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Forza Motorsport 5: Hands On, Assists Off – A Hardcore Perspective
By Nick de Bruyne on Thursday, October 10, 2013
Forza Motorsport 5 has received a lot of buzz since its first unveiling as one of the upcoming Xbox One’s most important launch titles. We’ve seen promises of amazing visuals, stunning car models, clever SkyNet powered A.I and more.
Now, while the majority of gamers are taking a good look at what’s on the carbon-fibre-weaved surface of Forza’s next-gen instalment, hard-core Forza fans, petrol-heads and racer-junkies like me are more concerned with what’s happened where it matters most… under the hood.
Fresh out of a real track day at the Kyalami GP circuit a week prior, I got some hands-on time with Forza Motorsport 5 at rAge 2013 with our hands on, and all the assists off to determine how it stacks up to its predecessor as well as the real deal.
Race Prep
So, after picking up the new Xbox One controller, ogling the pretty cars in the selection menu and loading up the track, I finally got to do something I’ve wanted to do since I first saw Forza 5… turn the assists off and see what it looks like when it doesn’t look like it’s being driven around the track by a robot.
For the sake of our test, I was able to get not one, but three laps of the Mazda Laguna Seca race circuit and to get the best feeling of the new physics system; I did all three laps in completely different kinds of cars.
I chose to drive the Ford Focus ST, known for its understeer in corners, the Mercedes 300SL which as a classic would give a good feel of a heavier, older rear wheel drive sports car and then finally, the Ferrari F12… agile, aerodynamic and loaded with enough horses for us to film a couple of epic spaghetti westerns. Best of all, I have access to this same track and these same cars (with the exception of the F12 which I swapped out for the 599 GTO) in Forza 4, which I then drove to compare with FM5 once I was back at my own setup.
What I’m going to try really hard to do in this article though is to not harp on about how incredible the new feedback-enabled triggers are on the Xbox One, and sing about the massive difference that they make to your driving experience by feeding extra information into your brain via your index fingers. I’m not going to do any of that, OK? OK.
Putting Rubber Down
While Forza has always leaned more to the side of a sim, it was always pretty well known that the cars, while close to their real-life counterparts, felt like they had just a bit more grip than they should have and even proved it when put it up against real life lap times and its rival GT5 in a brief test we did a while back. If you have ever been around a real track in a car that was fitted with semi-slicks rather than its standard road tires, you will know exactly what I mean.
On my first outing, I dove into the first left hander of Laguna Seca with the Focus, making sure that I got on the brakes light and early so as to not go flying off of the track with the large rAge crowd behind me watching (you need to show the crowds you’re a pro at times like this). So after making my way out of the sand trap that I was deeply and embarrassingly embedded into, I realised that we weren’t in Kansas anymore. Upon braking into the corner, my mind was temporarily stunned by the amount of information travelling up my fingers through the new Xbox One triggers, letting me know that I had just locked up my front wheels and was now tearing up a strip of the rubber attached to them. Honestly the amount of feedback I received from the trigg… ahem, sorry… let us carry on.
The new physics system feels significantly different to previous titles, that’s for certain. In the Focus it was now much more difficult to carry the right amount of speed through the bends to not understeer (fading outwards while cornering) into the corners but then also not suffer massive amounts of torque/under steer out of the bends when putting the power on. This was something that plagued early Forza games, especially during the earlier parts of the career modes, as the slower cars let you mostly flatten the accelerator pedal and just coast the car around most corners of the track without any real fear of losing it.
