FM6 Review: Forza Motorsport 6

[Justin]

Another year, another Forza release for an Xbox console.

For over a decade, Turn 10's Forza Motorsport series of games have been a topic of intense debate in the sim racing community. One question is consistently asked: Why don't Microsoft release these games on PC to go head to head with the best sims available on the market? A game with such a large variety of cars and tracks would be a sales hit among PC racing sim fans, with potentially little impact on the millions of sales gathered on Xbox due to a significant casual audience that both Forza and it's PlayStation equivalent Gran Turismo have.

Today, I'm attempting to answer this question with an in-depth review of the latest release in the Forza series, Forza Motorsport 6 for the Xbox One. This review is going to be conducted as if it were a PC racing sim, with an emphasis on wheel support, physics and handling, multiplayer features and everything else that a sim racer wants to know about a new sim, with little compromise being had for any shortcomings Forza 6 may have.

Graphics, Sound and Presentation
From the outset, Forza 6 screams production values. Everything about the way the game is presented to you is a result of a large development studio with millions of dollars of funding behind them, and it shows. The opening cinematic does a fantastic job of firing you up to get into a car and go racing, and the menus are slick, functional and look outstanding. There is no sim on the PC that can compete with this. Returning features include the large amount of custom liveries created by the community that can be downloaded to cars in the game in a matter of moments, and also the large amount of custom setups that can be bought using in-game credits from people selling them.

However, when we get to the track, some of the cracks begin to appear. Most of the options available in the menus are still available to be tweaked on track, except for one major omission: wheel and controller settings. There is very little more frustrating early in the Forza 6 experience than constantly needing to wait through loading screens while you reload races when tweaking force feedback settings. It's a problem Project CARS shares, but on a lesser degree as at least there were some FFB settings that could be adjusted on track in that game.

On the graphical side of things, Turn 10 have aimed for a 1080p 60 frames per second image, and this framerate is rock solid, with no frame drops noted at any point during my time with the game. It is impressive considering this holds up even with a maximum 24 cars on track (an eight car increase on Forza 5's max) in wet weather conditions, which, along with night races, make their series debut in Forza 6. This is impressive considering Project CARS often drops to 30 frames per second in similar conditions on the console versions of the game.

Of course, this aim for a smooth experience with a high resolution on a console with the equivalent power of a mid spec gaming PC from 3 years ago has taken it's toll on some aspect of the image quality. Reflections and mirrors are noticeably low resolution and update at only 30 frames per second. Aliasing and jagged edges appear often as well, with the post-process based anti-aliasing solution only working in certain situations.

However, the image quality in general has still notably improved from Forza 5, and for PC sim racers who are still accepting of decade-old graphics for gMotor-based sims, the graphics in Forza 6 will still impress.

Turn 10 have been known to hire some amazing sound designers for previous Forza games, and the sound design in Forza 6 is no exception. The car sounds are fantastic and outside of a few outliers, the cars sound very close to how you would expect in the real world. Just be sure to turn off in-race music as soon as you access the options in the game, as while the music now has more variation rather than the single track orchestral piece from Forza 5, there is no substitute for the sounds of a roaring engine that many of us sim racers immensely enjoy.

Cars, Tracks and Weather
Content is one of the key aspects as to why the Forza games are so popular among revheads, and Forza 6 delivers this in spades. The car roster in Forza 6 has ballooned out to a stunning 460 cars. While the true car number is most definitely lower due to Forza's sneaky method of including different liveries of the exact same car as a separate entry in the car list, there is no doubting that very few games can match the sheer variety of cars available in Forza 6. Everything from budget hatchbacks to Formula 1 cars occupy a place in Forza 6, many of which are rarities not seen in most sims. It also has the single largest collection of antique Ferrari's I've ever seen in a racing game, with attention to detail that is stunning to experience. However sadly this Forza game does not feature Porsche at this time, who have made appearances in other Forza games in the past.

Turn 10 have also addressed one of the major criticisms of Forza 5, the low track count. From the outset there are 26 different track locations to pick from, a major improvement on the 14 available at Forza 5's launch. The track selection features fan favourites Spa, Bathurst and Silverstone in addition to endurance race stalwarts the Nurburgring and Le Mans. The Top Gear test track also remains a part of the roster allowing you to compare hotlap times to The Stig, while Indianapolis and Daytona have been included to satisfy oval racing fans as well.

