Forza Motorsport review: 2023 reboot is OK with being the boring Forza

Forza Motorsport’s developer, Turn 10 Studios, finds itself in an odd position. This is eighth in the series, which used to be Xbox’s flagship. It returns after a strangely long six year absence to find its younger, more fun series Forza Horizon in the spotlight. When this process began, it was well underway. Forza Motorsport 7 came out in 2017 — it’s probably the reason Microsoft felt an extended break for Motorsport was both comfortable and necessary — but in the intervening time, the two strongest Horizon titles yet found an enormous new audience on Game Pass and beyond. The game is now available on Game Pass. Forza Motorsport has to explain itself all over again to a new generation of Forza fans brought up on Playground Games’ freewheeling automotive vacations.

Good news: It’s done with authority. There’s no hint of an identity crisis to Motorsport’s rebooted return, nor of the desperate trend-chasing that marred its Xbox One era with microtransactions, loot boxes, and fussily randomized service-gaming systems. There’s barely any evidence in Forza Motorsport that the Horizon games exist, unless you count the studied way in which it doesn’t do any of the things that Horizon does. It’s a real-world-inspired circuit-racing simulation with a focus on the game.

What if anything? Forza MotorsportIs single-minded, to the extent of being blind. It is a far cry from the joyous fiesta that was Horizon 5 — or even from the eccentric nerdery of Gran Turismo 7 — you might be surprised by the lack of variety in the event design and the absence of a distinctive voice, of a personality to guide you through this world of asphalt and piston. Forza Motorsport is the way it’s done. It has worked well as a framework and toolkit that returns what is put in.

Image: Turn 10 Studios/Xbox Game Studios

This framework is where Turn 10 has put the lion’s share of its effort over the last six years. The livery editor and the car tuning editor, which it shares with Horizon, were not too difficult to improve. Elsewhere, Forza Motorsport It was time for a serious revamp. Long-missing features like dynamic time of day and weather systems — which may sound like box-ticking, but are of crucial importance to the sim racing community — have finally been implemented, and beautifully, too. There’s an impressive spectrum of rain in this game, all the way from a hazy drizzle that can make for a treacherously slick surface to a view-obliterating downpour. Lighting across the sunsets and nighttime is dramatic and rich. Even at noon, the position of the sun has an impact on gameplay. For example, if you turn towards the sun, the dust-covered track edges can be difficult to see.

Forza’s car handling physics have been reworked, too. While Playground took the same fundamentals and shaped them into Horizon’s drifty arcade-sim hybrid that was both wildly entertaining and suited to navigating an open-world map, Turn 10 had been struggling to wrestle the simulation into more realistic shape in the Motorsport games; the handling was often jittery and unpredictable, and handled poorly on steering wheels. While it’s still less planted and more flamboyant than Gran Turismo, with more tendency toward oversteer, Forza MotorsportThis is much more realistic, consistent, and involving. (I haven’t had a chance to try it on a wheel myself, but I’m told it acquits itself much better.)

Turn 10 was also behind in the multiplayer department. After stealing an early lead in this area thanks to Microsoft’s networking expertise, the Motorsport series was left behind around 2017, as Gran Turismo Sport Some other sims have implemented ratings for driver skill, safety and performance. IRacingIn order to create a fairer and more sportsmanlike online race environment. In this context Forza Motorsport 7’s chaotic and aggressive lobbies seemed old-fashioned by comparison.

Image: Turn 10 Studios/Xbox Game Studios

Turn 10 is now following suit and has introduced driver ratings, penalties, and a mandatory three-race preparation phase. Forza Motorsport’s featured (as opposed to private) multiplayer races. Settling in for a multiplayer session is a commitment now, for sure — races have set entry times, plus practice and qualifying stages that build up over “race weekends” that last for half an hour or so, minimum. But you’re rewarded with racing that’s closely fought, fair, and exhilarating. Solid networking, and an easy-to-use interface are the foundations of this game. Forza Motorsport’s online multiplayer finally belongs back in the top drawer.

All of this is important, solid structural engineering that will help the Forza Motorsport franchise in the future. Turn 10 knew it couldn’t release another Forza Motorsport game without all of these things, so it did a good job. But there’s only a little innovation and imagination to go with it.

