Forza Motorsport 5 will make you love cars. It will also make you hate your friends.

Forza 5 addresses those needs. All of its tracks have been rebuilt, laser-scanned and meticulously crafted to be more authentically asphalt-like. It's got beautifully constructed cars, and a world filled with light so bright you can't even see the track coming out of certain corners. But Forza 5 's biggest addition is something you won't necessarily see. Until, that is, it tries to smash you off the road — all with a friend's name hanging over it.

Console launches need racing games. There's something about new hardware that gets developers in the mood to refine the genre's sense of speed, to make races feel more authentic. And of course, it doesn't hurt that racing games so capably demonstrate the visual power of new platforms.

Forza 5 can play somewhat like an arcade racer, with a host of assists and options to set that will render every car a speeding bullet, vulnerable only to the most direct of collisions. But Forza's passion pushes toward simulation. Forza 5 isn't about the spectacle that drives games like Need for Speed rivals. It's about learning tracks, and more, learning about the cars you're driving — their quirks, their strengths. As you get better at Forza and disable driving aids, every car is slowly revealed to be its own puzzle to be solved.

Thankfully, Forza 5 continues the series' goal of accessibility. There are a number of options present to ease less familiar players into Forza's world. The most obvious is the return of the driving line. It's a guide projected on the track that shows you where the ideal point for your car is on any given turn. Almost as helpful is the replay feature. At almost any time, you can hit the Y button to reverse time and re-run a part of the course in real time. Take the last turn on Laguna Seca too hard and slide into the sand? Try it again. Get smashed into a railing? Try again.