Attention to detail on all of the tracks is excellent, and all of them provide a sense of lively atmosphere that no other racing sim can match, with my favourite being the smoke drifting from trackside cook-offs occurring in the fan viewing areas of Road Atlanta and Watkins Glen. Despite all this, the best looking tracks of Forza 6 are still the fantasy location tracks, with Rio de Janeiro being included in Forza 6 to accompany the Bernese Alps and Prague locations. Many of the real tracks are apparently laserscanned, however it is hard to tell due to the force feedback system used in Forza 6 not being informative enough to notice minute changes of the road surface (more on this later in the review). Another neat attention to detail is the ability for track-side objects to be damaged during races. Track-side barriers will be lined with the paint of cars that have rubbed against them and tyres will come loose and fly off the barriers if cars come into contact with them.

Much has been made of the two long awaited inclusions to Forza 6, night racing and wet weather racing. Sadly, their implementation is lacking. Wet weather only features on circuits that often experience rain in the real world, and night racing can only be done on tracks that have featured night racing in the past. In both cases this means a large degree of the tracks available in the game can not have either wet weather or night racing, which seems limiting compared to the free control you have in Project CARS. These conditions are also fixed, so the dynamic time of day and weather systems found in pCARS are not able to be replicated in Forza 6. In addition to this, wet weather and night races can not be combined at once, meaning the ultimate driving challenge, driving at night in the rain, can not even be attempted in Forza 6.

This is a major disappointment not because of the night racing, which is very similar to other sims that feature this, but due to the wet weather, which is by far one of the most detailed implementations featured in a racing sim to date. This is all down to the implementation of puddles on the track surface, formed in places where puddles tend to form on the circuits in the rain in the real world. The location of these puddles are often on the racing line of the track, meaning driving around the puddles to avoid losses of grip and aquaplaning finally need to be applied, something that no racing sim to my knowledge has ever been able to achieve in the past.

Questions will be raised on whether these large puddles are realistic, as in many motorsports these track conditions would border on unsafe and undriveable. However, as we are playing racing sims with the danger of driving in these conditions being completely absent, the challenge involved in these conditions is very welcoming to experience.

Controllers, Wheels and Force Feedback
Forza 6 will primarily be played by most on a controller, and I can safely say that the gamepad controls still continue to be clear leader in providing an experience that makes all the cars fun to drive, while still keeping some of the characteristics that make each car unique. Special credit must also be given to the Xbox One controller in this situation, which contain comfortable, precise triggers that also include separate rumble motors, providing more feedback about the grip of the car than many other gamepads can provide.

As for wheels, Forza 6 supports all of the very few Xbox One-compatible wheels available on the market, including the popular Thrustmaster TX and the newly released Logitech G920 Driving Force (which was used for this review) wheels. Forza 6 also includes H-shifter support on all wheels that have them, and this works as you would expect on any sim.

However, the way the game plays on a wheel is the start of Forza 6's downfall.

First of all, the default settings provided for wheels in Forza 6 are terrible. The default axis assignments have unnecessarily large amounts of deadzone applied, which require immediate tweaking in the settings menus. Force feedback is turned to the maximum by default and this also is very poorly thought out as these settings provide a wheel weight that would be in line with driving a 18-wheeler without any power steering. The wheel weight is too strong and clips any sort of nuanced effects out of the signal, and in my experience even when running the force feedback at even 30% strength, there is very little feel for the car outside of it's weight shifting.

The problems with the force feedback don't stop there. Despite the wheel being used, Forza 6 has a massive centre axis force feedback deadzone that cannot be dialed out at all. It makes any wheel feel like a G27, which is known for having deadzone issues in many games. (The G920 features a significantly reduced deadzone, so it is not the wheel at fault here before you begin to wonder that.)

Another poor omission is the lack of soft locks and auto-adjusting degrees of rotation per car. The degrees of rotation setting applied in the menus is the rotation all the cars in the game will use, no matter their real world steering locks and ratios. With Forza 6's car roster being so varied, this poses a major problem. While the recommended 540 degree setting works well with many of the GT and touring cars, it is too high for open wheelers and too low for most road cars. Considering so many other modern sims have implemented automatic steering rotation settings, this archaic method is frustrating to use. There is no way to adjust the lock or ratios in the setup menus either, which allowed gMotor sims without automatic rotation detection to still be playable on those using wheels set above 540 degrees of rotation.

 

[Justin]

Handling and Physics
The hot topic of debate for most people when talking about racing sims all centres on the way the cars handle. These things, most particularly the accuracy of the physics and tyre models, make or break a sim in the eyes of most in the community.

Sadly for Forza 6, it falls into the “broken” category.

Most people would initially think that this next section will be about me claiming that the physics have been simplified to make it easy for the majority of people playing the game, those on gamepads, to drive these cars easily. And yes, this is definitely the case when the handling model is Forza 6's default “Normal” handling mode, which applies copious amounts of steering speed sensitivity and dampening to make the experience very easy to handle.

