Forza Motorsport

Lap nine at Maple Valley, half a second clear, and I threw it into the grass at the final left. Not the AI's fault. I had skipped the practice session to save time, my front tires were cooked, and the game had been quietly keeping score on that the whole while I was busy admiring my own lines. That is the loop Turn 10 built here: heat the tires, watch the fuel, learn what a surface does when the sun drops behind the trees, and accept that the car stops cooperating the moment you stop paying attention. So this is circuit racing with homework, not an open-world playground. The Builders Cup career walks you through series after series, and each one opens with a free practice where the game grades you corner by corner and hands back segment scores. Do the laps and you earn Car Points, which level up the specific car you are driving and unlock its upgrade parts. There are over 500 cars, 30 tracks, and the return of Fujimi Kaido, which is the single most nostalgic thing on that list for anyone who played the older entries. The 20th Anniversary Tour bolts on its own event chain with rewards attached. Races are short by sim standards, usually a handful of laps, and the AI difficulty bands are granular enough that you can find a setting where you are actually scrapping for position instead of leading by twelve seconds or getting lapped. On a pad it is one of the most approachable serious racers going. Full controller support, trigger response options that genuinely matter, and an assist stack you can dial line by line: braking line, steering assist, traction and stability control, auto or manual shifting, plus rewind if you want to undo one bad apex rather than restart eight minutes of racing. Switch it all off and the same car will happily spit you into a wall, which is the correct design. On a wheel it is good rather than definitive. It reads Logitech, Thrustmaster and Fanatec hardware without a fight, and the force feedback got meaningfully better through post-launch patches, but if you have spent real time in dedicated sims you will find the detail a little smoothed over. Now the part that stings for anyone who reads this site for co-op advice. There is no split-screen. None. Multiplayer is online only, PvP with cross-platform matchmaking, ranked series and open lobbies running on a rotating schedule of featured events. If your Saturday night involves four people, one screen and too many snacks, this is not the game to launch. Put on a kart racer instead. Beyond that, the mixed Steam standing is earned: the PC launch was rough with stutter, long loads and shader compilation misery, the always-connected requirement means a wobbly router can end your career night outright, and the Car Points system gates parts you already know you want behind laps in a car you may not enjoy driving. Patches have chipped away at all of it. The reputation has not fully recovered, and honestly the goodwill was spent in the first month. So who is it for? Solo drivers who like the ritual. If you enjoy running practice laps, reading a tire temperature readout, deciding whether to two-stop or nurse a set to the flag, and slowly turning a hot hatch into something that embarrasses far more expensive machinery, there is a lot of quiet satisfaction here, and the racing itself is clean and readable in a way plenty of rivals are not. The steady drip of added tracks and anniversary content means it is in a noticeably better state than the one people reviewed on day one, which matters if you bounced off it early. If you want a racer that entertains a whole room, keep looking. I keep coming back to this one on weeknights, headset on, nobody watching, and that tells you exactly what kind of game it turned out to be.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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