Forza Motorsport looks and feels like Forza but with an RPG hiding under the hood
By Richard Lawler, a senior editor following news across tech, culture, policy, and entertainment. He joined The Verge in 2021 after several years covering news at Engadget.
Not long into playing my preview copy of Forza Motorsport, I was intrigued but not that impressed — until I went back and played Forza Motorsport 7 for a while.
Arriving six years after the last entry and as the first game in the series built for the new generation of hardware, this latest Forza doesn’t make the biggest graphical leap in the series’ history. But after about 10 hours of driving in the game’s single and multiplayer events with the game, I felt like everything else you encounter while driving, like the audio, physics, and AI drivers, is noticeably different and better this time around.
The handling model, in particular, is what Forza players are here for, and it delivered exactly what I expected, especially in comparison to the last game. Forza’s “drivatar” technology for simulated competitors makes for more fun racing with less rubber banding, and whether I use a force feedback wheel (Logitech G923) or gamepad for control, my feeling of connection to the car and the road surface is now back to what we expect from a simulation racing game.
Forza Motorsport is less of a fantasy car collecting simulator and more like a role-playing game
The lists of 500-plus cars and 20 or so tracks aren’t the most of any racing series available. But Microsoft plans to add to those over time. How quickly that happens — as well as how much those additions cost — will be a big part of how happy players are with the new game. (The full Nordschleife route, for example, is promised to arrive in spring 2024.) Forza Motorsport is also the first game in the main
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