However Forza 6 features a second “simulation” handling mode designed with wheel users in mind. This is where Forza 6 becomes a frustrating affair because the cars, surprisingly enough become too hard to drive.

Yes, you read that right. A console only sim has the least grip out of any racing sim I have ever played, including many gMotor based sims that suffered from being too hard to drive on their default setups.

Rear wheel drive cars, no matter their power or weight, often more than not just lose traction without any notice. You can be holding low amounts of throttle on a car during a medium speed corner, before all of a sudden the rear ends loops around. This simply does not happen in any other sim I've played, and hell, for the majority of cars this wouldn't happen in the real world, or cars would end up being banned worldwide due to the amount of destruction they would cause.

At first I accepted this as being a quirk of the many road cars in the game that aren't designed for track racing on what I assumed were road tyres. However, upon using GT3 cars and Le Mans Prototypes, both of which have grip-laden slick tyres and copious amounts of aerodynamic downforce, and the same thing still happened. It had me doubting my sim skills for the longest of times before I realised that this just isn't my fault: these cars are impossible to drive consistently. Slick racing tyres have no grip, aerodynamic simulation has virtually no impact on the way the car travels, and the car seemingly wants to work against the driver at all times when not going in a straight line. Even with recommended setup changes that slow the car down immensely, it is impossible to dial out this behaviour completely.

To make matters worse, the poor force feedback system contributes to this problem. The first reaction of most drivers when a car is losing grip is to counter-steer to try and power out of the slide. But in Forza 6, counter-steering is nigh on impossible to get right. The force feedback system has no middle ground when turning as the progression you feel in the wheel when turning from one direction to another while saving a slide is completely absent from the game. This means that slides in Forza 6 can't be saved, as the counter-steer will almost always end up with the car over-rotating in the other direction and starting a long and painful streak of fishtailing..

Front wheel drive and four wheel drive cars suffer from these issues much less, but any sim racer would know that the most desirable cars to drive are mostly rear wheel driven, making Forza 6's large car roster feel limited due to these drive-ability issues.

To add to these mishaps is Forza's continued use of “game-ifying” the assists available to the driver. Despite the continued rise of sims opting to apply assists like ABS and traction control per car based on what systems the cars have installed in real life, in Forza 6 the assists still apply to every car and give you the incentive to turn them off by increasing credit payouts in races. These settings have no levels of aggressiveness, for example traction control is either on and very aggressive to cut the power on wheelspin, or it's completely off. This system becomes especially annoying when some of the higher power GT cars that have such systems in real life are either way too slow with TC on, or completely undriveable with TC off.

This game-ification (yes I know this is not a word for you vocabulary specialists out there!) of the assists becomes downright bizarre when you elect to use proper manual settings with a clutch. This setting applies to all cars, even ones that use semi-automatic paddle-shift gear boxes in real life! Now I'm all for the idea to keep stick shift manuals with clutches alive in the automotive world, but this seems bizarrely excessive.

In my honest opinion, the reason why the cars seem to have little grip is because of this assist system Forza is using, or at least partly due to it. Turn 10 have decided to add in artificial difficulty to increase the challenge of the cars to justify people getting higher credit payouts from races. However, this goes against the ideals of creating a racing sim and making these cars handle as close to the real thing as possible. If Turn 10 truly valued the sim community, they would have opened a way to allow for people to use “real” assists, fixed up the quirks with the simulation handling model and redesigned their wheel force feedback system completely.

I'm disappointed at all of this because in very few situations, Forza 6 can shine. Some of the cars are replicated superbly, something that surprised me as someone who initially thought Turn 10 must have cut corners in physics modelling to be able to include the amount of the cars they have in these games. There are some downright awesome things locked away deep in the handling model of Forza 6 that are shamefully made invisible by Turn 10's silly, unrealistic design decisions.

Career mode and AI
In more positive news for Forza 6, career mode has seen significant improvements from Forza 5. Progression through the career now has a recommended linear path and a goal to aim for, which was completely absent in Forza 5. The main career spans 15 separate championships of approximately five to six races each, spread across five volumes of racing categories. These categories begin with street sports car racing in Volume 1 and ending with elite level motorsport including F1 and Prototype cars in Volume 5. Each one of the three series in each volume has it's own unique focus as well. For example one series may focus on racing in wet conditions, while another may only take place on tracks located with the United States.

These races are interspersed with one-off showcase events, which you are free to participate in when you are invited to them throughout the career. These events are much more varied than the standard eight to ten minute races in career mode, with events ranging from taking on The Stig in one-on-one races in the same car, to races that replicate popular real world events, like taking an IndyCar around Indianapoils, a V8 Supercar around Bathurst or taking part in mixed class racing at Sebring and Daytona.

