Forza 5

[spatular]

New forza! same as the old forza? pretty much, so it's still really good.

there are a few small changes i've noticed that i really like - being given the option to pick one of the popular (or search through any) community paint jobs, or any colour before buying a car. when you pick a new car for a series, it auto upgardes it and shows the new stats before you buy it. it gives you timetrial/rivals laptimes to aim for in career races. only having to get in the top 3 for gold encourages me to up the difficulty, and so makes the races more fun then pervious versions, so far anyway.

i thought id hate the drivatar thing, and it has rammed me off a few times (so the rewind is very helpful there) but it seems to have made the races quite good fun surprisingly. and it's off earning you money all the time too.

the pad is really nice - one of the big new things is the rumble triggers, for racing games i can see these being great, think i need to get used to it though.

main disappointment is lack of steering wheel/force feedback but i already knew about that and it's not the games fault, i'm sure it'd be better with a wheel.

theres been a lot made about the lack of content, the cars doesn't bother me personally, 200 is plenty for me, and from previews it looks like theres loads of cool ones to look forward to. lack of tracks is more worrying, but it's too early to say if it'll get too samey for me.

graphics are really nice, it's super smooth and theres lots of cars on track, but i'm not sure its the best thing to show off a new console (well the new prague track maybe) as a lot of the real life circuits are just a bit boring due to lack of scenery and stuff.

oh yeah, like DANGERMAN mentioned in the other thread, it's pretty cool that you can start playing when its still downloading, you have to pick from the first 3 cars, and you're locked down to the first championship, and have to keep playing each track till the next one loads, but much better than having to wait till the download finished.

there's barely any people on here getting the new xbox as far as im aware so it might be quite quiet in here?

[Craymen Edge]

From what I've heard about the game so far, my big worry is that it's going to get really grind-y, since they apparently no longer give you cars for levelling up etc. I also hear that you're no longer able to dtive cars you don't own in free play, which sounds like a weird design decision to me.

So how does the progression feel?

I wonder if not getting rewarded cars is down to the reduced number in game, or to make the buying of car tokens with real cash look more appealing.

[spatular]

yeah seems like you have to buy the cars to do rivals (which is really crap), but there are some cars you can use in free play, including some quite cool ones - just tried out an indy car!<br /><br />progression is difficult to judge, it does seem slow yes, but then its similar in previous forza's so its hard to judge if its any worse to make you spend money.<br /><br />i was playing all day yesterday, sticking to the first group of championships, and in no way do you have to spend real money to progress, i've bought about 5 cheap-ish cars, one for 100k, the rest around 50k each, and i have saved up about 700k as well, so cold afford to do some of the higher up races, but want to save for a racing car which is about 1.2m, the f1 car being 6m - so to get the f1 car i can see it being a bit of a grind. early days though i guess.<br /><br />

[spatular]

as time progresses i'm getting a bit disappointed with a few aspects tbh.

i thought the monetary rewards would increase as you get to the harder races but that doesn't seem to be happening, so yeah it could be a big grind to the f1 car etc. i still think all the criticism is a bit over the top because i don't remember any GT/Forza game that isn't a big grind - i wish they werent personally mind. and if the fallout causes a patch that improves things - that would be good. i'm still at the stage where my winnings easily allow me to buy cars to take part in most of the game, its just thoes few elusive cars.

also the handling, after getting used to them i think the rumble triggers are ace, but i'm struggling in high speed corners - it's something many racing games struggle with but i seem to remember forza being really good for this - or maybe i'm remembering wrong because i usually use a wheel. anyway, shamefully i've changed the handling from simulation to normal (only for the fast/twitchy cars) - and it has helped with the high speed cornering.

edit - maybe t10 are listening to the complaints, i've just been gifted 3 cars.

[spatular]

Good news!

[spatular]

increased rewards this month, i got 5 mill, and with the half price cars at the moment i can by the F1 car and some more cool ones

[spatular]

Apparently the patch to give more money and make the cars cheaper is out now.

I went back to this a bit the other day, did some time trials and races with the f1 car - awesome fun. Also I like how you get cash for doing time trials.

[Sly Reflex]

This ain't bad for a freebie chuck in.

You know what? I like Drivatar. Stupid name I know, but it's like playing online without playing online, it's not really often that AI gets it right, but here they have. There's only a few people that I've driven against, Gouki16, MF Nick, Sabre, TheBoyInGreen to name a few. You might recognise some of those names, you might not. The thing is that they drive like you'd expect them to. Gouki sticks to the line and races cleanly, MF Nick and TheBoyInGreen and will jostle and cut you up to gain or retain places, MF Nick in particular is really risky, he has the back end sliding all over, likes to cut in on the apex and generally throw his weight about. The races I've had have been real toca touring car style, very physical and fraught over, it adds to the game over the usual driver AI. In no way was the AI in previous games bad, but this is a whole new playing field. It's impressive stuff that they can do that sort of thing, it keeps you on your toes.

[Sly Reflex]

I started and finished my first paintjob tonight. It shows up on my drivatar whenever it races, which is pretty cool. I know I've seen other people on my friends list show up with paintjobs, normally some go faster stripes or some tribal shite.

[Uncle Dokuro]

Have you done any upload studios for Forza 5 yet?

[Sly Reflex]

I don't even know what they are. I might have, I leave the share thing open for everything I do in game.

[Uncle Dokuro]

You have to download the Upload Studio app from the store and then you can edit your footage. 

 

 

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[Sly Reflex]

I don't think I'll bother with that for Forza. Might be worth looking into when I get some different games. I think it only has a 30 seconds thing as well, it's not like the PS4 where it records the past 15 minutes. I guess it'd be alright for montages.

Back to Forza 5. I really like this, but there's some things that bug me. Stuff like not showing who finished where after the race is over kind of bothers me, I want to see who finished where with what times, as far as I can see there's no way to see that. I've had some really good races against Spatula and it'd be nice to know exactly how much I beat him/got beat by him by. When I see someone spin out or run wide I want to see how badly that affected them on the final table.

Also the penalties thing needs looking over. Previous games used to do you for everything even if it wasn't you to blame and although they've removed some stuff. As it is now it's pretty much impossible to have a clean race, when you have 16 cars all jamming around a chicane or hairpin there's going to be rubbing and touching and it's a bit unfair that you get penalised for that. Really they should make it so that if you hit someone if it sets off over a certain G's you get seconds added to your lap time. Same with cutting corners, if you spend time on any part of the track that isn't valid the time you spend there should be added to your final lap time.

While we're at it, I can see you microtransactions. This isn't a F2P game, this is a full retail game and you've no right to show your face around these parts, thank you very much. From what I can see the grind isn't so bad (although I understand it used to be) so the tokens are kind of pointless now, but that shit is something that really really shouldn't be in a game that already has it hand out for extras as soon as you start playing it.