dadudemon
This is nearly a perfect game. It is certainly the pinnacle of car games.
Graphics:
I have no complaints about the graphics. Which is odd...because I usually do.
Lighting:
The lighting is realistic enough but I do have issues with the sun glare bullshit. Seems weird to lump this under "lighting" in a racing game that focuses on realism but I do not have these lighting issues in the real world on real tracks so why the hell should I have these problems on a game?
Interface:
The interface is not as intuitive as it could be. But, it gets the job done and it is minimalistically designed: perfect approach. Just could have been executed a tad better by making things easier to navigate to and from (for instance, when you've loaded a track, you should be able to swap out your car: some tracks are better suited for other cars even within the same class of cars). If you have to swap your car, I believe you have to quit the entire series and start it over with the new car. That's lame. The load screens take FOREVER and you're constantly having to load shit. The XBox One/consoles really suffer from not having a custom SSD that games can run from.
Fun Factor and Gameplay:
If you like racing games and cars, there is literally no better game on the planet for fun, alone. I like the leveling and credit system. It's slow enough that you really have to earn money to get into better cars and faster classes. But it is fast enough to prevent the game from being prohibitive (meaning, if you play the game in order, you will always have more than enough money to upgrade and buy cars for each class and series). If you want to skip ahead on the game and race in the more expensive classes, you'll have to really save and grind. Basically, you cannot start the game racing in the exotic class series of cars. You have to start with the hatchbacks or something. Of course, I am completely wrong about all of this because you CAN skip all the way to end-game cars by spending more real world money on the game buying tokens. This...is the ugliest part of the game. The EA or Zynga model of gaming is the worst thing in existence and it is even leaking over into high-class games like Forza, now.
Difficulty:
Here is the kicker about the difficulty in the game: it is as difficult as the real world players are. One very strange but amazing feature of this game is that there really is no AI driven cars. Turn 10 Studios (maker of the game) collects data on the races you do around each track and then creates a "drivatar" (portmanteau of drive + avatar) that will race with your racing times on each track. Your racing times are ranked with all other players in the world, by lap times. Based on this ranking, your drivatar is placed in each of the difficulty classes. I do not know the math nor even the specifics of how they choose to sort these race times. But it works. Every now and again, the computer will assign a drivatar of another player to a race that is just so much better than all the other players. My personal opinion is Turn 10 does this on purpose to force the player to get better and possibly move up to the next difficulty class.
Turn 10 recommends that if you've never played racing simulation games, start out in the easiest class and work your way up. I started out on normal (no difficulty on the handicap) but soon discovered that class to be far too easy so I bump it up 2-4 difficulty levels, depending on the series I'm racing in. I would say most gamers reading this will have the same experience as I did. If you have a steering wheel and pedals for this game, you can probably bump up the difficulty much higher (I feel the controllers greatly inhibit the ability to do the turns very well because a small little joystick is just not granular enough to fine tune turning details).
My general idea about your lap time world rank is any rank less than 20,000 is really good (since millions of people have played this game and gotten track times ranked, if you get a race time of less than 20,000, you're in the top 1 percentile of racers). I've done that on several tracks and my races were near perfect races (I can only imagine the vast chasm between my sub 20,000 track times I've put up and the single digit rank track times other gamers have put up: they are several seconds ahead of me and I really do not see how I could shave off more than 2 seconds in my races). I do not know if the ranks are for that particular class of cars or if it is the absolute world rank, however. I will find out when I get enough credits to buy F1 cars.
I suspect that the top ranks are for either for the class of car (but maxed by smart players) or if they are the X-class of cars (F1 cars).
So, more about the drivatar...
You have to race at least 3 races for it to create a drivatar profile for you. Basically, you have to record enough laps on at least 3 different tracks in order for Turn 10's servers to make things work. You can also select a rival (from a list of rivals Turn 10's servers pick for you) and race against that rival. The rivals are chosen based on how close in skill they are to you (based on race times). The fastest way to earn credits and experience is to do the rival races. They will be hard, though, as the players will ALWAYS be matched up to your skill level on the track. That's one of the things about this game that makes it much more difficult than other racing games: you're racing real people who have been specifically chosen for you, by a computer, who are at your skill level.
That Certain Something:
But what makes this game stupendous is the je ne sais quoi. Between each track, the announcer talks to you by telling you where you are going and then says a little something about the track. While the track loads, you get facts and figures about the track. As you enter each new racing class, a presenter from the hit UK Show, Top Gear, talks about the cars in that class (which is just awesome). The quality of all of it is AAA. It is like a single cent was not spared to polish this game to perfection.
Forza is known for making ultra-realistic feel for their cars (including the sound of the engine and tires on the tarmac) so this game was expected to at least give a nice racing simulation experience. But this game takes it to another level and makes it like watching Top Gear between races. Merging Forza and Top Gear is the best possible combination in existence (I believe they did this for Forza 4 but they really outdid themselves in 5).