The popular endurance events from earlier Forza games have also made their long awaited return, with races of at least an hour length including pitstops making their appearance for the first time since Forza 3. However, these endurance races are lacking, as the pitstop system in Forza 6 is bare bones. Pitstops are completely automatic from the moment you enter the pitlane, and there are no configurable options for them. From what I can gather, the only things that change in pitstops are the fuel level (which always fills the fuel tank to the brim) and fixing any acquired damage to your car (and for those of you wondering, visual damage to the cars is very minimal, similar to most other sims out there).

No tyre changes ever take place, and there's little need to as I haven't noticed any tyre degradation in my time with Forza 6 at all. Even fuel levels seem to be a token inclusion, as the weight of the car never changes no matter how much fuel is on board. Lap times at the start of stints will always be disappointingly similar to what they are at the end of stints. The terrible Top Gear “inspired” car bowling challenges are also included in these showcase events, though thankfully they can be avoided completely unlike their unwelcome forced appearances in Forza 5.

The open-ended nature of Forza 5's career mode can still be replicated somewhat, as you can continue racing in road cars for as long as you please so long as you have unlocked the volume of racing you want to stay in, and you own the cars required to complete the extra events. Showcase events can be attempted at any time and do not require you to own the cars in your garage to attempt them, but many of these events will be unavailable until you progress to a certain point in the career pathway.

The continued use of “Motorsport” in the title of these games continues to confuse me, as Forza continues to persist with the same old “races only, start from the middle of the grid” system. While practice mode has made an inclusion, which grants you unlimited track time before a race begins, however determining your position on the grid through qualifying sessions is still absent. Also absent are racing rules of any kind, including flags and penalties, and corner cutting is virtually unpunished. Barriers deter some of the more obvious corner cuts, but more often than not there is still multiple car widths available on the inside of corners to easily drive through without the game doing anything to deter such actions.

I can understand that most people playing Forza are not likely to care about these things, but making qualifying and strict rules an option for those of seeking to simulate proper motorsports like the way just about any PC racing sim does would improve the experience immensely for those looking for a proper motorsports experience, not to mention it would break the feeling of monotony that occurs after doing races end on end starting from 12th on the grid. This monotony is even more pronounced when the goal in every career race is exactly the same: to finish on the podium. You can not proceed unless you finish in 3rd or higher, yet the reward for finishing 3rd is exactly the same as winning the race, leaving little incentive to go for the win. This is bizarre considering Forza's open-world arcade spin off series, Forza Horizon, uses a points system for their championships, which would fit perfectly in the career mode progression in Forza 6.

The production values mentioned earlier are also very evident throughout the career mode. Voiced introductions by popular personalities in the automotive world are a nice touch, with appearances from Josef Newgarden, Justin Bell, Tanner Foust and Mark Skaife to name a few. Ex-Top Gear hosts Richard Hammond and James May also make voiced appearances in a continuation of their appearance from Forza 5, though Jeremy Clarkson has predictably been removed as a result of his producer-punching antics.

A new inclusion to the single player experience is mod cards. In all career races, you will have three mod slots, each with their own category. Green “Boost” mods give you anything from increased credits or experience points to improved grip for the next race only. Blue “Crew” mods are permanent boosts to the characteristics of the car, like improved braking, more horsepower or decreased weight. Finally, purple “Dare” mods are intended to be permanent challenges that increase the challenge in return for increased credit payouts. These include restricting the use of certain assists or locking your view to only one camera angle. These mod cards are obtained in mod packs, which can be bought at various prices using in game credits, with the more expensive packs including rarer cards that usually either have better boosts for Boost and Crew cards and more difficult Dare cars that reward higher amounts of credits. These mods are completely optional to use if you want to keep the cars as close to their real world counterparts as possible.

The way Forza 5 handled level progression rewards in career mode was severely criticised, with new levels only ever rewarding the same paltry amount of credits every time, with no ability to be rewarded with cars that occurred every few levels in older Forza games. Forza 6 has addressed this by introducing prize spins at every level up, which is lifted from Forza Horizon 2. Upon leveling up, a random spin will occur with 9 potential rewards available. These rewards can include anything from new cars to large credit amounts and mod packs. The jackpot prizes are often very rewarding, with super expensive cars and millions upon millions of credits available. In my time with the game, I've amassed six million credits in addition to winning Formula 1 cars both old and new, an Indy car, a few GT cars and even a Bugatti Veyron. Despite making me a little disappointed that this isn't real life, it allows anyone playing the game to amass a significant selection of cars or credits to buy new cars. This keeps the career progression moving forwards, instead of being stuck due to not having enough credits to buy new cars like many people struggled with in Forza 5. For those with less patience, car tokens bought using cash can still be used to quickly buy expensive cars as well if you're in no mood to wait until you earn the credits naturally.

