“Cars. To some, they’re just transport; a convenient alternative to highly flammable dirigibles, or walking,” says Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson in Forza Motorsport 5’s pensive intro. But in a monologue not dissimilar to the one he provided to open Forza 4 Clarkson goes on to describe why cars are far more than this. He describes how they represent both the glory of technology and the essence of freedom. He explains how they mark the moments by which we define decades, as on-screen a set of keys is wedged into the palms of a grinning teenager.

Kickstart My Heart

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King of the Mountain

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“Cars are some of the most intoxicating, most beautiful things ever forged by mankind,” he muses.Superficially speaking Forza 5 is just looking to turn us on before we even turn a key, but once you’re inside it’s instantly clear that Forza 5 is here to accelerate Forza’s transition from a series that simply features cars to one that truly celebrates them. The cars here aren’t just thumbnails in a scrolling menu; every one has a history and a reason to admire it. Forza 5 clearly wants to be the defining cocktail of global car culture and it’s a philosophy that’s extends from Clarkson’s slightly wistful opening montage to deep within the guts of career mode. Thanks to a well-chosen bunch of unprecedentedly lavish car models and the help of all three hosts of the UK’s Top Gear, Forza 5 is a virtual love letter to every vehicle it contains. And while the overall track count teeters on the wrong side of thin and the lack of dynamic time or weather stings, it’s one that’s technically very hard to fault.Featuring just over 200 cars, Forza 5 is several hundred cars shy of Forza 4’s eventual count of well over 600. The important thing is that every car that did scrape into Forza 5 for launch deserves to be here. Iconic classics, from old-school European grand tourers to hulking US muscle and timeless Italian supercars to cult performance hatches and sedans. Cutting-edge current models, from affordable modern rides to today’s money-no-object hypercars. World-famous F1, GT, and touring cars and, for the first time, hardcore open-wheelers like the ludicrous Ariel Atom V8. It’s all wheat and no chaff.The best place to dribble over them is in Forzavista mode, where they look absolutely remarkable. You can’t pop the hood on everything, but the level of attention paid to even the smallest of details can be downright astonishing. Explore every inch and you’ll find the cars modelled down to manufacturer stickers on the inner-edges of doors. The detail really is something else, from the speckled surface of a steering wheel in an enduring ’90s hatchback to the staggering crispness of the tiny labels accompanying the multitude of switches in a Le Mans Prototype. Forza 4’s Autovista mode already gave us an appetiser of this two years ago so the novelty is suppressed slightly, but the fact that every car can be so closely inspected is exceedingly cool.On track, things are equally impressive. Supremely realistic lighting slides over bodywork, casting impeccable shadows. Brake lights glow more realistically than ever. Flecks of rubber collect on the paintwork. Cosmetic damage doesn’t really handle massive accidents but small scrapes and nudges are well-translated to your car’s panels. You’ll even see specks of different coloured paint from rubbing against opponents.It’s not universally beautiful, though. Small effects like tyre smoke and the puffs of dust kicked up by cars putting a wheel off-track don’t amaze, and the rudimentary pit-stops look uncharacteristically shonky.The audio, however, is uniformly excellent, whether it’s the chirping of tyres under brakes or the throbbing of a helicopter overhead. And the engine notes? Well, they’re better than ever. Turn it up loud; that’s an order.Unsurprisingly, the cars still handle as good as they look and sound. Better, in fact. It’ll certainly feel familiar enough to returning Forza fans, but there’s more nuance to how the cars shift about on their newly modelled suspension and more bite to the way tyres cling to the asphalt. The cars feel more distinct from each other than ever before too; the finesse required to thread a 600bhp, one-and-a-half metric ton V8 Supercar through The Esses across Mount Panorama is very different to the way you need to coax the thoroughly insane, rally-bred Ford RS200 around the famous Top Gear Hammerhead. Of course, it always has been – but here it feels more credible than ever. The way Forza 5’s cars communicate weight is tremendous.The Xbox One controller’s haptic triggers give you feedback on when your wheels are slipping under the throttle and losing grip under braking, and I