This subtle new balance is nothing short of a pure delight for true racer fans, because it means we have new levels of balance and finesse to perfect when lapping our favourite circuits. If you want to turn all of the assists off, then be prepared to put on your big-boy-pants and concentrate. Understeer is now a much bigger factor, thanks to the fact that in all of the cars, there was a much higher feeling and even visible amount of force on the cars that caused them to get unsettled while cornering. Again, if you have ever lapped a track in a real car as a driver or a passenger, you will know that you start really feeling the limits of a car when you realise that all four wheels are doing this light jiggle underneath you while under load. Finding the balance that keeps the car fast and settled is a big part of what makes lapping a car so enjoyable, and from what I felt in the demo the physics are able to deliver a much more satisfying and realistic feeling of force, weight, suspension load and that all too important feeling of rubber to the road, especially thanks to the feedback you get from the new Xbox trigger feedback. Oh, those wonderful triggers.
The Controls Feel So Wheel
When it comes to Forza, I also know that there is a pretty significant difference in how the game plays depending on if you are playing on a controller with assisted smoothed movements or rather anything like a racing or MS wireless speed wheel setup that allows for 1-to-1 steering movement. The demo I played used the standard controller and while the awesome new trigger feedback was really something to behold, the input from the thumbsticks still felt like it could use a little more fine tuning. It was especially frustrating when I threw the Ferrari into a corner to attempt a fun drift, only to find the in-game driver taking too long to correct the the car even though I was jamming the stick in the opposite direction and ending up in the gravel once again.
In all seriousness though, I really do have to take a moment to praise the incredible new feedback system that Microsoft has integrated into the new controller’s triggers. Rumble feedback has been available for a long time now, and is a great way to convey a message to your hands and brain that you are bashing into the car in front of you, running over a rough surface or running wide over a red and white curb. Now if rumble was the deep base that plays out in a song, then the triggers are the treble, the detail. By using these smaller motors and linking them directly to the triggers, the game is able to fully convey information relating to the sudden jerk of your wheels locking up, the slipping out of your tires as you lose traction and all the smaller details that happen in-between.
Once you have tried Forza with the new triggers, you will feel like there is no going back. These triggers are to controls what surround sound was to stereo, or HD was to SD. Suddenly there is clarity and an additional amount of information at your disposal and the kind that you could live without… but you really wouldn’t want to.
Old vs. New
As I mentioned before, once back at my own setup I was able to run both the Focus and the Mercedes around Laguna Seca in Forza 4 but for the Ferrari I substituted it out for something similar, in this case a Ferrari 599 GTO. This brings me back to my earlier statement that the previous Forza games felt just a little too grippy for their own good. When testing the cars out in Forza 4 it was now very apparent that I was able to carry way more speed into the corners without much fuss whereas in Forza 5 I had to watch my balance and approach speeds a lot more. Push too hard into a corner in Forza 5 and you find your car losing bits of grip on different tires, fading off past your line and dumping you in the dirt whereas Forza 4 will be a little happier to catch your car for you and let you get on your way.
I didn’t have time to drive any of the cars with and without assists, only without so just take that into account after finishing this article. With ABS and stability management on, the cars are sure to behave a lot more like you would hope they would if your real butt was on the line and more casual drivers are sure to be able to find a great balance between fun and challenge.
Too Long, Didn’t Race
To conclude my brief but interesting experience with Forza Motorsport 5, I can say that the visuals are clean and the cars are drop dead gorgeous, but lying in wait underneath is a new physics system that is sure to get the hard-core fans really excited and hopefully make the assisted driving even more fun and authentic for the casuals. The biggest changes I felt really came down to the new feeling of a more realistic traction/physics/suspension system that really made the car feel like it was moving around under load and under breaking. Of course my experience was brief and far from a really in-depth look at everything the game and its new features have to offer. Also keep in mind that this was also a demo, and things may still change… but for the most part the game incredibly solid and close to completion.
At the end of the day I was very happy with what Forza Motorsport 5 had shown me. The more authentic the experience is, the more we get to live out our digital fantasies of taming some of the most desirable vehicles that the world has to offer… and that looks to be exactly what Forza Motorsport 5 is going to be providing at launch.
Also, did I mention those new Xbox One feedback triggers? Oh man… those triggers.
