Forza Motorsport 7

Forza Motorsport 7 is the high point of the series. Turn 10 delivers a great racing game in almost every aspect, which skillfully manages the balancing act of being a sophisticated simulation and an accessible racer at the same time.

Microsoft pitched Forza Motorsport 7 as the ultimate automotive playset, and it’s hard to argue otherwise. With enough cars to fill a dozen museums and the most generous selection of tracks to date in the series, the amount of driving, experimenting, and racing here is absolutely mammoth. Accessible as always for beginners but crammed with content targeted at lifelong car junkies, Forza Motorsport 7 is Turn 10’s finest love letter to speed and style this generation, no matter what language you speak.

Forza Motorsport 7 is a yuuge game, and by that, I mean that it’s massive, and by massive I mean gigantic. You get the picture. I can’t really picture myself playing it for less than half a year. With so many races in single player, with the multiplayer choices, and the option to build your own races, people are going to have this game installed for a long time. I can’t speak about replayability because you’re not going to uninstall it anytime soon. People are going to play it over and over again, with no end in sight. Surprisingly, the goal of Forza Motorsport 7 is not to win but to get credits to buy cars. If you don’t mind the presence of microtransactions, and you convince yourself that you can grind away for credits, you’re going to love Forza Motorsport 7.

​Forza Motorsport 7 is absolutely stunning on PC, with a solid 4K / 60 fps presentation that offers a spectacular driving experience.​

As far as technology and gameplay are concerned, Forza Motorsport 7 wins the cup - the new reference for demanding arcade racing games.

In its current form FM7 is not perfect (loot boxes!), but when it comes to the most important thing, namely the joy of driving, it’s simply the best racing game available regardless of platform. [12/2017, p.64]

Light performance problems and a poor loot box system can't quite distract from Forza Motorsport 7's accommodating difficulty, stunning beauty, and lavish racing options.

A brilliant, detailed racing game that stays true to the series lineage, for better and for worse. [Issue#268, p.64]

There's an incredible amount to do within the confines of a traditional racing game. Flawed, then, but pushing for the top of the podium all the same. [Christmas 2017, p.116]

Even with an imperfect roster and a selection of modes that doesn't compare to the comprehensiveness of Forza 6 at launch, Forza Motorsport 7 is still a feature-rich and competition-diverse bundle of racing events that keep you coming back for more. The ability to control the weather to create rich, painterly cloudy backdrops goes a long way in making up for the lack of zombie modes and the Toyota MR2.

Aside from being one of the best-looking games on the platform, it plays like a dream due to a myriad of control options, while the freedom afforded by its gameplay options ensures that people of any racing skill level will be able to jump in and do well. However, its lack of stability puts it behind the console version and can make playing it on the PC frustrating if you aren't prepared to restart the game constantly. Despite the score given, which would be one full point higher if stability were fixed, players really wait for a patch unless they're impatient.

Forza Motorsport 7 is a great game. There's no doubting you'll enjoy a lot of your time with Forza, but you're also guaranteed to run into a few problems here and there. It's extremely approachable and simply oozes content out of the gate. Racing is fun and exciting even at the worst of times. It is, however, marred by an invasive microtransaction system as well as elements of the game feeding into this, either forcing a grind or inevitably letting you pay real money to have easier access to later content.

What really starts to impact the whole experience is how Microsoft and Turn 10 have needlessly and thoughtlessly introduced loot boxes.

Forza is still the jack-of-all-trades motorsport video game that will appeal to fans of cars and racing them. The passion is still there, albeit slowly being crushed under the ever-growing mountain of poor design choices and cash-grabs. For returning fans there are precious few reasons to upgrade other than the extra cars and tracks. As someone who’s been playing these games since the original, the direction that has been taken is disappointing to say the least.

At its core is a rewarding driving model, hundreds of gorgeous and unusual cars, and some imaginatively designed solo championships to tackle in them. In time, it will probably be unreservedly brilliant. But, right now, I can’t overlook the technical problems that I’m having. And, to continue this candour, I can’t overlook the VIP pass nerfing or the exclusion of a season pass from Forza’s Ultimate Edition either.