You can either look at Forza 6 as a 'driving game' or a 'racing game'. And, despite phenomenal quality (and I do mean p...
Read More
Showing posts with label MICROSOFT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MICROSOFT. Show all posts
Friday, September 11, 2015
FORZA MOTORSPORT 6 REVIEW
You can either look at Forza 6 as a 'driving game' or a 'racing game'. And, despite phenomenal quality (and I do mean phenomenal) throughout most of its production, it doesn't offer anywhere near the best driving experience available on console. As a racing game? I simply wouldn't call it that. I've been playing it all week and I've had one great race. One. Obviously, that is a problem.
Let's look at the driving first, since that’s what you spend your time doing. In the very fastest cars, it's exhilarating like few other games. The sensation of being at 200mph in an F1 car is properly scary. It's almost violent when you accelerate out of a corner, there's so much power under your finger. I've seen videos of people trying real F1 cars on track days, and this is just like that. Far more power than most people could possibly handle.
CHECK THE VIDEO
But the game isn't about that kind of driving for 90% of the time. Sporadic showcase events may let you try some more exotic cars early on but, for the most part, career mode is slow and boring. There are 5 main 'volumes' of race types, ranging from pootling road cars and nostalgia-laden classics to snarling beasts and V8 Supercars. You spend most of your time in sedate, joyless races, going through the motions of driving and hitting rewind when you fail. Forza 6 is actually much more engaging when you disable rewind - where's the fun in do-or-die manoeuvres if it's really just 'do or mulligan'?
Many cars feel like they have beach balls for tyres and driving lap after lap at a proverbial snail's pace is incredibly dull. The idea of racing SUVs around Spa in the dead of night with only the cars' headlights to illuminate the track is fundamentally exciting. I would love to do that for real. In the game? It's mind-numbingly boring. Slow, floaty and sedate, it's simply not fun.
Naturally, the first thing I did was play on Sim settings, like I normally do. However, the 'raw' cars behave very strangely – actually a lot like the motorbikes of MotoGP 15. Yes, that is weird. There is definitely more grip in Forza 6 compared to Forza 5, but that creates some very strange accidents. I somehow managed to roll my car on a straight because it waggled under acceleration, which grew more violent before turning into a spin, which tipped over and barrelled for some 50m. Needless to say, that would never happen in real life. So after a few hours, I grudgingly switched on stability management and things were more manageable.
And so we get to the racing. The problem is simple: The Drivatar system simply doesn't work. Never mind the fact some cars inexplicably tap the brakes on a straight. It doesn't matter which Avatar Difficulty you choose: on some tracks you'll win easily, while on others one or sometimes two cars will simply drive away from everyone else. You'll sometimes catch a glimpse of a dot on the track map, or a speck on the horizon, but you'll never catch them. The hardest difficulty is meant to humble you and it does. But everything below that is alarmingly inconsistent
As a result, actually getting into a closely-fought, cut-and-thrust race (which is what a racing game needs to be exciting), is incredibly rare. It doesn't help that only special, themed events fill the grid with the same model of car. Most races are uneven in terms of horsepower and grip and it really shows. Fortunately, you only need to get 3rd or higher to progress, but you really should be able to win if you're good enough.
Forza 6 makes Forza 5 look like a demo in terms of event types and track diversity and the first two hours of the game are beautifully-paced, as you're introduced to the controls in a warm-up race, then gradually given full control over assists and difficulty, before the new 'Mods' feature is unveiled.
I really like the Mods. They are given to you as cards in packs of varying price and rarity, and are split into three types. Some cards can be used as many times as you like and give you stat boots like +12% grip or -5% weight, plus extra boosts on certain tracks. Dare cards offer credit rewards for completing race objectives under set circumstances, such as forced cockpit cam, or no assists. Other cards are single-use, like a two grid position starting boost for one race. They're fun to use and I hope the series expands on them in the future.
