Forza Motorsport 6 Review

   The eagle-eyed among you may remember that I put Forza Horizon 2 in my game of the year list last year, it was fantastic after all, and so I figured it was time to dip my toe in to the main series for the first time. After all, I've got a long history with racing games. When I was younger Gan Turismo 1 and 2 were a couple of of my favourite games. It wasn't just the racing though (good job as looking back the AI on that was pants, but it was a PS1 game I guess), it was buying cars, handpicking races, speciality events, winning cars, different race types and all the other things that went along with it.
   Unfortunately as I've got older I got epilepsy and hence can't drive. so even though all that stuff seemed to awesome to me as a kid, I've grown up in to someone who couldn't give a hoot about cars, there's just no interest there, but as shown last year, I still enjoy racing games. The last straight track racing game I remember playing though was Project Gotham Racing 4 (Xbox's other (now defunct) racing series) and I really did enjoy that, mind you it did come out in 2007, still, I've always liked racing games, so I didn't see why it mattered. Turns out it did matter. I'm racing around these tracks and I just don't care. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate everything that's there and I will go in to more detail, but as I'm racing around these set routes, my mind wonders and I very quickly lose interest. I struggle to see what I used to find so exciting about them as it just seems like it's about learning when to break on corners, and that's it. Sure, you may be sitting there thinking to yourself 'that's what racing is' or 'all videogames are about learning a mechanic' but I think my lack of interest in the subject matter is leading me to boredom (or maybe you're thinking of your own boredom reading this hot mess).
   I want to be positive here though, so I will. If you like cars, I'm pretty sure you'll like this. For one, It looks great (as expected) and the car selection is excellent. Hell, there's plenty of 90's classics from me to choose from that I still have a minor knowledge of  them due to my interest in the past, plus, there's some great GT classics in there, what more could I want than reliving the glory days of GT in a GTO? There's a great tool for livery creating as well that's full of options, and, if like me that seems like too much effort but still want one, you can download livery's that other people have made as well. There's car modding as well that effect your stats that 'gearheads' (that's a term, right?) will appreciate (I assume), but you can also auto mod the car so the computer will do this for you and save the hassle, if like me, you don't care.
   On the positive and gaming side of things, the options are great. There's so many ways of modifying the difficulty for yourself and they've done a great job with this. From the simple aspect of turning the AI difficulty up or down, to things like adding/ removing a racing line, automatic or manual transmission, abs, auto break and plenty more. an added bonus here too is that the more modifiers you turn off, the more prize ( according to the spellcheck here, 'prize isn't a word) money you get for your races, so it pays to be good too (unfortunately only in game, not IRL (unless there's some tournament I don't know about)).
 

    On top of this there's so much to do (if you want). Just the basic game is 6 categories of increasingly powerful cars with multiple tournaments within each, then within these categories there's 6 categories, and you're not 100% complete on that until you win every tournament with a car from every category so if you want to, there's plenty to play. Of course, you can also just do each tournament once which has you complete the game the normal way too. Then there's dozens of special challenges to play too with the likes of car specific challenges, moments from history, side challenges and more to keep you busy.
   Back to my favourite bit now, criticism. Online is terrible. It's just down to luck as to who doesn't get involved in the first corner pileup and then hoping no-one takes you out on any other corner. Don't get me wrong, that's how I race with friends and against AI (as a last resort, I might add) but when there's 24 cars racing and they're all smashing in to each other constantly it's just a cluster...mess?
   Music, what's gone on there then? I can't think of any traditional racing game I've ever played before that hasn't had a proper soundtrack (at least playstation onwards), but this just has some in-house created general background music. Am I supposed to care about the sound of cars? because I don't. And then, there's Top Gear plastered all over the place. I hate Top Gear. What's the big deal, seriously? There's Top gear challenges and James May and Richard Hammond doing voice overs all over the place. I'm so glad that show fell apart

   So what's my recommendation? I guess if you like cars and/or racing games then go for it, the gameplay is about as good as you can get in a racer, but a lack of variety has bored me. If, like me, you've been out of racers for a while, I'd really recommend you don't bother. Because of what I see as a well deigned game for other people but not at all me, I'm going to be less harsh on a score than I could and give it 5/10. Will I get the presumed Horizon 3 next year? Maybe, I did like that last year, a lot, but this has left me with a our taste in my mouth.