5 Things I Hate About Forza Motorsport 6

Hello dear CTzens ! I’m writing this article today to expose some problems about my favourite racing game franchise : Forza Motorsport. But first, let me give you a bit of background about me. I’ve been playing video games since I was 8 years old, and I’ve been growing my passions for cars and gaming in a way that marries both. My first ever video game was Need For Speed 4 : High Stakes but my love for racing simulation games was born when I first played Gran Turismo 2.

With the first Xbox came Forza Motorsport. This game was so much better than all other games I’ve played : the customization, the cars, the tracks, the soundtrack and the graphics, everything was perfect. Instant crush ! I never looked back, goodbye Gran Turismo. Since then, I’ve played every Forza titles, and while my favourite remains the second opus, we are here today to talk about the 6th of the Motorsport series… So let’s get started !

1. The AI : the “revolutionary” system of the Drivatars.

In the career mode, like in every sim-racing games, you race against Artificial Intelligence. And in Forza Motorsport 6, the AIs system is called Drivatars, a name that appeared in the first FM game. And while you had to “train” an AI by racing alone on racetracks, in FM6 it works slightly differently : it takes data from your racing style and that of many others via the Xbox Cloud and brings it together to shape how your opponents will drive during a race, making for a much richer, more realistic experience.

Well, in theory, this sounds good. But the reality is far from this. In Forza Motorsport 6, you race against AI like any other games, however this time, they are way too much aggressive, and contacts are inevitable (there is an option in the difficulty menu to make them a bit less “touchy”). Even worse, they aren’t getting better when you rise the difficulty, they just corner a little bit better, but are getting faster in straights. in “Unbeatable” difficulty, they become so broken that they are infuriating. And it’s not the skills of your friends, because whatever the hardness, you’ll see their name over some cars, badly driven or not. It really seems like they just found a fancy name to call their AIs.

2. Customisation.

I won’t talk about the painting/wrapping mode here, because it’s the best section of the customisation in this game. The parts that help you enhance the performances of your car are great, the PI system is good (even if sometimes it feels quite approximative). The real problem is when you want to change bodykits, change the aerodynamics of your “racecar”.

While in GT6 you have custom rear wings (you can change the width , length, height and style with different settings) and well integrated body enhancement (if available on your car), in FM6 you have real aftermarket bodykits (rarely or most exclusively for JDMs), or the “Forza Aero” consisting on a splitter with a pair of canards mounted on your stock bumper up front (or a simple “vintage” splitter for old cars) and a rear wing at the back, with the exact same design for every cars (the only difference is when your car is a hatchback or an old car, the design changes but remains the same all carsof this type). The best body modifications, but of course the rarest, are the OEM ones (normal indeed, they are made for the car). No widebodies.

But of course, this “Forza Aero” package doesn’t always look good. I’d even say it’s rarely the case. Most of the time, it looks “OK”, I mean by that It’s not very nice but it won’t burn your retina. Sometimes however it’s just horrible (the next photo will show you). So if you can get passed the look of it, it’s necessary if you want your car to be competitive, but if you can’t, you keep the car for the collection, or for fast tracks that don’t require downforce. And appart from the evident lack of real body parts (OEM or Aftermarket) and widebodies (because racecar), this “Forza Aero” is the only thing you have to tune the downforce or your machine.

Forza Motorsport, first of the name, was better for the rear wings, because there were 3 different design, and you could choose the best for the car you were building. Yet for nowadays games, on this point, GT6 does a better job.

3. The car collection.

This point isn’t about the quantity, it’s about the quality. Over 400 cars is more than sufficient, even greater when they are all beautifully rendered, inside and outside (forzavista mode can be a pleasure for your eyes). But let’s clarify something, Forza Motorsport 6 is a racing simulation, on closed racetracks like Laguna Seca, LeMans and our beloved green hell, the Nürburgring.

So first, why do we have off-road mastodon and fat SUVs (there is a championship just for them in the career called “Sport Utility Juggernauts”) like the F-150 SVT Raptor, or the uber-fat Hummer H1, even the ugly Pontiac Aztek ? There are some other cars that are pointless or just fun for 5 minutes and then get lost on your collection. These kind of cars are better in a game like Forza Horizon, with open spaces and jumps and hills and funny things to do (I love drifting my H1 and do some cross country races in the F-150 SVT Raptor, but doing this in FM6 ?).

And secondly, the manufacturers aren’t equally represented. It is maybe a problem of licences, but if GT6 can get that much cars, you’re just not trying. I won’t start another debate, but I’d just say that I’d love to see more car from my homeland and from the old continent in general like the old British little bombs.

4. No custom lobbies.

That’s one of the reasons why, for me, Forza Motorsport 2 was the best. The custom online lobbies. You were able to create your own session, choose the track, with your own rules, and anyone could join (the plus being the possibility to select the nationality of the lobby, suppressing the language barrier). Oh, and yes, being able to kick out those who were ramming people off. Aaaaah, the good old days…

In FM6, all you got is the choice of the class you want to race in, and the matchmaking finds you a lobby. No one talks, or when someone says something, it’s a kid asking if people got a microphone, and then, dead silence. So is the “community”.
You can’t cheer up at the end of a race, chat, exchange tips,… Nah, you can’t do that anymore, online lobbies are as silent as a roadkill.

On this point, Forza Horizon 2 has the best online system, whether it’s online free roam or online road trip.

5. Corner cutting.

This last point is something only “hot-lappers” like me will notice, especially in Rival mode. this has been addressed to Turn 10 Studios many time, but it’s still a thing, so I got to talk about it.

This is for me the most engaging kind of racing, “hot-laps” or racing against the clock. It’s just you and your machine versus the track and it’s timer. and in Forza Motorsport 6, it’s the Rivals mode that gives you the best of it. You choose the track, the car, and the game gives you lap-times of other players, friends or complete strangers, and you have to do better.

The problem is that people cuts corners in this mode. In previous Forza Motorsport games, doing so would make you “dirty” and your lap time would be marked as such, thus resulting in the inability to reach the top of the board. This time, No such things on some corner of some tracks such as Monza, Silverstone, Indianapolis GP or the Top Gear test track.

Then, why trying to do it properly if you know that some brainless cheater will beat you because he didn’t liked the apex on this special corner that took you 10 laps to master ? You either give up as a gentleman or try long enough to become a cheater…

It is still a great game.

All this of course isn’t to say that Forza Motorsport 6 is a bad game. New features like night racing and rain are great, the new tracks help refreshing the licence and the graphics are awesome. But to be perfect, this game still as a long way to go, so we just can hope that T10 Studios will listen to us and make things better, or I’ll stick to the Forza Horizon Franchise, which is more arcade oriented, but is a lot funnier and community-friendly.

Thank you for reading this, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did while writing it, and sorry if there are grammatical mistakes, english isn’t my native language ! Feel free to share your reactions in the comments below. I would have usually finished with a potato picture, but because Forza Motorsport is a game “where dreams are driven”, I’ll leave you with my 3 dream cars that are, for my pleasure, in the game !