Format: Windows 11
Genre: Racing
Developer: Turn 10 Studios
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios

During development, Turn 10 showed beautiful track-side vistas rife with detail, pristine ray-traced car reflections, and ray traced global illumination. The final product, by contrast and with no hyperbole, looks like a mobile game. Polyphony's Gran Turismo 7 didn't set this reviewer's hair on fire either, but this new Forza by comparison is laughable: washed out HDR, chunky resolution cube maps, obvious screen-space artifacts when windshield wipers are going, and some of the poorest ray-traced reflections on PC don't even begin to illustrate the myriad issues. The tracks look vacant, and lacking in detail. Compounding those problems are the game's menus, which are confusing to navigate and visually look like they were tossed together inside of a week. One of the images, a cup for sedans, has a two-door car on it. It's not even that the game lacks personality-- it's almost as if it was made by purple-haired wackos as an afront to the people who have been looking forward to this release for the past six years.

Right from the start there is this obnoxious lady, with the bossy empowered womyn voice acting style, constantly haranguing the-- let's be honest-- ninety-nine percent male player base with absolute banalities like "Better buckle up, it's going to get wild!" She condescendingly narrates every single menu selection: pick "Buy Cars", and she informs the player with glowing insight "This is where you buy cars!" She can't even leave the player alone during races: "Last lap, go for it!" The in-menu music is straight out of a Pfizer commercial; it's the kind of generic soaring material one hears when the advertisement is showing the obligatory interracial couple smiling in slow motion while the narrator reads off the drug's five hundred side effects. Even the engine sounds are poor: this reviewer tried three different cars he owns or has owned in real life, and the in-game noises sound nothing like the real things. Were they even recorded for the correct vehicles?

When working properly, the in-race physics are excellent: probably the best ever featured in the "simcade" subgenre. The cars dive the proper amount under breaking, they rotate realistically, and most importantly the developers did not fall prey to the common mistake of exaggerating the effects of under and oversteer. If there is a complaint, it's that the cars perhaps feel a bit floatey-- not enough heft. Forums such as Reddit are filled with videos of bugs, like cars flying many feet above the track surface. There seems to be an issue with the clutch button: it's as if it gets "stuck on", causing the throttle to bang off the rev limiter after each gear change. Many of the cars seem to lack shifting animations. As for the content surrounding the races, it's poor: basic features from the prior series entries are totally absent; there are only twenty cups to participate in, in the entire game; and the title features a bizarre progression system involving grinding untold races for each car just to unlock new mufflers or other components to install.

Some months ago this reviewer read a concern which went something like, "With Game Pass, my fear is that Microsoft is going to throw a bunch of content on there, whether it's any good or not, just to constantly have new icons on the web site advertising the service." If this new Forza Motorsport doesn't actualize those fears, then nothing could: one might say this game has no soul, but even that dour language would be an injustice to how little respect is shown with this title-- a lack of respect for the brand, a lack of respect for car lovers, and a lack of respect for the fanbase who have adored this series over the years. Something went unfathomably wrong with this project's direction: it feels like a finger in the eye, and no amount of added cars or tracks will address the perverse, core nature of this indelibly monstrous creation.