Topic: Forza 4 - demo is up (XBL)

[Cobra951]

The demo is up, and it's a good one.  It may be for Gold members only at this point, not sure.  I spent a couple of hours with it.  Single racetrack, with about 5 different races.  By setting the "difficulty", you select different sets of aids (or lack thereof).  I hope the full game lets you pick those individually.  I went with "Advanced", which is the lowest difficulty that allows manual shifting.  No assisted steering or brakes.  That also gives you a braking line, which is really helpful until you learn the track.

Visuals are nice, particularly in the frame-rate dept.  Full 60 fps as promised, no hitching at all that I could notice.  The cars and controls feel great.  There are about 5 cars to try out, though each is tied to a particular event.  There are 3 "quick races" and 2 races against a rival.  The latter can be continued indefinitely, which is nice.  Lots of play time if you want it.  At least 5 views are available, and the right stick can be used to look in all directions, with some restrictions.  In-car, hood and bumper views have a limited arc for the camera up front, then the view snaps to left, right, or rear, depending on where you aim the right stick.  On outside the car views, you can look smoothly all around.

The racing feels spot-on, though slower traffic does not yield the best line to you.  (Lower-class cars are supposed to get out of your way in real racing.)  Check it out if you can.  Good stuff.

[K-man]

I got really into Forza 2.  Even purchased a Microsoft wheel (which apparently has been discontinued?)

I really enjoyed playing 2.  I missed the boat on 3 though.  I may give 4 a go.  It seems like it wasn't that long ago when 3 came out.

[Cobra951]

Same here.  I have 2 and really enjoyed, but I skipped 3.  There seems to be enough advancement here to consider it.  What I should really do is give 2 a spin again, and see how it stacks up against the 4 demo.  It's been a long while.

[K-man]

I got rather adept at playing the game with no assists, which I'm sure you can appreciate the difficulty of.  I just figured if I'm going to go for realism by purchasing a force feedback wheel, I need to go all-in.

I was really really into 2 for a time.  Then I moved, and that location wasn't exactly friendly to using a wheel setup where I gamed.  I really liked that you could customize your cars and then sell them at the auction house.

[Cobra951]

A ton of reviews are up on Metacritic already.  It's looking like a stellar game.  The following quote from IGN is not unique.

The improved visuals, the added cars on track, the wealth of new race types, the tweaked AI and closer racing, the ferocious sound and superior sense of speed, the even better livery editor, the lot. With Forza 4 Turn 10 has crafted a driving game like no other; it's hands-down this generation's premier racing simulator.

I'm going to have to grab it sometime, maybe a Christmas gift from me to me.

Edit:  A couple of reviews you won't find on Metacritic:

Ars Technica
Motor Trend

[scottws]

I have found that with both the Forza and Gran Turismo series I dominate in the earlier and middle races with the slower cars and then get schooled in the later races without a vastly superior car than the AI.  I think my timing on the braking is what burns me.  Or I just don't know how to tweak the plethora of settings for my car correctly.

In Gran Turismo 3 particularly I always took advantage of the fact that the AI racers were basically on rails and I'd keep the accelerator down and bash into the side of one ahead of me in the turn at a 45 degree angle.  In the early part of the races that would go a long way to giving me a nice lead.  I always had a real hard time racing when I was in traffic.

I'd usually peak around the Mustang Cobra R.  I kicked ass with that car, but eventually it wouldn't be enough and I'd struggle with the rear-wheel drive cars with very high power like the racing versions of the Corvette.  The only exception was the Mustang GT500KR in Forza 2.  It had tons of power for its small tires and it was easy to spin the rear wheels but I was adept enough with the accelerator to do pretty well with that car.  I think part of it is that I always gave the Fords a little bit of extra practice because I'm a huge Mustang fan.

I was always the worst with Porsches.  The way that rear end would stick and then suddenly break out under really heavy cornering...  I never could win with the well handling cars like RX-7s or F355s/360 Modenas.  I'd need great acceleration to take the lead in the beginning and speed to keep it.  In these games, great acceleration always has a way of covering up your cornering mistakes.

[Cobra951]

I like the Mustangs too, as you know.  Here is my Boss 429 in Forza 4.  The game allows uploading pix in 0.9-megapixel and 8.3-MP sizes.  Mine's the smaller size.  The other is huge.

I've spent a good deal of time on the game today.  It does what it set out to do very well.  Everything is polished to a bright shine.  The look and feel of the cars the best yet.  The menu system is fairly good, but won't win any awards.  Load times are longer than I expected, and that's with everything installed to the hard drive.  Once it loads, though, all is perfectly smooth, as in 60-fps smooth while driving.  There are no hiccups of any kind.  Some replay-camera modes can clip through the racetrack occasionally.  That's about it for obvious visual flaws.  The car models are fantastic.  They are quite detailed and are rendered well.  The physics modeling is convincing.  You can display "telemetry", what the math is doing, during replays.  There's a lot there to see.  It all looks great and behaves superbly.

My biggest gripe so far is that I can't practice before a race.  That's one thing I miss From Gran Turismo 1.  (I don't remember if Forza 2 had the same problem.)  When you go into an event, you get thrown right into the fight without any chance to learn the track and adjust your car for it.  Oh, you can do it--by selecting the event, seeing what the track is, backing out, then wading through the menus to select your car, select Upgrade, then find and select the same track for a test drive.  It's awkward, and they should have given you the option in the racing event itself.

I like the RPG-like progression in general, where you not only gain player levels with XP, but also affinity for particular car manufacturers.  One odd thing about affinity is that eventually parts discounts stack up to 100% after 4 increments.  That's right--all your car's upgrades become free once you get enough affinity for its manufacturer.  I already did it with Ford, and yes indeed, I verified that my Ford uber-parts cost is now 0 CR.  So it's not even that hard an accomplishment.  I just got the game today.  They should probably nerf this in some way.

The game comes on 2 discs, a play disc and an install content disc.  There are also redeemable codes in the box for about 500 MB worth of extra tracks and cars.  It all adds up to 11 GB on the HDD.  Lots o' stuff!

I quit playing about an hour ago, when my performance started to go South from being tired and bleary-eyed.  It's definitely addicting if you're at all into this kind of sim.  More to come.