AI in Forza is a mixed bag. For the most part, races against “traditional” AI are absent in Forza 6, with all career races using the “Drivatar” system, where the opponents on track will be AI made to resemble the driving abilities of either fellow Forza 6 players on your Xbox Live friends list or random players that fall into the skill level that you have selected. This system never provides a consistent experience, which is both a good and a bad thing. It's always good to have AI that make mistakes in troublesome corners and the variety of aggressiveness per driver is very noticeable.

However, even with the AI set to limited aggressiveness to stop them blocking and divebombing into corners, these traits still occur often, leading me to believe that the AI in Forza still don't take into account the positioning of other cars all that well. In the few showcase events that do use traditional AI, your opponents and much more predictable and well behaved, but also begin to be too tame and happy to follow the leader in packs. There's no real happy medium that is found in Forza 6, though in a comparison with Project CARS I would still prefer Turn 10's implementation of AI, as the AI in Slightly Mad's game exhibits confusing behaviour more often than in Forza 6.

Multiplayer
For anyone who complains about chaotic, frenzied public multiplayer races in PC online sims, let me be the first to say that you have seen nothing yet.

Public online lobbies in Forza 6 are what sim racers should consider to be the purgatory of online racing. It is as if every single racer who may even have a slight tendency to be a little overaggressive has been sent here to wallow in pain amongst themselves in a flurry of tire smoke, flying gravel and dented car panels.

Online races have a tendency to be against every single known rule known in online racing. Races must be won on turn 1 in Forza 6, as if you make it through turn 1 safe, you are ahead of about 80% of the field already. Blocking, weaving and divebombing are all acceptable methods of holding or gaining places, because if you don't you are never going to finish inside the top quarter of the field, ever.

Of course, you can't stop crazy drivers from being crazy, and when you consider many people online are probably either A) not used to driving games and therefore not aware of any common courtesies when racing others online, or B) users on wheels who are rammed into unsaveable spins that gamepad users can easily correct due freely using assists. This means the width of quality of drivers is significantly larger than that of any other racing game.

However, it is honestly my belief that it is the game's fault for cultivating drivers of questionable quality, as there is zero punishment for aggressive drivers in all of Forza 6's online game modes. The same issues with penalties and corner cutting that exist in career mode apply here; the issue being that there are no penalties or rules at all. The only control that people having in eliminating terrible drivers is to vote kick them out in the lobby, which very rarely if ever is coordinated enough to obtain enough votes to be successful. The racing line in Forza 6 is the absolute fastest way through a corner that avoids any barriers; the white line boundaries mean absolutely nothing.

Worst of all, this on-track anarchy even applies to Forza 6's new competitive “Leagues” system, where two playlists per week operate on a timed schedule and match people based on their skill chosen from five different categories, with the aim being to reach the top division by claiming as many points from races as you can, with higher points awarded for finishing ahead of people who are higher on the leaderboard than yourself.

You would think in a competitive mode that the missing penalties and corner cutting rules would be implemented. But once again, anything goes here. You could effectively bump and ram your way through races and the game would reward you for it by putting you in a higher division. To make matters worse, there are no restrictions on assists in this mode, which gives those running on wheels with simulation steering and no assists a major disadvantage. This disadvantage doesn't come through pure speed, as all the assists are very aggressive and will almost certainly add to your lap times, but instead makes driving so much more difficult to stay consistent with.

As I mentioned earlier, those running assists can easily correct and hold onto slides and spins, caused either by contact with other cars or just by losing control yourself, whereas those on wheels with no assists will never be able to do the same. The only way to stay competitive in the chaos is to eliminate any potential for error, which means turning on the assists and ruining the pure experience many of us sim racers desire. Forza 6 just isn't fun online when you try play it like a sim unless you organise private races with clean racers. In public lobbies, this game may as well be an arcade racing game, just mainly raced on real circuits instead of fantasy circuits.

It's a shame as on a technical level, Forza 6 provides a solid experience online. The use of a dedicated server backbone makes finding races a quick and easy process and on track things hold up quite well, with only minor lag experienced when wheel to wheel with other cars. Cars tend to get a little jumpy and warp when large distances ahead, but this is never a major issue that causes race-ending incidents.