If you want a racing game that CAN be challenging, I recommend this game.
Graphics:
I have no complaints about the graphics. Which is odd...because I usually do.
Lighting:
The lighting is realistic enough but I do have issues with the sun glare bullshit. Seems weird to lump this under "lighting" in a racing game that focuses on realism but I do not have these lighting issues in the real world on real tracks so why the hell should I have these problems on a game?
Interface:
The interface is not as intuitive as it could be. But, it gets the job done and it is minimalistically designed: perfect approach. Just could have been executed a tad better by making things easier to navigate to and from (for instance, when you've loaded a track, you should be able to swap out your car: some tracks are better suited for other cars even within the same class of cars). If you have to swap your car, I believe you have to quit the entire series and start it over with the new car. That's lame. The load screens take FOREVER and you're constantly having to load shit. The XBox One/consoles really suffer from not having a custom SSD that games can run from.
Fun Factor and Gameplay:
If you like racing games and cars, there is literally no better game on the planet for fun, alone. I like the leveling and credit system. It's slow enough that you really have to earn money to get into better cars and faster classes. But it is fast enough to prevent the game from being prohibitive (meaning, if you play the game in order, you will always have more than enough money to upgrade and buy cars for each class and series). If you want to skip ahead on the game and race in the more expensive classes, you'll have to really save and grind. Basically, you cannot start the game racing in the exotic class series of cars. You have to start with the hatchbacks or something. Of course, I am completely wrong about all of this because you CAN skip all the way to end-game cars by spending more real world money on the game buying tokens. This...is the ugliest part of the game. The EA or Zynga model of gaming is the worst thing in existence and it is even leaking over into high-class games like Forza, now.
Difficulty:
Here is the kicker about the difficulty in the game: it is as difficult as the real world players are. One very strange but amazing feature of this game is that there really is no AI driven cars. Turn 10 Studios (maker of the game) collects data on the races you do around each track and then creates a "drivatar" (portmanteau of drive + avatar) that will race with your racing times on each track. Your racing times are ranked with all other players in the world, by lap times. Based on this ranking, your drivatar is placed in each of the difficulty classes. I do not know the math nor even the specifics of how they choose to sort these race times. But it works. Every now and again, the computer will assign a drivatar of another player to a race that is just so much better than all the other players. My personal opinion is Turn 10 does this on purpose to force the player to get better and possibly move up to the next difficulty class.
Turn 10 recommends that if you've never played racing simulation games, start out in the easiest class and work your way up. I started out on normal (no difficulty on the handicap) but soon discovered that class to be far too easy so I bump it up 2-4 difficulty levels, depending on the series I'm racing in. I would say most gamers reading this will have the same experience as I did. If you have a steering wheel and pedals for this game, you can probably bump up the difficulty much higher (I feel the controllers greatly inhibit the ability to do the turns very well because a small little joystick is just not granular enough to fine tune turning details).
My general idea about your lap time world rank is any rank less than 20,000 is really good (since millions of people have played this game and gotten track times ranked, if you get a race time of less than 20,000, you're in the top 1 percentile of racers). I've done that on several tracks and my races were near perfect races (I can only imagine the vast chasm between my sub 20,000 track times I've put up and the single digit rank track times other gamers have put up: they are several seconds ahead of me and I really do not see how I could shave off more than 2 seconds in my races). I do not know if the ranks are for that particular class of cars or if it is the absolute world rank, however. I will find out when I get enough credits to buy F1 cars.
I suspect that the top ranks are for either for the class of car (but maxed by smart players) or if they are the X-class of cars (F1 cars).So, more about the drivatar...
You have to race at least 3 races for it to create a drivatar profile for you. Basically, you have to record enough laps on at least 3 different tracks in order for Turn 10's servers to make things work. You can also select a rival (from a list of rivals Turn 10's servers pick for you) and race against that rival. The rivals are chosen based on how close in skill they are to you (based on race times). The fastest way to earn credits and experience is to do the rival races. They will be hard, though, as the players will ALWAYS be matched up to your skill level on the track. That's one of the things about this game that makes it much more difficult than other racing games: you're racing real people who have been specifically chosen for you, by a computer, who are at your skill level.
That Certain Something:
But what makes this game stupendous is the je ne sais quoi. Between each track, the announcer talks to you by telling you where you are going and then says a little something about the track. While the track loads, you get facts and figures about the track. As you enter each new racing class, a presenter from the hit UK Show, Top Gear, talks about the cars in that class (which is just awesome). The quality of all of it is AAA. It is like a single cent was not spared to polish this game to perfection.
Forza is known for making ultra-realistic feel for their cars (including the sound of the engine and tires on the tarmac) so this game was expected to at least give a nice racing simulation experience. But this game takes it to another level and makes it like watching Top Gear between races. Merging Forza and Top Gear is the best possible combination in existence (I believe they did this for Forza 4 but they really outdid themselves in 5).
If you want a racing game that CAN be challenging, I recommend this game.