Forza Motorsport 1 Year Later: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

Exactly one year ago, Forza Motorsport launched, kicking off a new era for Microsoft’s racing franchise.

It was a bumpy launch. While critic reviews were consistent with the rest of the series, users were less kind. After the longest gestation period of any Motorsport title—the last installment was 2017’s Forza Motorsport 7—the now-numberless title launched with a fraction of the previous game’s tracks, a day-long career mode, and an ultra-linear car upgrade progression system. We criticized all of these aspects in our game review.

A year later, has the game matured past those challenges and evolved into the premier sim racer the Xbox has been missing for… well, six years? Er, sort of.

Prior to release, developer Turn 10 Studios spent plenty of time hyping the “built from the ground up” aspect of the game. It seemed reasonable: what else would’ve taken so long, anyway?

Then the videos started rolling in. The Mitsubishi Eclipse model still looked like the same one from the original game 18 years earlier; more polygons maybe, but the same flat, outdated lights front and back. (There is a long, long list of inaccurate car models on the official forums.) Despite having real-time lighting—a resource-intensive feature that should result in a more realistic look—many of the tracks had harsh, over-exposed lighting. This even extends to the “home” garage in the game, with awkward shadows that fails to showcase these epic cars in their best light. Literally. Meanwhile the car selection screen, still just row after row of still tiles, has the cars awash in over-dramatic reflections and featuring darkened headlights.

Despite being built only for the latest Xbox platform, Forza Motortsport doesn’t look like a headliner. There are moments of brilliance, like a thrilling race through the rain at night at Le Mans, but that’s the exception, not the rule.

A year in, the single-player career mode is still small. It’s not even the lack of events; it’s that many of them, be it the permanent options or the limited-time ones that cycle in, stick to only a handful of eligible cars. That feels unreasonably restrictive in a game with over 600 cars. Entering those races, there’s often one lead vehicle to hunt down while the rest of the field fills in as rolling chicanes. Good luck dealing with the cruel and unusual punishment of the contact penalty system, which will often peg the player with a penalty after AI brakes on the apex, or swerves mid-corner.

Online is slightly better, with a fair number of pre-baked, themed rooms.

But Forza used to be about more than the on-track experience—in fact, the Horizon series still is. And yet there’s so many parts still missing here. From something as big as a Drift Mode or a creative hub, to a detail like a free-movement camera while purchasing a car, there’s so many seemingly easy features that have never been implemented in Motorsport.

The next bit is more of a personal annoyance: limited-time content. When a new offline championship arrives it often features a new-to-game car as a prize. Should you miss the event, however, the car isn’t available to purchase after. Turn 10 might be trying to lure players to play more often, but should one miss it, all it does is discourage them from playing even more. Until…

We’re ending on a good note here: Turn 10 has been listening. The limited-time content? In a future update, it will be made available after the debut series. Forza Race Regulations and those stiff penalties? They’ve been tweaked. Car modifications are no longer tied to specific goals either.

Turn 10 has added numerous tracks to the game in the last year as well, enough that running more than one series in a row no longer feels repetitive. There’s more coming too, including Sunset Peninsula, a challenging track last seen over a decade ago.

Remember those inaccurate car models? The developers aren’t going to switch them all overnight, but some will be seeing improvements soon.

Racing games are uniquely poised to work as long-term platforms, or games as a service (GaaS). For all its issues, Forza Motorsport continues to offer one of the most diverse car lists in the track-based racing game scene. If Turn 10 is dedicated to providing the same amount of attention to this game in its second 12 months as it received in its first, the numberless FM could become a winner again.

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