Final Thoughts
Forza 6 is one of those rare games that will either please or disappoint people based on their expectations of the game. For the vast majority of people, this game will be played like an average racing game on a gamepad, just with an impressively large variety of cars and tracks with a lengthy single player career mode to use them in. Indeed, this is the way I played Forza games back on the Xbox 360 and I enjoyed them for it. It is deserving of all the other glowing reviews out there as they are geared towards being relevant for that wider audience, and there is no doubt many racing games fail to come close to the fun that can be had in Forza on a gamepad.

However, for many of us here, for a game that prides itself on being a racing simulation and using the word “motorsports” in the title, Forza 6 is a massive disappointment. For all the positives found in the flashy production values, the variety of the car and track roster, the wonderful wet weather effects and the great career mode, this game can not be considered a true racing sim. For those of us praying for a Forza game on PC, don't go worrying about missing out on a racing sim, as this game does not fit that bill.

The questionable physics and assists implementation, the poor wheel force feedback, the complete ignorance of common motorsport rules and regulations and the ridiculously poor multiplayer functionality make Forza 6 worthless for those wanting a decent wheel-ready racing sim on a console. Project CARS, despite its many issues, still remains the better of the two games when considered completely within the realms of racing sims.

There is no doubt that we will see Forza 7 in 2017, and hopefully then can Turn 10 realise that for all the sales and media acclaim that are being handed their way, they have a huge opportunity to create an incredible racing sim if they work on the aspects us sim racers want from sim racing games. The potential is undoubtedly there, and Turn 10 definitely have the workforce to do it within two years, it just needs realising.

In the meantime, we shall await to see whether Assetto Corsa's console release next year or even the potential release of Gran Turismo 7 within the next few years can take the mantle of the best console racing sim on the market away from Project CARS.

Score: 6/10

 

[Wojciech Swirydowicz]

Excellent review. It's almost as I would read my thoughts
The only cars that are good to drive without tuning are historic vehicles using old tires. Grip progression is very nicely recreated there and there's fun to be had for wheel users. The rest is just over sensitive and very easy to slide without a warning with force feedback actually making things more difficult.
Also lack of FOV adjustments is a killer and makes things harder to judge (wasn't mentioned in review). Cockpit cam FOV is so high that you would need 60' screen placed right in front of your face to have track look right.

 

[Derek Lundie]

Tried the demo out a week ago and had the exact same frantic oversteer issues with the RWD driving model in the RX7. Was hoping that it was down to poorly chosen upgrades or a poor default setup but after reading this review it's clear that it's an issue with all RWD cars in the game. Great review, echoed my impressions of the game exactly, looks like I will be avoiding this one.

 

[EpilepticToast]

Agree x1000, the unfortunate truth is that T10 are unlikely to change their ways when they can make easy money from the everyday casual car "enthusiast" who just wants to hop on and drive their rice burner around like they dream of doing in real life. The physics are a joke. It would be a fantastic game if only they made the physics realistic with wheel users in mind, but nope! another few years of waiting...

 

[Blkout]

Sorry Justin, I can't agree with a lot of your review although I understand everyone has their own opinion. As someone that has played every FM game from the beginning and almost maxed out all of their achievements, needless to say I've spent a lot of time with each game. FM6 is the best of the series and by no means deserves a 6/10 rating as evident by the Metacritic professional and user reviews which is more in line with that I think about the game.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-one/forza-motorsport-6

That being said, I would like to address one point that jumped out at me. You stated:

"The problems with the force feedback don't stop there. Despite the wheel being used, Forza 6 has a massive centre axis force feedback deadzone that cannot be dialed out at all. It makes any wheel feel like a G27, which is known for having deadzone issues in many games. (The G920 features a significantly reduced deadzone, so it is not the wheel at fault here before you begin to wonder that.)"

I have NO deadzone with the Fanatec CSW v2. I notice you didn't test that wheel but to state that "despite the wheel being used, FM has a massive center deadzone" is just not true with the Fanatec CSW v2.

FM6 is a great racing game and Turn 10 hasn't ever made the claim of being the best full blown driving simulator on the market. I'm sure Turn 10 knows quite well that PC's dominate the market if you want a full blown simulator. That doesn't take anything away from the wonderful game that Turn 10 has created. It fills the need in a market for this type of game. While not a full blown sim, its accurate enough to be more than an arcade racer and falls somewhere between. Its just a damn fine game for what it sets out to do.

 

[Justin]

Excellent review. It's almost as I would read my thoughts
The only cars that are good to drive without tuning are historic vehicles using old tires. Grip progression is very nicely recreated there and there's fun to be had for wheel users. The rest is just over sensitive and very easy to slide without a warning with force feedback actually making things more difficult.
Also lack of FOV adjustments is a killer and makes things harder to judge (wasn't mentioned in review). Cockpit cam FOV is so high that you would need 60' screen placed right in front of your face to have track look right.