There is a problem, however. While I absolutely welcome the video game elements and special states these challenges introduce (one card turns off collisions for the entire first lap, letting you drive through the packed field at turn 1), they are somewhat negated by the new spinner system. Every time you level up - which happens every couple of races - you get to spin a randomised spinner with nine possible prizes. None of the rewards totally suck, but there are some huge wins to be had. About an hour into the game, I hit level three and won a Lotus F1 car worth 2,000,000 credits. I also won 1,000,000 credits soon after. So when you're gambling rare cards on the prospect of maybe a 10,000 credit bonus, it feels a bit meaningless. A shame, since the spinner and the Mod cards are both truly great elements. They just don't work together.
The game's biggest new feature is probably wet weather driving – and it's gorgeous. I scoffed at all the hype around the game's puddles, but I take it all back. These are some seriously sexy puddles. They're not dynamic (so they're always in the same place and don't get bigger or dry up), but they behave exactly like real puddles, making your car hydroplane, or dragging it off-line and onto the wet grass, where you're heading straight to the scene of the accident.
Project CARS' weather is better (it's a fully dynamic weather system with rolling clouds and everything) and Driveclub's wet conditions look better, but Forza 6 at least maintains a rock solid 60fps. I haven't seen it drop or tear a single frame anywhere, even when all those hyper-detailed cars are leaving the startline. It's gorgeous.
And oh boy, the cars are really special. They look absolutely stunning, and it's impossible to take a bad photo of them in the returning photo mode. They pick up dents and scrapes and occasionally a spoiler will fall off, but otherwise the damage is visually modest. Impacts do significantly affect handling, however. First you'll find braking is unstable when suspension is bent, but crash hard enough and your vehicle will be seriously crippled. What a shame impacts with other cars lack any kind of violence. In some races, it's often like bars of dry soap rubbing together.
I love everything else about the game. Having real-life Indycar drivers and Hammond / May from – sorry, formerly from – Top Gear introducing classes is wonderful. Warm, engaging and often funny, they add much-needed personality to the action and the result is clearly a AAA package. The car customisation options are predictably amazing (and you should see my pure gold-painted Ferrari F40, which looks so classy it hurts), the circuit selection features hit after hit of real world classics and the sensation of simply travelling forwards is wonderful. On the rare occasions you hit 200mph, it's magnificent.
The speedier, grippier classes like the Grand Touring series really show what the game could have been. But when Formula E became available and the first race was an 8-lap slog around Indianapolis, I wondered where gaming went wrong. I found myself sitting there, stony-faced, maintaining 138mph, in the lead, with no need to brake, and no chance of being passed. The frantic orchestral music and pounding drums reached crescendo after crescendo as I spent ten minutes of my life gently nudging left. Racing games are better than this and we must never forget that.
Friday, February 13, 2015
FORZA HORIZON 2 REVIEW
Forza Horizon 2 is an open-world racing video game developed for Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles. It is the sequel to 2012's Forza Horizon and part of the Forza Motorsport series.
The Horizon Festival is a massive, summer-long music and automobile festival, and it's back again--this time it's hitting the French and Italian coasts before spilling into the sun-baked countryside. Thousands of hipsters with fancy cars and far too much disposable income have gathered here for a summer of concerts and racing competition; think Coachella meets Le Mans, and you're halfway there. It's a completely ludicrous set up that makes no sense under any form of scrutiny. Seriously, who would give these people free reign to terrorize not one, but two European countries with high-powered sports cars? I can't tell you how many private vineyards I must have demolished on my race to be Horizon champion, and it kills me a little inside every single time. Still, it at least gives you some context as to why you're driving around the Mediterranean coast like a bat out of hell.
As contrived as the whole premise is, Forza Horizon 2's, well, horizons are gorgeous. Whether you're racing down the winding streets of Nice or zipping through the bounding hills of Montellino, each location in Forza Horizon is both distinct and breathtaking. While there aren't as many cars here as there are in a typical Forza game, each one is painstakingly detailed, right down to the individual gauges and windshield wipers. The dynamic weather system ensures those wipers get fair use, too. One minute it's nice and sunny; the next, it's raining like the end of days, and how you tackle each course changes dramatically. It also looks fantastic, too, as rain bubbles and pools on the surfaces of roads and cars. Other than a few frame hiccups and some minor bouts of shadow pop-in, Forza Horizon 2's vistas are a joy to drive through, whether you're doing it in a classic Ferrari GTO or a not-so-classic 1981 Volkswagen Scirocco.
