While the team behind the Gran Turismo series continues to work from a mystery playbook that doesn’t appear to emphasize timely releases and the rest of the competition continues to struggle to achieve parity, Turn 10 Studios’ Forza franchise has become the gold standard for console racing simulators. That sentiment was further bolstered by the release of Forza Motorsport 5 alongside Microsoft’s new Xbox One console in November of 2013, a title which set the bar for audio and visual fidelity, challenge and true-to-life physics higher than any console title before it.
Let’s start by getting one important thing out of the way: though it may look a lot like Forza Motorsport 5, Forza Horizon 2 is not a traditional racing simulator. However, Forza Horizon 2 builds upon both the first game in the series as well as the newfound abilities of the Xbox One to create an interesting hybrid of an open world driving game and a hardcore racing sim that has the potential to appease both casual gamers and racing simulator fans simultaneously.
In the world of console racing simulators, two franchises garner the lion’s share of attention: Forza Motorsport for Microsoft’s Xbox and Gran Turismo for Sony’s Playstation. But Slightly Mad Studios, the group behind the crowd-funded racing title Project Cars, might just have a legitimate contender on their hands.
Debuting alongside Microsoft’s new console, the Xbox One, there’s a lot more riding on the successful execution of Forza Motorsport 5 as opposed to previous entries in the series. FM5, along with a handful of other launch titles for the new system, has to convince fans that it’s worth investing in an entirely new system for the experience it provides. Does Forza Motorsport 5 deliver? Well, yes and no.
Forza Motorsport 4, Turn 10 Studio’s Gran Turismo-rivaling driving sim hits video game stores today. In preparation for our forthcoming review of the XBox 360-only title, we spent some time with the demo version, which came out late last week.