Actually you make a good point on historic vehicles being better to drive than modern cars. Noticed it especially with the Group 5 cars that pop up in an early showcase event. They were very easy to drive on the limit...which kinda goes against pretty much every other version of them in other sims.

And yeah, FOV and camera issues are one of the things I forgot to include here. The FOV is way too far back and the camera position being titled slightly downward is sort of odd. Your points are definitely valid here.

Sorry Justin, I can't agree with a lot of your review although I understand everyone has their own opinion. As someone that has played every FM game from the beginning and almost maxed out all of their achievements, needless to say I've spent a lot of time with each game. FM6 is the best of the series and by no means deserves a 6/10 rating as evident by the Metacritic professional and user reviews which is more in line with that I think about the game.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-one/forza-motorsport-6

That being said, I would like to address one point that jumped out at me. You stated:

"The problems with the force feedback don't stop there. Despite the wheel being used, Forza 6 has a massive centre axis force feedback deadzone that cannot be dialed out at all. It makes any wheel feel like a G27, which is known for having deadzone issues in many games. (The G920 features a significantly reduced deadzone, so it is not the wheel at fault here before you begin to wonder that.)"

I have NO deadzone with the Fanatec CSW v2. I notice you didn't test that wheel but to state that "despite the wheel being used, FM has a massive center deadzone" is just not true with the Fanatec CSW v2.

FM6 is a great racing game and Turn 10 hasn't ever made the claim of being the best full blown driving simulator on the market. I'm sure Turn 10 knows quite well that PC's dominate the market if you want a full blown simulator. That doesn't take anything away from the wonderful game that Turn 10 has created. It fills the need in a market for this type of game. While not a full blown sim, its accurate enough to be more than an arcade racer and falls somewhere between. Its just a damn fine game for what it sets out to do.

I knew this review would have mixed opinions from Forza fans but yeah, as someone who has played Forza games in the past and has since moved onto playing more PC sims, Forza to me feels disappointing and it likely would for many other PC-centric sim racers who are interested in Forza games as well.

The reviews from the mass media are warranted and their opinions are definitely valuable. What they say and how they review the game reflects well on how most people will play the game. And I do agree with them in many aspects. But for sim racers I can't help but feel it's a product with so much potential going to waste due to certain design decisions. I wrote this review for a large sim racing community that RD contains after all.

Turn 10 may have lightened up their view on Forza being a sim but it still doesn't excuse the fact that they include motorsport in the title...when in reality it isn't very good at simulating many aspects which govern proper motorsports. The audience on the most part regards this game as a sim as well, and I have reviewed it as one to answer the question I posed at the start of the review.

As for the wheels, I've done most of my reviews on the G920 (which has no deadzone in any PC sim I've tried, at least not on G27 levels) and I have good word from someone with a TX that a lightness around the centre of the wheel is noticeable even for them. Would have loved to test it with a Fanatec wheel but from what I've read many people are experiencing a deadzone issue no matter what wheel they use, which is why I went with that statement. Hopefully it can be fixed in a patch and if there's improvement I'll amend that part of the review.

 

[PaulH]

Thanks for the review, the multiplayer part made me chuckle
Been on the fence about getting an XBone for a while, might just wait now after reading this.
Perhaps give it time to mature, do they release patches on XBone?
Although a FOV slider should be a default item in any racing game...
Will see how it develops......

 

[James Robertson]

No dead zone with the CSW v2 here either, I wonder what could be the cause of this?

In fact with the CSW V2 its the most enjoyable driving experience I have had in a game. I like the way you cant just charge into every corner with your pants on fire and sort it all out mid corner. With Forza 6 you have to adopt a more restrained driving approach and its a really enjoyable challenge IMO.

 

[belevezero]

Great review! I've been struggling with FM6 for over a week trying to figure out its physics model, and while it's not impossible to find a playable compromise in the wheel settings and tuning, it's a lot of work for what you eventually get. I use a TX wheel, and the forces are as you say, dead or barely breathing in the middle 25 degrees or so, unless you use a DOR of 360-540, but there's no sensitivity slider to supplement this. There's also very little nuance in the forces, so the information you get from the wheel is limited to the rumble strips and grip loss, but by the time that info comes through its already too late.