You won't need to know a lot about about cars (other than that they look cool and go fast) to enjoy Forza Horizon 2, as it trades realism for pure, high-speed thrills. Cars may dent and windshields may shatter, but they ride just as well as if they were just driven off the lot, and each one is miraculously restored after each race. Driving on dirt or grassy fields will cause your vehicle to slide around more than it would on the road, but honestly, that just makes things even more fun, as you drift wide through someone's delicately pruned shrubberies. Heck, when the festival gives you your first ride, it doesn't show you each car's individual stats--rather, it's as if the game simply asks: "Which one looks the most badass to you?" Even the series' signature Rewind feature feels more at home here than it ever did in Motorsport, as it keeps you from having to repeat races due to a single botched turn. Forza Horizon 2 wants you in a car and doing awesome stuff as quickly and as often as possible, without having to worry about differentials and gear ratios.
That is, unless you want to worry about that stuff, in which case Forza Horizon 2 has you covered there as well. You can poke around under the hood and change pretty much anything, from tuning different parts of your car to changing individual difficulty settings. That has long been a hallmark of the Motorsport games, but it’s new here in the more arcadey Horizon series. The cosmetic damage I mentioned earlier? You can switch over to realistic damage, meaning your car will stop dead in its tracks if it gets banged up too much--completely changing how you approach driving in the game. By taking advantage of these options, you can transform Horizon 2 from a simple arcade racer to a much more in depth simulation. It never feels truly necessary, though, and a vast majority of my time was spent without even touching any of these settings. Still, it's there if you want it, and it disappears almost completely if you don't care about anything other than going fast. Race against the world In addition to the massive solo mode, Forza Horizon 2 includes an impressive online component. Compete in Road Trips or free roam across the entire map with several friends, picking and choosing races as you go. In addition to the typical races, you can also compete in Playground events, like Infected (ram into other cars as fast as you can to "infect" and turn them to your other side). While I wish the lines between online and off were a bit more blurred than they are here, if you're looking to test your driving mettle against the world's best racers, you won't be disappointed. Actually racing on each of Forza Horizon 2's many courses is a varied and exciting experience. Drivatars--the AI system introduced in Motorsport 5 that takes other players' racing data and puts it in your game--are back, and they seem to fit even better here than they did in the game that created them. Drivatars in Motorsport 5 are overly aggressive, to the point of constantly trying to ram into you, and it feels out of place in that game’s overly sterile environment.
Not so here, as races in Horizon 2 are far more cutthroat and unpredictable, going from pavement, to off-road, and back again, with racers often leaving behind a wake of wooden fences and traffic cones. Earning skill points takes the insanity to a whole new level, as you're rewarded based on how well you drift around corners or how close you get to other drivers without crashing. Racing in Horizon 2 is a contact sport, and it's the most thrilling it's ever been in the series. In between championships, you can explore the massive open world of Southern Europe and take on a plethora of additional side content. It's makes for nice diversions, but much of it feels like just that--a diversion. Sure, you can seek out and destroy all 150 XP boards on the map, but there's really no incentive to do so, other than to say you did. Still, having this huge map to explore lets you be as focused or as distracted as you want to be, while always keeping you engaged in the act of driving
After a while, though, Forza Horizon 2 starts running out of new tricks. Each championship in the game works like this: First, you go on a Road Trip to your destination--a timed jaunt that's less about racing and more about learning the lay of the land. Once there, you partake in four different races tied to your chosen championship. Once you finish those, you go on another road trip and do it all over again. For a while, you're constantly unlocking new features in between races, but once you start focusing in on knocking off wins to make it to the Horizon Finale, it starts to feel a bit repetitive. Still, it takes around 10 hours to get to a point where you're even starting to repeat races, and with 180 different championships, there's a ton to do. And when the core racing is this good, you won't mind a little repetition. Despite minor faults, it's easy to love Forza Horizon 2. With many of the optional features the more serious Motorsport games are known for, along with Horizon's high-octane thrills and massive open landscapes to explore, Forza Horizon 2 is a culmination of the best parts of both games, all in one package.
FOR MORE INFO. VISIT GAME BLAST OFFICIAL SITE
http://gameblast.wix.com/game-blast
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)