely with any car of your choosing. The game says that split-screen is offered in free play mode so that you can race with a friend. The multiplayer mode lets you race online against other players - races can hold a total of 24 players. Both leagues and rivals allow you to race for online leaderboard times. Rivals allows you to see a rival's best lap so that you can attempt to beat it. In leagues, you are put into a league based on your skill level and matched against other players of the same skill level. As you race in leagues, you'll gain points so that you will eventually get into higher skill level leagues based on your point total.

You can view your cars and buy new cars from the main menu as well as customize or tweak them as much as you want. There is an upgrade shop where you can upgrade your car parts such as the engine portion or various other portions in greater detail for a price of credits. The game uses both credits and tokens as its form of currency. You gain credits (CR) from racing and you gain tokens (TK) from leveling up.

I must say, I'm not one for racing games, but Forza Motorsport 6 easily wins me over with the overall cars to choose from and easiness in picking it up and playing it. The controls in the game are tight and easy to get used to. The game offers a fantastic set of learning options for newcomers that can be turned off for more advanced players. Overall, I highly recommend it to racing game fans and it might be worth a try for non-racing fans because of how easy it is to pick up and play.

The Good:
+ Smooth and tight controls
+ Very helpful features for beginners

The Bad:
- The loading in between races can get long and tiresome