With that said, GT3 cars actually don't handle that bad, at least for me. I'd even say that they are more realistic in terms of grip than Project Cars (which is the most forgiving physics model I've ever experienced in a pc sim). Sure, I'd have to drastically soften the suspension and completely deflate the tires to unusual levels, but I can get around the track and enjoy it. The road cars on the other hand seem to oversteer intentionally, as if to make the handling arbitrarily difficult. I've tried to bring this up on Forza forums, but control pad players just tell me to L2P and that the game is perfect lol. Anyway, I hope it gets fixed, but I just don't think games like this are developed with wheel users in mind. Shame really, it could be a good sim.

 

[Tim.E]

This would be the only reason for me to buy an Xbox, such a shame this game isn't for the PS4!

 

[sum ting wong]

I agree with the physics 100%. I've played Forza probably since the first one and FM6 has just the worst oversteer in any game, sim or arcade. I also found the 1970s Lotus around Nordschleife easier to drive than a GT3 car or a Prototype. Far from realistic.
That was with "normal" physics. "Sim" physics are just unplayable.

 

[W_Akira]

Great review! I've been struggling with FM6 for over a week trying to figure out its physics model, and while it's not impossible to find a playable compromise in the wheel settings and tuning, it's a lot of work for what you eventually get. I use a TX wheel, and the forces are as you say, dead or barely breathing in the middle 25 degrees or so, unless you use a DOR of 360-540, but there's no sensitivity slider to supplement this. There's also very little nuance in the forces, so the information you get from the wheel is limited to the rumble strips and grip loss, but by the time that info comes through its already too late.

With that said, GT3 cars actually don't handle that bad, at least for me. I'd even say that they are more realistic in terms of grip than Project Cars (which is the most forgiving physics model I've ever experienced in a pc sim). Sure, I'd have to drastically soften the suspension and completely deflate the tires to unusual levels, but I can get around the track and enjoy it. The road cars on the other hand seem to oversteer intentionally, as if to make the handling arbitrarily difficult. I've tried to bring this up on Forza forums, but control pad players just tell me to L2P and that the game is perfect lol. Anyway, I hope it gets fixed, but I just don't think games like this are developed with wheel users in mind. Shame really, it could be a good sim.

There is really something wrong with the exaggerated oversteer on MR, FR and RR cars. To correct this you see many strange setups to make the car more driveable. Too much negative camber on rear (more negative than front axle), too low tire pressure on rear and other stuff.

 

[billymitchell]

I have NO deadzone with the Fanatec CSW v2. I notice you didn't test that wheel but to state that "despite the wheel being used, FM has a massive center deadzone" is just not true with the Fanatec CSW v2.

No dead zone with the CSW v2 here either, I wonder what could be the cause of this?

In fact with the CSW V2 its the most enjoyable driving experience I have had in a game.

Fanatec wheels have consistently been great with Forza titles, although my experience was limited to Forza 2, 3 and 4 on a 360 with a Porsche GT2 and CSR Elite.

Based on your remarks, it seems that tradition continues.

 

[Blkout]

I'm not having to do any major tuning tweaks to drive any vehicle in FM6. The physics in FM6 are far better than FM5. I did find it difficult to play with a gamepad the first day I played it but it's been wonderful with the Fanatec CSW v2. I'm on stage 13 of 15 in the career and it's been a wonderful experience.

 

[Matheus Machado]

Really like the way you analyze games by different perspectives. Haven't tried the game, so I have nothing much to say about it.

 

[Matheus Machado]

- wrong placed - Ignore

 

[yusupov]

cause of deadzone is probably simply the g27, 29 or whatever they want to call it. i dont buy that its significantly reduced.

 

[Justin]

cause of deadzone is probably simply the g27, 29 or whatever they want to call it. i dont buy that its significantly reduced.

G27's have this minimum force value from anywhere between 16-20%. This mininum force, as we know, is used to offset FFB deadzones on wheels.

The deadzone issue doesn't exist on the G920 at the very least. Not sure if the G29 is any different in this regard.

There must be something weird going on when Logitech and Thrustmaster wheels have the deadzone issue yet Fanatec wheels don't.

 

[TzZyO]

This game-ification (yes I know this is not a word for you vocabulary specialists out there!) of the assists becomes downright bizarre when you elect to use proper manual settings with a clutch. This setting applies to all cars, even ones that use semi-automatic paddle-shift gear boxes in real life! Now I'm all for the idea to keep stick shift manuals with clutches alive in the automotive world, but this seems bizarrely excessive.

That's not something unheard of on PC either. Try R3E and Dirt Rally, for example. They always give me a headache, since I have a tendency to switch between cars of different eras on a whim. And the unimplemented soft-lock feature surely makes it even more of a pain.

Let's hope that auto-adjustable controlling schemes will become a standard soon. Or that at least the player could be provided with facilities to make controlling profiles and assign them to different cars or sets whereof.