Forza Horizon is a game that invites you to explore the world. Gran Turismo 7 offers the menu of its quaint Café to choose from, Forza Motorsport Presents only a basic event grid. Five tours are available, consisting each of four four- to six-race series plus an event that serves as the capstone. Every series focuses on a specific class of cars, ranging from the latest super sedans to vintage exotics. If you’ve played any Forza game, these won’t come as any surprise, and they’ve certainly been more imaginatively defined and more enticingly laid out before. There’s also a “featured” tab with a tour of additional series that unlock on a weekly basis, in a similar way to Forza Horizon’s seasonal playlists.

Image: Turn 10 Studios/Xbox Game Studios

Every one of these series is structured the same — although, to be fair to Turn 10, it has challenged the status quo of the “CarPG” genre somewhat with some interesting quirks within that structure. Once you choose a car for a series, it’s locked in, and each car needs to be leveled individually, unlocking upgrades (as well as the special currency needed to buy them) as you go. It’s compulsory to complete three practice laps before each race, and these are where the best Car XP rewards are to be had for refining your cornering techniques and improving your lap times. What this means is that the better and more often you drive your car, the quicker it gets.

This system — and it’s applied in multiplayer, too — makes it effectively impossible to spend your way to speed in any car using credits. It’s better to drive it and gradually build up your car. In one of the few areas where it seems to be responding to the Horizon series, Turn 10 is actively countering those games’ overabundance of reward cars, and their indulgence of silly, game-breaking builds that allow you to engine-swap a 1,000 horsepower unit into a 1950s micro-car. Engine and drivetrain swaps unlock at levels 40 and 50. It’s grindy, but I appreciate the more realistic philosophy behind it, and the dedication to building a relationship between players and their cars — as well as the way it marginalizes some of the more irritating aspects of the Forza meta, such as the overwhelming dominance of all-wheel-drive tunes that strip out the cars’ individual characteristics.

Within each career series, however, I’m not sure it works so well. It’s a bit like Diablo 4, Forza Motorsport metes out upgrades so gradually that it’s hard to feel the difference they’ve made, especially when you’re pitted against rival AIs whose cars also scale to match the power of yours. There’s a smoothing effect that dulls the sense of progression, and some more out-of-the-box approaches — like splashing out on a faster car and driving it without upgrades — are ruled out altogether.

Image: Turn 10/Xbox Game Studios

That’s matched by event design that’s repetitive in the extreme. Though Forza Motorsport has a wide selection of tracks — including a good number of completely new originals as well as lesser-known real-world circuits like South Africa’s Kyalami — all you ever do at them is practice, practice, practice and then race, race, race.

This loop has been beautifully executed. These practice sessions help you refine your driving through important sectors and build atmosphere. It may seem counter-intuitive to be able to select your own position on the grid (no more than third), but it encourages players to push themselves, by either starting farther back, mixing up their race with others, or increasing difficulty. It creates more tension, excitement and competition on track. A career race is not a good indicator of a driver’s ability. Forza Motorsport It’s a perfect 20-minute gaming session. But — aside from the Rivals time-trial mode — this loop is about the only thing the game offers. And with races tending to be at least five laps long, plus practice, it’s a pretty long loop. It can be mind-numbing to watch it on repeat.

Forza Motorsport It’s serious business. Turn 10 says to put in the work; run your laps and shave seconds off. Make that small adjustment, or grind that victory. Its refusal to cater to Horizon’s fun-addled players is admirable. Instead, it offers them an invitation to its austere Church. This is a game about going round in circles, a little bit faster every time, and it’s quite unapologetic about it. That’s proven compelling enough to base an entire sport around, so perhaps that’s fair enough. Just a bit more variety could have made a big difference.

Forza MotorsportRelease date is 10th October on Windows PC and Xbox Series X. Microsoft provided a code for a prerelease download to review the game on Xbox Series X. Vox Media is affiliated with other companies. Vox Media earns commissions from affiliate products, although this doesn’t influence the editorial content. Find out more about affiliate links. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.