was surprised at how much this adds to the driving experience.It’ll take you a while before you’re able to try all the cars because there’s been a change to the way we’re allowed access to them. Forza 5’s somewhat neutered free-play mode only lets you use your own garage cars or ‘rent’ one for free from a small selection, and driver levels no longer come with a reward car at every promotion. It’s a bit disappointing, although it does make you think harder about, and become more attached to, the cars you ultimately do buy.As always, cars can be upgraded, tuned, and painted. The best tunes and designs will be curated and suggested to players, but you can still manually search other players’ designs for the content you’re looking for. I honestly can’t say I was a massive fan of defacing my cars with the admittedly small selection of liveries available during the review period but you don’t have to apply a design. Thankfully, opponent designs can be switched off too, so if you prefer the traditional look over racing against a bunch of gaudy Hot Wheels also-rans you’re covered.The whole reason you’ll be at the mercy of other racers’ tastes in tribal vinyls, however, is because of Forza 5’s seriously cool new Drivatar AI. In single-player, Forza 5 will pit you against opponents which race according to the real-life driving behaviours of the Forza players they’re based on. Racing is a lot more dynamic and unpredictable as a result. Some Drivatar opponents take unconventional lines into corners, and many are happy to pound several cars wide into bends that regular, computer AI would have tracked around in a polite convoy.You can tune the Drivatar difficulty to be just right for your skill. You now just need to finish in the top three to earn gold completion so if you can repress your need to outright win every single race (and instead opt for a level of difficulty that’ll see you occasionally out-raced by the top two or three cars) you’ll be satisfyingly challenged every time you hit the track. As with turning off assists and refraining from the rewind feature, you earn extra XP for increasing the difficulty so it’s totally worth having it set where it’s hard to win but you’re still able to progress.It's also worth mentioning that even when you aren’t playing Forza 5, the AI based on your behaviour is, so each time you log in you’ll collect credits based on your Drivatar’s performance.Forza 5’s track selection is also down from Forza 4, but the ones that are here are largely very good. New additions like Bathurst and Spa are genuine highlights, and (although the finish line at the former is in the wrong place) the absolute joy to be gleaned from bombing flat out into The Chase at Bathurst or Eau Rouge at Spa cannot be understated. These highly technical, world-class circuits are immensely fun to lap around. Importantly they mostly look as remarkable as the cars. Detail decreases the further off course you look but up close the imperfections on the track surface really sing, and the trackside objects and painted walls really do look realistically weathered.Dynamic time of day is again absent from Forza 5, as is changing weather; two omissions that are beginning to weigh heavily against the series. I will say the early morning sun in several of Forza 5’s tracks probably looks good in screenshots but feels a little overplayed here. I certainly got to a point where I was a bit tired of driving into a blindingly white orb and yearned to take on Mount Panorama at midday rather than 8am.There are just 14 track locations, so although most have more than one layout the final track count is arguably on the wrong side of light; you’ll generally find yourself hitting the same courses at least once in basically every race series. However, there’s no shortage of stuff to do on the tracks we do have. The varied racing series will keep you busy for a long time, and all of them are introduced by one of the Top Gear lads, who personally explain the significance of the participating cars. The credibility and humour these voiceovers bring to Forza 5 really works, whether it’s Richard Hammond beaming enthusiastically about classic US racing muscle or James May mildly appalled at the inclusion of a VW Beetle.Then there’s the Rivals functionality, returning from Forza 4, which constantly rewards you with cash and XP for beating the player ahead of you and will again encourage many late nights chasing one more ghost. The standalone Rivals Mode features again too, with custom events hinged around certain tracks and cars. Of course, there’s also robust multiplayer for when you want to race real people rather than Skynet versions of them. The racing is fairly typical but it’s also highly customisable. If, like me, you still miss the endurance races, here's where you can set them up.