Forza Motorsport might be the game that turns me into a car person. Or at least a racing simulation gamer. Somewhere between blasting down a straightaway at 130 miles per hour (mph) and going into turns at around 46 mph, I found a higher understanding of the genre. Varying the braking and decelerating of my peanut butter orange Ford Mustang GT through increasingly sharp curves, I realized those actions reap as much reward as parrying and blocking in a Dark Souls-like action game.
These laps were mere practice at the Kyalami Grand Prix in Midrand, South Africa, but I was treating them with greater importance. Dead set on finally hitting the target lap time, I couldn’t help but restart that section of the demo over (and over) again until I hit the goal. And that was when I realized Forza Motorsport is special.
Not only did I pump my fist in the air when I made that time, but I was exhilarated minutes later. Racing at Kyalami at night, with the city flicking in the distance, Forza Motorsport filled me with a mood that combined what I love about F1 races and the “Fast & Furious” movies. Starting from 12th in the grid, I was projected to finish second at best and fourth at worst — which I apparently took as a challenge. I sped into the lead before the first lap was over, and finished first overall. “Uh-oh,” I thought. I didn’t need a new hobby.
And that’s exactly what the makers of Forza Motorsport, the first entry in this series in six years, are betting will happen.
Where to order Forza Motorsport
Forza Motorsport will hit Xbox Series X and S (as well as PCs) on Oct. 10, and it will be available on day one for Xbox Game Pass subscribers. But you can play early if you pay a little more.
If you want to own Forza Motorsport, you have a few options. The $70 Forza Motorsport Standard Edition (which is the same version hitting Game Pass) will feature more than 500 cars and 20 racetracks. The $90 Deluxe Edition packs in the Car Pass with 30 “new-to-Forza” cars to your game on a one-per-week basis.
For those who need it now, there’s the $100 Premium Edition. It’s got everything found in the Deluxe Edition, with an earlier release date of Oct. 5. For this higher price, you also get the Race Day Car Pack (with eight more “new-to-Forza” cars), VIP Membership (including 2X credits and five Forza Edition cars) and the Welcome Pack (with bonus credits and five more unlocked cars). Preorders are available now.
Xbox's most prestigious racing simulator is back with hundreds of cars, and it's built for both experts and new fans.
Hit the track five days early and get a ton more cars with the Premium Edition upgrade.
Forza Motorsport is a whole new beast
Six years after Forza Motorsport 7’s 2017 release, developer Turn 10 Studios and Xbox Game Studios return to the track with a stallion designed to compete and last. At a private media event in New York City, the team previewed Forza Motorsport with a few races from its Builder’s Cup, which I’ve been playing at home since. At that event, they also spoke about Motorsport as a title with a long road map ahead, with more cars and tracks to come for free.
Without a numeral at the end of its name, Forza Motorsport is a reboot moment for the series that aims to be more accessible to new players. The Motorsport team delivered reengineered physics and a game built for the long term, but the secret sauce I love is its fantastic onboarding experience. It’s charmed me so much that I wonder if my time playing Forza Motorsport will outlast my recently begun F1 fandom (especially if Max Verstappen keeps winning).
How did this happen? Dan Greenwald, the general manager of Motorsports and one of the creators of Forza Motorsport, told me the plan is based around “slowing players down in order to speed them up.” He then explained that some “players in Forza Motorsport 1 through 7 would jump straight into a really fast car, like a Ferrari, something aspirational,” unknowingly reminding me exactly how I bounced off past racing sims.
And that’s where things go wrong, as “they would go bombing around the track, they would smash into the AI, they would go off-track and they’d go, ‘This is too hard.’ To which, as someone who has done those tracks in the past, I’m like, ‘Well, of course it is.’” I almost felt called out.
Forza Motorsport is for the newbies too
Having totaled my fair share of virtual hot rods in the past, I am impressed with how well Forza Motorsport eased me into the sport. I won’t claim my Forza cars don’t show some damage, but I never once felt like I was playing an unfair game. Not only does it offer tight controls for excellent gameplay, but there’s also the rewind feature, which gives you extra chances to make the right choices on the track. Gran Turismo games don’t have that, so I might stick with Forza Motorsport over GT7 for the time being.
Then, there’s the more universal driving lines, optional graphics on the road that signal to keep the pace (blue) or slow down (red). These helped me realize how I needed to treat the corners of each track like tests and not obstacles to be survived.
Lastly, the key segment timers pop up from the bottom of the screen during particular portions of each track. These gave me a sense of focus in the moment and let me see if I was improving over my previous laps. All of these little touches add up to a course in how to think smarter about racing.
Collectors are welcome, but tinkerers are encouraged
The three cars available in my preview are not the luxury-grade autos you might expect from a game like this. They’re more casual cars: a 2018 Honda Civic Type R, a 2019 Subaru WRX STI and the aforementioned Mustang GT. I tried out the Civic, because the buzz in the room was all about that car (I swear I wasn’t swayed by the knowledge that it’s the vehicle John Cena drives most regularly).
Speeding that Civic around the slightly foggy (and fictional) Grand Oak Raceway, I was practically shocked by how calming Forza Motorsport felt. This is the very first racing simulator I’ve ever enjoyed playing. And once I made it through some practice runs and races, I’d earned enough in-game points to upgrade my Civic R.
I wasn’t overwhelmed going through the menus of purchasable upgrades, thanks to the four-vector “spider” graph. Replacing the prior bar chart, this visualizes how each new part will adjust your braking, handling, speed and acceleration. The change is made to get people to think about balance and avoid that Sonic-level “gotta go fast” mindset.
This focus on tinkering and upgrading is part of the heart of Forza Motorsport, which will look to get gamers to focus on 10 specific cars. Sure, you could go full Ash Ketchum and collect all 500-plus cars in the game; nobody will stop you. But that’s a bit of sensory overload to me. I get the feeling I’d rather spend the time modifying the cars I pick into being my own, to get the (virtual) sense of ownership that my New Yorker self doesn’t expect to have with any actual cars.
Forza looks great too, especially when I enabled ray tracing to see light reflecting off the windows and other surfaces. Forza has three graphics settings: Performance for 60 frames per second (fps) gameplay rendering at 4K, Performance RT with 60 fps and ray tracing and Visuals for 4K gameplay and ray tracing at 30 fps.
The takeaway
In what still seems like a minor miracle, I feel right at home in the eighth edition of this venerable racing simulator. And I didn’t get the sense I was being pandered to or that I was playing a dumbed-down game either. Forza Motorsport is packed to the gills with smarts for gearheads (the experts surrounding me often nodded their head while oohing and aahing accordingly), but it also feels like something better, at least for me. Everything I saw and heard also makes me confident it will appeal to the die-hard crowd who own their own racing wheel.
Forza Motorsport looks seriously fun, and it’s shaping up to be one of the best Xbox Series X games (it’ll also work with the entry-level Series S), or one of the Xbox Game Pass games to download if you’re not ready to make an investment up front. And in the console wars conversation, it feels like Microsoft’s return salvo to counterpunch Sony’s Gran Turismo 7. I can’t wait to go whipping around more tracks, and get familiar with the wider world of race cars.
