@UpInFlames: There. Better? ;p
Eurogamer review is brutal. im surprised they gave it a 7.
On Drivatar.
Why have just the one braking point when you can have two? And why not have a quick dab of the brake in the middle of a straight? The unpredictable driving of others creates too many needless scraps - it's a good thing that Forza's rewind feature is intact, though it's a shame you have to put into use so many times because of the AI. The data that's in there is pooled from a good number of players, pulled from Turn 10 and Microsoft - so you'd have thought it'd be of a reasonable quality. There's the potential for it to improve over time, but right now the Xbox One's heavily touted cloud rains down a thunderstorm of idiocy.
On micro-transactions and grinding.
All that's left is the grind, and it's not a particularly pleasant one. Unlike previous outings, cars don't unlock upon levelling up. Everything must be bought in Forza Motorsport 5, and all transactions take place in a slightly misshapen economy. A series will, on average, net the player in excess of 110,000 credits for just under an hour's effort - but with some of the premium racecars costing well over a million, it's a somewhat brutal grind. Good job, then, that there are tokens purchasable on the Xbox One's marketplace for you to attain the car you're after, or to temporarily boost the rate at which you gain XP. When you've already paid £429.99 for a new console, £44.99 for the game and maybe even £349.99 for the only steering wheel that the game supports at launch, such tricks appear a little unsavoury, and in Forza 5, mechanics greedily smuggled from free-to-play games trample over the elegant RPG elements the series once embraced so effectively.
On (lack of) content.
So little is spread out so thin across a career that doesn't make much of an effort to engage. Forza Motorsport 5's lattice of events is unlocked from the off, with different categories spread out across a succession of long series of 10 races each. There's no thread to follow, though, and with just 14 locations to share amongst them all, repetition sets in fast.
But for these additions, so much has been lost from previous iterations of Forza Motorsport. Maple Valley, for so long a signature track tailored for the series' tail-out handling, is absent, as is Infineon Raceway, gone before we ever really had the chance to get acquainted. The Nordschleife Nurburgring is the victim of a savage cut, as too is Suzuka, a track that has in recent years become recognised as one of the greatest on the F1 calendar. Forza Motorsport 5's replacement, Yas Marina - perhaps the only circuit in the world tedious enough to turn a three-way championship showdown into a tiresome procession - feels like the final kick in the teeth.
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