Grindy
Forza Motorsport 5 developed by Turn 10 and published by Microsoft is the racing game equivalent to a grindy RPG. Forza features great visuals to go along with a game that simply lasts too long and is very slow to progress.
The gameplay in Forza 5 is about almost as good as it is going to get for any racing game. The game does a great job of blending simulation gameplay with customizable options to allow even beginner players to have tons of fun. The player can adjust the difficulty sliders and racing assists a number of different ways, and everyone will be sure to find a happy median of fun and challenge. Once you discover your median there simply isnt much else to do in Forza other than continuously race against questionable AI or human opponents. The game lacks variety as compared to other racing games.
The meat of Forza Motorsports 5 is the career mode. The career mode is overly simple as you can race in one of six categories of racing such as track toys, compact cars, or real life racing types. Beyond picking your race series and hitting the track there is almost nothing to change how the game is played from one race to the other. In total there are easily 400+ races in the career broken up into series of 10. Playing through the entire career will take many many hours with no variety. I have sunk in about 50 hours in the career with a few sets of races left. After about 20 hours of playing the game turns into nothing but a complete grind as you try to accumulate enough credits or experience to enter the next set of races. The later cars such as open wheel racing cars and top of the line Buggati's cost way too much money. I am at a point where the next car I need to purchase costs 2 million credits, and I have barely any left after buying cars for other races. This is even after a patch that lowered the amount cars cost and increased the credits for races completed. The developers designed this grind on purpose as they allow you to purchase more experience and cars with micro transactions. To buy the 2 million credit car for the next race would cost me roughly 10$ real money just for one car! After a patch that lowered it! The grind level combined with the willingness for he developers to present options for micro transactions on nearly every screen can easily turn someone off to the game.
The biggest issue with the single player portion of Forza 5 is easily the frustrating and poor AI design. The developers thought it would be a good idea to craft every AI car out of how other people both from your friends list and randoms race in their own races. This concept known as "drivitars" eliminates standard computer AI with replica racers. In concept this seems like a fantastic idea, but the execution is very poor. Since the AI is modelled after humans all of the 15 other cars on track constantly try to ram you off the track and run into each other in corners. It feels like a multiplayer race, but generally that doesnt make the game any better. It does make winning races a lot more difficult, but it also makes them 100x more frustrating.
Another way to gain credits and experience is to take your cars you have purchased and race them online against other humans. There are many different race types offered in multiplayer, but one big problem is that they are all grouped into separate playlists. There is no option in the multiplayer to just join a quick lobby of any type of race, and this results in matches having a lot less players than there should be and longer wait times. I was able to get into a few lobbies with 8+ racers, but most of the lobbies seemed to only have 4-8 total racers. All in all there is simply too many race types options spread over multiple lobbies instead of grouping more players together in fewer lobbies.
There are plenty of different cars to race with, even though there are a lot less to choose from than previous games in the series. The player can also design and customize every car to give each its own personality, or they can use designs that have been uploaded by the community. On the other hand the number of tracks to race on is very disappointing. There are 13 tracks in total with a few variations of each, but all of the tracks race similar except for the tracks with unique elements such as Laguna Seca or Circuit De Prague. All of the tracks are real world tracks. The game just feels like you are racing on the same tracks over and over again. Also present in the game is presentation brought to you by Top Gear UK. Clarkson, Hammond and May provide introductions for cars and races in the career, and the top gear test track is also raceable.
As much as I love simulation racers and Top Gear, Forza 5 is just missing something that prevents the game from getting a higher score. It would get a 3.5 if we could give half stars but it gets a 4 due to the multiplayer being great when I could get into a good lobby.
