Forza Motorsport 4

Forza Motorsport 4 opens with Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson lamenting the demise of the petrol head in today’s society.

“We are an endangered species, we lovers of performance and beauty and mechanical soul,” he says, then concludes: “but there is hope, there is a haven that celebrates fun ... and it’s all here for you to explore”.

That haven is Forza Motorsport 4 – and what a haven it is: around 500 exotic Italian thoroughbreds, American muscle cars and European classics – most of them are cars that I could only dream of owning but all of them rendered so beautifully that you’ll swear you’re looking at the real thing and not computer-generated models.

However, you don’t start Forza 4 with an especially stunning steed that will impress your friends. Oh, no, the first car you’ll race is something small, something compact, such as a Ford Ka, a Chevrolet Spark or a Nissan Micra. “Nana cars”, my young son pointed out when he started driving a Chevy Spark. He laughed that it was only able to only get up to 110kmh.

You start out in the amateur sub-compact ranks, working your way through the track fodder and the classes, racing on tracks in the United States, Europe and Asia. Winning races earns you credits which you can use to upgrade your cars. The more experience you earn, the quicker you’ll move through the ranks and the closer you’ll get to the exotic cars.

Forza 4 can be as difficult or as easy as you want it to be. Novices might want to play with many of the assists on (auto-braking, racing lines, auto-steering, the rewind feature), giving it a more arcade feel so they don’t get put off by the brutality of near-realistic vehicle handling. Well-seasoned Forza racers will go straight for the custom option where they can fine tune the handling to suit their tastes. There’s nothing quite like having your rear wheels slide out from under you after you’ve taken a corner too fast to keep you on your toes!

You can tweak the most minute of details of your car, if that’s your thing: tyre pressures (developer Turn 10 worked closely with Italian tyre manufacturer Pirelli to ensure that the tyre physics were just right), gear ratios, wheel alignment settings, suspension levels, the amount of downforce, brakes and the differential.

Content is king here and as well as the career and freeplay modes, you can also race online and play the Rival mode - a competitive mode that could just well be one of the best things in Forza 4. Rivals mode lets you see what times your Xbox Live friends have completed events in - then lets you try and beat it. It’s the ultimate rivalry between online friends, a ghost car taunting you if you fall even a second behind a friend’s time.

But wait, there’s more: much, much more.

Forza 4 also uses Microsoft’s Kinect sensor in the game’s Autovista mode, which lets you explore cars unlocked through completing challenges. In this mode, you lean left and right to look around a vehicle then step inside it by highlighting an icon on a door with your hand and taking a step forward.

Once inside the cockpit you move your head to look around – then hold your over the ignition and the car will roar into life. The sound of a Ferrari 458 springing into life is one that will stir the blood of car lovers and non-lovers alike. Click on an information icon and the tones of Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson tell you all you need to know about the car.

You can also race using Kinect if you want, holding your arms outstretched like a steering wheel, turning left and right to negotiate corners and avoid rivals. Of course, you have no control over accelerating or braking – you just steer – but it works remarkably well, and while it won’t replace a controller or a dedicated steering wheel, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked.

It’s not all perfect: the computer-controlled AI drivers were a little aggressive at times – it was nothing for them to side-swipe me on a corner – and sometimes you’d have no cars in your rear view mirror then suddenly an opponent would be alongside you. And sorry, but I didn’t actually see the point of challenges like knocking over bowling pins on the Top Gear test track. Would you really want to do that in my expensive car? No, me neither.

People who dislike consoles have said to me “Oh, if you want a real racing experience you should be playing iRacing or rFactor on the PC”: that’s all well and good but this is a console racer, and a damn good one at that, and for Xbox 360-owning racing fans, Forza Motorsport 4 is a no-brainer: go buy it now.

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