Forza Motorsport 4 is one of the best racing games I've ever played. The game isn't perfect, but no other title out this generation is as amazing as a total package as Forza 4. Racing games usually boil down to numbers. Like features, number of cars, graphics, sound, etc... But there is really more to a racing game than this. Let's start with that though...
Forza Motorsport 4 has more than 500 cars, 25 tracks, and some amazing features. Among these a Rivals mode that works similarly to the EA Autolog. Here times in certain events are taken from your friends and Car Club members and you try and beat them.
The main feature that has been stressed by the developers of Forza Motorsport 4 is the Autovista Mode. This allows the player to examine a car in depth with both visual and audio commentary on each piece of the car. The doors open, the engine reeves, the player can examine parts of the dashboard, etc... The commentary is provided by the folks at the popular television show Top Gear. Each car is rendered down to the most intricate detail. The cars in this game are ALL rendered perfectly. But the cars in Autowista are modeled in ways that would be invisible in the other cars in the game. All of this is wonderful and it DOES kind of remind me of some of the segments on Top Gear. But this mode is barely necessary and frankly seems to be the only real black mark on what is an amazing package. The time spent in Autovista should have gone into upgrading some of the other parts of the main game that are lacking when compared to similarly simulated experiences.
The Career Mode has two modes; the World Tour where you play through a different events that seem to be randomly generated for you based somewhat on what car your in and what level of driver experience you have at the time. As you go through six driver championships there are increases in difficulty as you progress. Mostly this is represented in smarter driver A.I. And fewer rewinds. Until you reach the final World Tour championship level where the rewinds are not available and the A.I. Can be sporadically very difficult. The other option in the Career Mode is to play through Events manually in the Event List area. This allows you to choose the events yourself. But there are no championships or championship progression.
The Career Mode is also where the player is going to be customizing and upgrading your cars. This is also where your going to be creating design and tuning packages.
The other main area is the Community Mode. Here you will find the online racing area, the Rivals Events, Car Clubs, Auction House, and Storefront. These features are all expanded and wonderful from Forza Motorsport 3. There are more online race types like Virus and Cat and Mouse. While I really did enjoy the online area. There is certainly some streamlining that could have been done. There is still a lot of loading, waiting, and menus that have to be gone through before you can actually race.
The Car Clubs area is new and this is where you can join or create a car club and share your cars. There are some limitations here however, cars cannot be shared if they are downloadable content and the person who is sharing the content doesn't have the car. Which seems silly. Shared cars can only be used online. Which usually gives the participant a wide variety of cars to choose from. So unless you are tuning or upgrading a car in a special way. There isn't much reason to use these. Cars shared won't necessarily have the design you put on it, as if the design is locked; it too will be unavailable for the person borrowing the car. This too seems silly as, wouldn't a locked design be good advertising for the designer? So more cars that the design is on, the better.
The Auction House and Storefronts are improved menu design wise. But there are still too many menus. When you bid on a car you can't bid more until you go through a few menus. And then there is the silly receive credits/resolve auction menus. You have to go through additional menus to finish out your auction whether to get your money back or the car you won. Just send it to my account automatically. Why the extra steps? Throughout all this there is waiting, loading, etc.. I definitely, as all ways really love the Auction House and Storefront features. I wish there was even more to them than there is.
While there are some great extra features in this game. The main thing your going to be doing in this game is racing. While Forza 4 isn't perfect in this regard it is still the best game out on any console right now for racing. Every car feels different, every interior is rendered perfectly, and the audio model for each car is awesome. Each car can be upgraded and doing these upgrades makes an impact on speed, handling, etc.. Unlike other customization centered car games, there is no instance where upgrading a car destroys the performance of the car. Which even Forza 3 made this mistake. Of course, if you want your Mini to be a Supercar, you might be dreaming. Because cars that don't have 12 cylinders to begin with, usually don't have the wheel base to support high speed and high speed turning. So while you will definitely be able to pimp your ride; just don't expect a Lamborghini for the price of a Datsun.
There are short comings however; There are no weather effects, no night races, and the tracks themselves can sometimes amount to virtually the track itself. There are certainly some limited terrain effects on the tracks. But this is mostly done to slow down cars not change their handling. But even with all this taken into consideration Turn 10 has made and is still making some of the best racing content to ever grace a console.
Every car in the game makes you want to play longer. I completed this game's career mode incredibly fast. In just twelve days, I finished the World Tour mode and I hit Driver Level 59. This is far higher than I hit in the entire course of time playing Forza 3. Which I played a great deal. While some of this is due to the revamped Driver Level system where you get experience for doing everything from Online Races to Rivals Races to the Main Career Mode Races. But it is still a testament to how wonderful the game is, and how much the actual work has been done from one game to the next.
For sixty dollars, this is a huge package with more than 30+ hours of gameplay. If you even like racing games you will love this one. Especially if you've played Forza 3, you really need to play Forza 4. 9/10.
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