50 Games in 2012 – #15 Forza Motorsport 4 (360) (Completed May 7th)
Racing games are often a dime a dozen but the cream of the crop in the Racing genre is devoted to a select few. The Burnout series has always been a favourite of mine a long with Kart racers in Diddy Kong and Mario Kart titles. When it comes to Simulation I've turned to Forza for my racing needs and have yet to miss out on a series title. With that said I purchased Forza 4 looking for some downtime racing action and have been enjoying it off and on over the past couple months.
As far as racing simulation goes Forza 4 reigns supreme. For myself I'm just a casual racing fan but to the hardcore racing gamer Forza has dozens upon dozens of hours in content to dig into. With an abundance of tracks a long with an impressive high-res car lineup there is a lot to like aesthetically for both the casual and serious. The visuals don't stop at the cars as both the designed real life and created racing locales push the cinematic structure of Forza 4 past Forza 3 on the awe scale. Over time you get to see a lot of these tracks racing variants of the course but continually the beauty of almost all of the courses is enough to make going back and racing these courses still fun in career mode.
Breaking the game down to it's basics the driving mechanics of Forza 4 are also top notch. I cannot critique between past and present iterations but the way the cars control and how ai react make for entertaining races in all modes. The game runs smooth as butter and your rarely feeling out of place while controlling your car. This smooth structure runs through pretty much everything Forza has to offer. The menu screens are easy to manoeuvre, customization makes sense, finding a race online is simple and the in game driving is easy to pick up. Forza 4 rarely made me feel frustrated while playing and that was exactly what I was looking for when I wanted to wind down the day with a race.
Forza 4 can be an every man’s game which is often hard to find. When more often then not I plough through a game in a day or two being able to play Forza for 20 or so minutes over a couple of months was very pleasing. When I did dig deeper into Forza 4's online and career they both appealed and offered hours of more fun. Forza 4 offers cutting edge graphics, easy to manoeuvre menu's along with grade A gameplay and as a whole this racer is as fresh as they come on the market to date.
Game Summary:
Date Finished: 5/7 | Forza Motorsport 4 (360)
Pros: Stellar graphics and great car simulation.
Cons: Career mode can become repetitive.
Conclusion: Forza stands as no underdog and is argueably one of the best racing games of this generation.
[9/10]
{Previous Entry #14: http://bitmob.com/articles/50-games-in-2012-14-heavy-rain-ps3}