Forza Motorsport on PC
Getting into the groove
Like a kid on Christmas morning, I got up early-ish on Tuesday, October 10, to finally play the pre-install of the new Forza Motorsport on PC. The intro (runs once) drops you into the last bit of a rainy race on the Hakone track with the Cadillac race car, to give you a taste.
From there, you are guided through creating your avatar (since you are behind a helmet, you don’t have too much customization of your looks1) and then introduces you to the first career event, a Builder’s Cup. You get to choose your car, and I opted for the Honda Civic Type R, a front wheel drive beast of a street vehicle.
The structure is a mandated practice session (early in the career, there is no qualifying) where you must complete three laps, then you race.
The first race in the Builders Cup, also is at the Hakone track, you have your pit chief on your radio cheering you on soothing you when you do something dumb (like forgetting to brake for a corner, doh).
That first race taught me that:
The assists for driving were too much, even for a noob like me. Next race I backed them off2
The AI at the lowest level of competition (the default for noobs like me) is bad. Really bad. Forza online has been a haven for shameful rammers who just jam their way in. And the AI seems to have been taught this shameful behavior. I need to crank up the avatar competitiveness to see if this abates
The physics are good, really good. Prior versions felt more arcade-like, but here, the oversteer/understeer, and the behavior of the brakes/acceleration in the corners feels a lot more real than FM7 on my old Xbox One.
It is a lot of fun.
Naturally, I have been watching some of the early players’ reviews on YouTube, and there are some grumbles people have. It seems that the folks who are more on the driving sim side3, with chairs, wheels and pedals really are upset with how it feels on their force-feedback devices. There have been plenty of gripes on the early multiplayer.
But there have been good tips. I learnt that you have to tune up your car to be competitive. I pretty much ignored that in prior versions, and maybe that is why I would struggle so much.
There are lots of complaints with the forced practice before each career event. I don’t mind, it does allow me to learn the track (n.b. - three laps isn’t enough time to really learn a track but it helps). Also, the fact that you have to drive (and race) your car to level it up to open different tiers for upgrade parts. That is annoying, but it does get you driving more, and if I was honest, it does teach you how the various upgrades affect the performance envelope of your cars.
I am 4 days in, and so far, I have gone through the first Builder’s cup, and am about halfway through the second career progression event (I am driving a Golf R in the Hot Hatches, one of my favorite cars and class!)
So far, I am loving it.
The new PC handles the game with ease, locked at 60Hz frame rate, with all the eye candy on my 2K monitor. No glitches, no complaints.
The graphics are amazing. The raytracing and dynamic lighting is spectacular. My old PC with the ancient GTX1660 card would have been low detail and no ray tracing, across the board.
Win win all the way!
I have saved some replays of my clumsy playing, and some still images, but I have yet to figure out how to access them. Once I do, I will share some.
which I hate, as a middle-aged greying ginger, loaded with freckles, it is pain to try to get an avatar to look like me.
I am not a sim guy so I prefer to have it be a fun experience, not frustrating, and it seems that FM2023 has nailed it
These are people who buy a rigid cockpit, with up to 3 monitors, Recaro seats, and Fanatec controls, in addition to the console or PC to run it. AA roughly $4K investment without the pc/console. Yikes, that’s a lotta bread!