Xbox Japan spilled the beans early. The site was taken down, but here’s a re-cap:
More to come at E3
Previous thread. Though I like the title of this one better. More descriptive!
This will be the first time I’m looking forward to a main Forza title more than the last Horizon title. Horizon 2 is great, I’m still making my way through it, (and it was even better in condensed form Fast And Furious style) but the drivatars didn’t really play that big a role in Horizon 2, whereas they made all the difference in the world in the closed circuit races of Forza 5.
I hope they retain an emphasis on Top Gear challenges, even though that show seems to be officially dead for now. Bring back Star in a Reasonably Priced Car! And bring back all versions of it, with all the different cars they’ve had throughout the years. Please!
Can we use Kinect to caress and fondle our virtual cars? Because it’s not a Forza unless you can still do that.
-Tom
People have Kinect?
I’m afraid the correct answer was “people have Xbox Ones?”.
-Tom
I’m trying to resurrect this thread over the other two(!) threads for this game.
Demo link now live: https://store.xbox.com/en-US/Xbox-One/Games/Forza-Motorsport-6-Demo/797f4c79-ec31-4981-807b-c5f398611aba
Grabbing the demo now, definitely want to get this. My friend of mine recently got me back into playing auto games and have done a bit of practicing on Forza 5 and Fast & Furious Horizons which I snagged last year but never played.
— Alan
Really enjoyed the demo. Those mod packs look like they could be a fun way to waste credits & spice up races with dares.
I’ll definitely be buying this sometime soon. :) I’ve bought most of the recent Forza games (4, Horizon, Horizon 2) after loving their demos.
So the game retains references to Top Gear in some of the races/events (“Race The Stig”, etc.) but I’m pretty sure the voiceover/intro stuff is not going to be similar to Forza 5 unfortunately.
Played through the demo; definitely liked it. Indycar is… yikes. Soooo fast. Night and especially the rain effects are pretty nice.
Another new thing is Mods, which are kinda… like player card packs for sports games, except these just better tune your car or grant specific track abilities. I’m assuming they are pay only, but maybe you can use Credits on them…
— Alan
This is free for Xbox Live Gold users now. Remember to grab it. Like Forza 5, the licenses will expire soon so it won’t be available after that. They also had the “All Forza 6 DLC bundled together” bundle for $5 instead of $100 this week, so I grabbed that as well.
I did a race last night this morning. Yikes! I haven’t played a serious track racing game since Forza 5, so I’m really rusty. One little mistake and the race is done. The AI doesn’t wait around or give you a second shot. This is going to take some getting used to. Forza Horizon series is nowhere near this hard. The damage my car took from a little rubbin’ racing, for instance, was extensive, unlike the Horizon series. And a damaged car will immediately put you at a disadvantage.
But I like it. I restarted the race and made sure not to crash into the other cars this time, and won the race on “Highly Skilled” drivatar difficulty. So I just have to make sure I don’t do any more rubbing racing. Horizon 2, 3, and 4 have come in between my play of Forza 5 and 6 and I have to unlearn a lot of bad habits.
Really not enjoying this iteration of the series. The racing is well done, but what the hell kind of racing game doesn’t allow me to listen to music when I’m racing? In DiRT Rally games, that’s acceptable because you have to listen to pace notes, but in track racing? UNACCEPTABLE.
Back to the positive for a second, the puddle physics and wet tracks really are well done, and make tracks that I’ve played a million times before in these kinds of games interesting again. Sebring when it’s wet is quite different.
But man, Gran Turismo 2 and 3 and 4 had such great music. The original Xbox Forza allowed you to play your own music. Forza 2 and 3 and 4 on 360 allowed you to stream your music from your computer while you played. Forza 5 let you snap a music player to the side where you could stream music from your computer. But of course, by Forza 6 they’ve gotten rid of the ability to snap stuff to the side. Playing a track racing game without music just feels like such a waste of time.
Also, getting all the DLC was kind of a bad idea. I have all the cars I could ever want. What is the point of progression in a CaRPG where I already have the fast cars? Forza 5 did this right. Forza 6 still makes it interesting by diving all the championships into themes, basically. It reminds me of DriveClub, but with better physics. But DriveClub had music damn it.
Well, despite not having good music, I did play a little more. I tried the Porsche Anthology series, and it has a great intro, telling us they’re going to work their way through three phases of Porsche’s legacy, and they’re going to introduce us to every single Porsche in the game individually. Shades of NFS: Porsche Unleashed. I just wish this was in a game that let me play music while driving Porsches.
The game got tired of me winning all the time on “Highly Skilled”, and told me to I should try “Expert”. And now I’ve started coming in 2nd and 3rd, which I think satisfies the game.
I found an interview with people who were responsible for the terrible milquetoast music in this game:
I have to admit, the campaign in this game is pretty good so far. I finished the first car series, which is interspersed with showcase events that unlock. I must say I’m impressed that Richard Hammond and James May didn’t phone in their contribution, they really say their lines with conviction and get you excited about whatever they’re narrating. I believe this was in the period where Jeremy Clarkson had been fired, but these two were still with Top Gear.
It’s a lot of fun to drive in Forza 6, but I enjoyed online play the most. I imagine all those people moved on to Forza 7.
Where the physics in Forza 6 is most notable is driving in the rain. I’m also playing DiRT Rally 2.0 right now, and even though I love that game to bits, when you compare driving on wet tarmac in that game with Forza 6, the latter wins by a mile. In DiRT Rally 2.0 and most other driving games, you just have a uniform wet surface at all times, even though that’s not how it works in real life. In real life, you have different sized puddles and accumulation of water in different parts of the road, and your car behaves very differently when driving through those various depths. And Forza 6 does that really well.
The rain race @ Sebring in the demo sold me on the game.
And I hate Sebring.
It almost felt like a completely different track :)
Looks like that 5$ DLC bundle went poof, oh well. I only had the Porsche expansion. The track in that one is great. Virginia I think. I must’ve done at least 100 laps on it.
After doing the night courses, I realized that so many of these courses that I’ve done in the daytime feel completely unfamiliar in a night-time setting. Like the short version of the Le Mans course (I always forget its name), which I’ve done a lot in many games, felt completely new at night. Same with Sebring at night.
Meanwhile, the showcase events in this game are pretty awesome. Some of them are the equivalent of the Driver’s License challenges in Gran Turismo games. Others are just really fun and interesting ways of doing a race. One where I raced through some cones put on a race track while driving a Mazda MX-5 was much more fun than it sounds. The one on one races against the Stig can get really exciting. I just did a race in a racing BMW M4 where the rest of the cars (which were not racing cars) took off, and I had to sit there at the starting line for 30 seconds. Sheesh. When you do start though, you’re appropriately much more powerful than the other cars, and you only get one lap to catch up to them all. I had to try the showcase about 10 times, but when I finally got it, it felt phenomenal. Whoever designed these showcases did a really good job. They really break up the career mode with a wide variety of entertaining things.