Forza Motorsport Is Out Now: First Impressions

pczone.co.uk:

Forza Motorsport officially launched today, and after a few hours of play, I have thoughts. You’re welcome.

Developer Turn 10 has rebooted the series – hence dropping the number from the name – with a revamped ForzaTech engine built from the ground up for the Xbox Series consoles.

Higher-detail tracks, cars, environments and a bit of ray-tracing are the major visual enhancements.

As for gameplay, aside from more realistic car physics and tyre models, it’s all about the new vehicle upgrade structure, corner segment grades and smart penalty system. At least from what I’ve seen so far.

Reviews have been very solid; check out IGN, Eurogamer and Kotaku. For what it’s worth, here’s my early take.

Forza Motorsport has been criticised for failing to deliver what was expected from its most touted graphics feature, ray-tracing. Pre-release demos showed off excellent ray-traced reflections, mostly in car bodies, that got the graphics geeks like me giddy with excitement.

Sadly, the game’s reflection quality doesn’t get near the quality of the demos. I guess it’s expected as the current-gen consoles Forza was designed around struggle with RT, but it’s still annoying when publishers over-promise and under-deliver.

The PC release could feature better RT options, but as of release, it doesn’t differ much from the Xbox Series X preset. Let’s hope that changes.

What looks better than expected is Forza Motorsport’s excellent motion blur.

Watching a side-by-side comparison with Gran Turismo 7 shows what a difference motion blur can make to the sense of speed. The cars in GT7 look oddly tranquil by comparison; it’s a bigger difference than I ever imagined it would be.

The camera’s focal length can also play a part in this illusion, giving Forza a