It’s been six years since the last Forza release, the new game has been rebuilt from the ground up, but what does this actually mean? Well, for a start, you get 200 less cars compared to Forza 7, (500 vs 700) and 12 less tracks (20 vs 32). Whilst this is disappointing, mainly as some great tracks are currently absent (Nordschleife, Monza, Road America) anyone who understands software development should know that this has clearly been a massive undertaking and a labour of love. More cars and tracks are promised, think of this more as a platform that will be built upon, and what a platform it is.

I only did 5 races in the single player campaign before jumping onto the multiplayer system, the A.I for single player is much improved, and in a completely different league to Gran Turismo’s A.I. that cruise around at 60% like they’re on a Sunday track day. You can tweak the difficulty in many ways and adjust your grid start position.

However, it’s the multiplayer that really shines. The new format of 20 minutes of practice on a track, within which you’ll chose an appropriate point to put in 3 flying laps that will determine your start for the race really allows you to lock into a track, make adjustments to your setup on the fly (the car will auto drive round the track whilst you change things in real time from the menu) combined with the new penalty system appear to have transformed the multiplayer experience into something very very enjoyable indeed.

At the beginning of your multiplayer journey, you’ll be required to do at least 3 training races in the Honda Civic Touring car. This is the perfect car to start, it’s fast enough to be fun, but forgiving enough to allow you to learn. Car physics and feel are improved immensely compared to previous iterations, and whilst it’s definitely less realistic that Gran Turismo, it still requires huge amounts of skill and commitment to put a car on pole. It’s just the right amount of fun vs realism.

The new penalty system is not perfect, but is good enough that it promotes close, clean racing, I’ve had some absolutely belting races already, and the addition of tyre wear just adds another layer of depth that was missing from previous entries, holding on to the lead as you’re tyres begin to fade, constantly having to judge braking distances with the pack hunting you down is really nail biting stuff. But even if you’ve got it spectacularly wrong and find yourself at the back, I’ve still had some terrific races trying to fight back up into a decent position.

It’s not all perfect, I don’t like the new car levelling system that locks you out of certain upgrades until you’ve driven each car enough, I’ve had two instances where, during qualifying the game has reported the loss of a controller, even though the pad was still connected via Bluetooth, I had one race where I put it on pole at Laguna Seca and the race failed to load. Whilst performance for me on a i5 12600k and RTX3070 has been rock solid, some PC users are definitely having issues. Search for Digital Foundry’s assessment of how to fix your the problem.

This to me, is everything I’ve been hoping and wishing for for years from a Forza game. The gameplay is familiar but improved, the online racing is a better experience than anything I’ve ever played before, and I can see myself playing this title for years.