[Editor’s Note: Because Microsoft didn’t send out review copies until Wednesday, we’re still working on our review. We’re aiming to have it completed early next week, but for those of you who want our early impressions, here’s what Luke thinks of Forza Motorsport 7 so far.]
My first day and a half with Forza Motorsport 7 was spent doing much the same as I’ve done with every previous instalment: attempting to move through the solo campaign while allowing myself to become occasionally distracted by experimenting with interesting new car and track combos (and with more cars and tracks than ever, there are plenty of those). Overall, it’s a fairly familiar experience thus far, and one that hasn’t deviated much from the time-tested loop established by genre kingpin Gran Turismo back in 1997. Beating opponents, winning credits, and injecting those credits back into the next race by buying better parts and collecting new cars are again the core concerns. In other words, I can confirm that this is definitely a Forza Motorsport game.
Forza Motorsport 7 is drop-dead gorgeous and marches at a steadfast and decisively locked 60 frames per second under every circumstance.
The Forza Motorsport series’ key pillars have always been its technical strength and its sheer breadth of content, and they remain so here. As usual, Forza Motorsport 7 is drop-dead gorgeous and marches at a steadfast and decisively locked 60 frames per second under every circumstance. Also as usual, it’s arrived with a very respectable smorgasbord of the world’s most renowned tracks, as well as cars from all corners of the globe (over 700 if you go by the bullet points, though slightly fewer if you take out the pre-customised “Forza Edition” doubles). To me, the controller handling feels as if it’s been honed to convey more heft, but it’s not a drastic departure from the fun handling model of past Forza games. It’s still quite straightforward to hold satisfying drift angles, poising your car sideways on the throttle. I’m still testing settings across two different wheels for Xbox One and PC (IGN’s team in the US has experienced errors downloading the game on PC but my limited experience out of Australia on PC has been fine so far, with my save migrating from Xbox One to PC and back seamlessly).
It does seem like it’s pivoted just enough from Forza Motorsport 6 to establish itself as a worthwhile upgrade, however, and combined with the tweaks to the driving experience, the massaged sound, and the much-improved track atmosphere, this year’s edition already feels like the definitive Forza Motorsport game by any measure.
Forza Motorsport 7 contains a more linear and structured solo experience than previous games, but the biggest shift is how developer Turn 10 has doubled down on the car collecting. The cars are now arranged in tiers, and the more of them you have the further up these tiers you’ll be able to pluck cars from.
Forza Motorsport 7 functions just as well as a virtual car museum as it does a video game.
I think it works, considering that Forza Motorsport 7 functions just as well as a virtual car museum as it does a video game, and I can’t really find too much wrong with anything that encourages people to interact with cars they may not have ever heard of otherwise. I’m all for folks having their (Forza) horizons broadened. As someone who enjoys compulsively collecting, customising, and experimenting with as many cars as I can afford, having a collection system that rewards me for amassing a warehouse full of rides with access to higher-end and rarer cars is actually quite motivating.
For anybody who has previously maintained narrow, ruthlessly curated personal garages within older Forza games, the change may be a bit unwelcome; accumulation for the sake of accumulation, perhaps. It also does admittedly smack a little of Gran Turismo 5’s aggravating XP system, which locked cars you could otherwise afford from purchase until you’d reached an arbitrary level. Unlike GT, however, Forza Motorsport 7 still allows you to drive anything you want in Free Play, so nothing is ever totally inaccessible.
One of the most welcome changes I’ve found for now is the varied time-of-day track lighting. Unlike Forza 5 and Forza 6, where all tracks are snapshots of a certain time of day and temperature, Forza 7’s tracks take on a new look: one time through you’ll see baking midday sun, another an overcast dusk with the low sun glowing a deep orange behind the grey clouds. The weather isn’t always fixed anymore, either, and some tracks can be set to shift from dry to wet. The wet surfaces look absolutely stunning when the heavens open up but not all tracks support this stuff, though, and Forza Motorsport 7 doesn’t offer the same level of nuance in terms of dictating the precise time and weather scenarios for your custom races as Project CARS 2 does.
There’s also the added shake and vibrating wipers and such in cabin view, which adds a bit of ferocity that’s probably been lacking from Forza.
But there are plenty of other adjustments I’ve been pleased to see, from the new ability to lengthen otherwise-short races (to give yourself time to chase down the top-tier AI) to the even more aggressive audio work, which sounds especially terrific and raw in the chase cam perspective. There’s also the added shake and vibrating wipers and such in cabin view, which adds a bit of ferocity that’s probably been lacking from Forza – particularly for those like me who tend to play from behind the wheel. I don’t doubt I’ll notice more flourishes over the coming weekend.
One thing I definitely can’t see myself warming to, however, is the new loot box system. Honestly, it’s just not a phenomenon I remotely understand. I’m keenly aware that somehow prize boxes have been successfully implemented in a range of hugely popular games (Overwatch being the prime example), but it’s just not for me. Fortunately, in the case of Forza Motorsport 7 you’re only exchanging in-game currency to purchase prize crates – there isn’t any way to acquire them with Earth dollars, at least for now – but it just seems unnecessarily nebulous to me. I can’t really see what it adds to the game, I guess.
I’ll be progressing further through the solo features and trialling multiplayer over the weekend. We’ll have our final review and video review for Forza Motorsport 7 up early next week.
Luke is Games Editor at IGN's Sydney office. You can find him on Twitter @MrLukeReilly.
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