by: Michael Barnes

Forza Motorsport 4 opens with a montage of exotic cars and a pro-speed and fun monologue delivered by Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson. You’re then immediately put behind the wheel of the game’s cover car, the Ferrari 458 Italia, in a quick race through the Bernese Alps. Visuals are set to stun and that great, grippy Forza feeling comes through your wheel or control pad. All assists are on by default and I’m pretty sure the race is rigged for you to win. But in these opening moments, Turn 10’s vision of the perfect (or near perfect) car lover’s game is starkly apparent. It’s very European— all clean lines and sophistication, with none of the messy quirk or esotericism of the rival Gran Turismo series. This vision is also a very populist, accessible one despite the fact that the Koenigseggs, McLarens, Bugattis, and other supercars in the game are as elite as they come. It’s always a beautiful day to race, and finding the perfect line is only a rewind away.

Several showcase cars are presented in incredibly hyper-realistic detail for you to walk around, inspect, and “touch” using either Kinect or a standard control. Go ahead, pop the hood. Lean in and a hotspot will give you some details about the engines. Open the door and sit in the driver’s seat. Oh look- the keys are in it. Are you up for a driving challenge? I never knew how much I wanted a 2005 Ford GT, a modern remake of the GT40 that was purpose-designed to beat Ferrari at LeMans in 1966, until I kicked the tires and drove it in Autovista.

Turn 10 clearly understands car lust, which is why the focus is on desirable and sometimes unattainable cars rather than a zillion variations of the Nissan Skyline or the old beater your pop bought you when you turned 16. Along with Autovista, they’ve leveraged the Forza series’ already robust feature set to provide us with many ways to drive, appreciate, and love these magnificent automobiles. The relationship you enter into with this game is entirely subjective, and it really is what you make of it.

What you want out of it may be just to drive that red Italia as fast as possible, never crashing, and always winning. But you may be more inclined to tinker and tune to try to squeeze a better hot lap at Top Gear’s Dunsfold track out of your reasonably priced Kia Cee’D, consulting a wealth of in-game information explaining everything from flywheels to gear ratio and watching test track telemetry to monitor performance. You might focus on collecting American Muscle or customizing hot hatch drifters for sale at the in-game auction house. You can challenge a grid of random players in one of the many multiplayer modes or take on everyone from friends to the top ranked players in the world through the new Rivals mode, a sort of asynchronous online offering that can be alarmingly addictive. There are drag and NASCAR-style events. There are a few moments where the game lets its precisely coifed hair down for car soccer and car bowling games, but the less said about them the better. The amount of content- and I’m not just talking about cars and tracks- is staggering.

With so much to see and do in this automotive buffet, inevitably some parts are going to be stronger than others. Although the package is consistent overall, I’ve found that the game’s career mode is unusually weak. I was able to blow through half of the globe-spanning tour of the world’s top race tracks with nothing less than a second place finish and without buying or modifying any of the cars in my garage. The game constantly gifts you with new cars and manufacturer affinity discounts, and upgrading a car to meet a class specification can be done automatically. The career events also never force you into racing a car or class you don’t want to use, so if you want to do the whole thing with S-class supercars, it’s up to you.