A weird thing happened on the way to my Forza 6 review.
Not weird in the sense of an otter covered in blancmange suddenly appearing in front of me playing the theme to “The Goodies” on bagpipes*, but weird in the sense that while I was playing it, I was always thinking about what might be next.
Which in many ways isn’t fair to the latest in the Forza series. Forza 6 is, like its forebears, a game all about motor racing, complete with its own breathless intro that tries to define why we race in philosophical terms.
No, really, this was a thing that they spent budget on.
Not that a lot of cash hasn’t been spent on making Forza 6 a lot more of a racing game than Forza 5 or Forza Horizons, with a choice of 460 vehicles to tool around some 26 tracks on. That’s a solid choice of rides and walls to crash them into.
I suspect the reason why while I was playing Forza 6, I was thinking about where racing games could go next was down to to two primary reasons.
Firstly, it’s rather good. I’m not a huge fan of petrolhead-style racing games to speak of, but I can easily see the general quality in Forza 6 shining through while playing, even for a heathen like myself. I’m certain that the more passionate driving sim fans will be busy arguing over whether it’s better or worse than, say, Project Cars based on the minutiae that’s only obvious to the most hardcore of hardcore fans.
I can’t speak to that, because it’s not the way I approach racing games at all. I’m significantly more casual than that in my approach to them, looking more to the straight up “fun” aspect (and yeah, I know that’s a horribly loaded and nebulous term) rather than whether the wheel nuts on the 1972 Mazda RX2 are the right shape or not. The odds are good that they are, if it’s even in the 460 cars to start with.
Forza 6 is fun, and it’s mostly well realised for the more casual player, with plenty of tweaking around skill levels alongside a card-based “mods” mechanism that grants you both permanent and temporary boosts, although some of these are gambling-based negative boosts, so you could, for example, take a worse grid position in return for a greater payoff if you do manage to win your race. There’s good variety in the tracks, and there’s options for genuinely scary night races, or races in the rain with some eerily accurate aquaplaning if you’re a bit too enthusiastic on the pedals.
Forza 6, like the Forzas before it, still does play to a slight arcade sensibility, albeit not to quite the same extent as, say, a Need For Speed game. I like that, and I suspect that’s a play for the masses, because while there’s no shortage of genuine motoring fanatics, those who just want to drive a Veyron fast around the Nürburgring and don’t much care for gear ratios are still going to outnumber them.
That’s what got my brain wondering where you go to from here, and whether racing games — Forza 6 amongst them — might not have fallen into the sports game trap.
Every year, there’s a new FIFA, a new Madden, maybe a new Golf or Ice Hockey or Tennis or similar game from the few makers that can turn a dollar once they’ve paid the licensing costs for these incredibly complex games.
Every year, they’re tweaked around the edges, but we’re well and truly past the days when they could make genuinely shocking changes to the core gameplay. Those who play them obsessively — and there are those who buy a console only to play FIFA on it, for example — will spot the small tweaks and appreciate the roster upgrades, but for the masses it means you really can take a rest from sports franchises on a rolling basis. Unless you’re fanatical enough to care about the rosters (and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that in any way), last year’s game is probably good enough, and certainly likely to be fun enough to play with your mates.
Forza 6 is like that. It’s fun, and without going into the terrible specifics of whether it gets the feel of multi-million dollar sportscars and hot hatches and all the rest just right — because honestly, I wouldn’t know and the chances are pretty damned good you wouldn’t either — it’s probably your best racing bet if you’re an Xbox One owner right now. It’s improved enough than Forza 5 or Forza Horizons to be worth buying, but equally, it’s likely to be good enough for most gamers for some time.
While there are minor quirks that could be attended to, they’re really pretty minor at this stage. You can’t have rain at night. The way that the challenges and career mode spans out can be a bit of a low level-grind. The random spins reward you regularly, but they can be very unbalanced, with some huge prizes theoretically achievable very early in the game. Sometimes the “Drivatars” — the apparently-derived-from-your-friends-lists driver foes you face — do things that are inexplicably weird, even for human drivers. Those are all things that could be either patched into Forza 6, or built into Forza 7, and some folk would never even notice.
Oh yeah, and before I forget: Anyone who comes across my Drivatar. I’m really very, very sorry. I’m almost certain he’s an overly aggressive jerk.
There are some obvious avenues driving games could go down, full VR being the most immediately evident. But for now, there’s Forza 6, and while it’s very good indeed, it does rather suggest that we’re not likely to see much better with mainstream appeal that’s going to fully justify its asking price, unless you’re a fan of driving minutiae. If you are, buy Forza 6 and have a blast just perving at the car models and realistic dashboard simulations.
I’ll be out on the track, or probably crashing into a wall while pondering too much about the future of videogames.
*I have weirdly specific hallucinations. It’s probably something to do with eating too much cheese before bedtime.