Disclaimer: I am going to be as fair & balance as possible, I love racing games, I love GT4, I love PGR & Xbox Live, there's nothing wrong with having good racing games on Xbox & PS2.
***All pictures snapped & driven by yours truly***
Preface:
When GT4 came out and bought out tons of new content, then the infamous Forza demo from OXM came out and really dissappointed many as well as myself. Then the Forza demo crashing at CES, most of us has written Forza off as a GT competitor
Well, I'm glad that was just a demo...
The opening movie almost looked like the GT4 opening with the same type of cinematics and a touch of American-ness.
You start by creating a profile, then pick arcade or simulator mode, the arcade mode resembles GT4 where you select different classes of cars and tracks, many of them look exactly like GT4's offering. When the race starts, it does the same image flipping and sound a la GT4.
The graphics, wow with 480p widescreen, its very sweet. You don't really need 1080i here. It has a crisp CG animated look, not quite photorealistic at GT4 but after-awhile you will admire the sweet graphics, it is much crisper, cleaner, and uniform than GT4's only replay look sweet. The car in-game graphics are much more detail and doesn't pixellate, which is a complaint of GT4 that the "draw distance" is too short and very difficult to drive fast and see traffic ahead.
I am quite impressed by the level of detail, if you think PGR is detailed, Forza blows it away. When you hit a metal fence, you actually feel and hear the fence scrapping the car!
Graphically it is much more "technical" than GT4's blurring tricks to fool you, which does the job on non-techies, but Forza be prepared for eye candy. Pixel Shader is at work everywhere. I hit somebody, my hood is dented and scrapped, looks the part...
Night time racing is quite cool, the lighting is quite realistic. In GT4, the headlights of cars illuminates similarly and not very unique.
With damage, 1 of my headlight was smashed up and it uses xenon hids which is well represented.
Lots of sweet dynamic lighting, shadows, and smoke trails!!
Ok, how's the control? Its quite fast and responsive. Very touchy at 1st but after I lapped the car 3 times and tried all buttons, its quite good. The hand brake works like a hand brake, not like GT4's unrealistic handbrake. Spins, drifts, and induced mild understeer and oversteer quite easily achieve and felt in Forza. GT4 upgraded the handling, but not upgraded the feel, the cars still has that car rotating screen feeling and not a real sense of speed and grip on corners.
I believe tremendous work to fine tune the handling & control here, I think the Forza guy nailed it. The braking is still quite tricky but it is quite realistic.
If you guys liked PGR where realistic physics such as wind, drafting, and tapping other cars, Forza goes even further. Nothing like drafting and tapping out the other car in the lead and watch they spin out or ram the car in the wrong corner and you end up hitting the wall.
Sound, huge leaps over GT4. I can't even begin to start from the sound of the STI's boxer rumble to the V8 in the RS6 and the sweet sound of the Ferrari 550, and the Zonda.
Now the reason GT4 is huge because the modding, I'm actually quite addicted to modding cars in Forza now starting with my MR2 turbo, Forza allows even more levels of modding than GT4. Near every car can be modified without the usual limits in GT4. The Civic Type R can get either Supercharged or Turbo, as well as modifying the shifter, ignition system, suspension, flywheel, etc. Think GT4 tuning even further.
The best part is you get to paint your car for free, the only mods you pay are the bolt on stuff.
Like adding front lip, diffusers, side markers, wings, and hoods.
Check out my custom MR2 MKII Turbo.
The tracks are convincingly realistic and very well done like GT4, I can say which is better since I haven't unlocked all the tracks but I can tell the GT4 has the greater number and variety.
Look at the dynamic reflections!
RX-8 drifting action.
RS6 Drifting.
Finally, I can honestly say this is the faster, cooler, and more innovative racing game on the market today. GT4, now feels dated, more like a GT3 expansion pack, and lacks the innovation that Forza packs.
I give Forza 4.5/5 - GT4 4/5
So much more cooler things to do in Forza than GT4, don't forget Xbox Live!!
All the comments about Forza being "arcadey" is not looking at the game correctly.
If we compare GT4 & Forza, the sum of all the features, content, etc.. the game that is more arcadey is GT4. Because it suits a broader appeal by making the game cinematically more production looking and gives this false sense of a simulator just because it has Nurgurgring and more licensed cars does not hide the facts that GT4 still lacks damage, physics, controls are setup for general audience and even with TSC turned off, the cars feel still lack feedback and more realistic handling.
GT4's value is content and polish, it uses it to hide the fact that the game is still pretty much the same as GT3.. that's not such a bad thing but Forza has *convinced* me that it feels quite dated now.....
**Update**
Stunning Visuals!!
Laguna Seca
***All pictures snapped & driven by yours truly***
Preface:
When GT4 came out and bought out tons of new content, then the infamous Forza demo from OXM came out and really dissappointed many as well as myself. Then the Forza demo crashing at CES, most of us has written Forza off as a GT competitor
Well, I'm glad that was just a demo...
The opening movie almost looked like the GT4 opening with the same type of cinematics and a touch of American-ness.
You start by creating a profile, then pick arcade or simulator mode, the arcade mode resembles GT4 where you select different classes of cars and tracks, many of them look exactly like GT4's offering. When the race starts, it does the same image flipping and sound a la GT4.
The graphics, wow with 480p widescreen, its very sweet. You don't really need 1080i here. It has a crisp CG animated look, not quite photorealistic at GT4 but after-awhile you will admire the sweet graphics, it is much crisper, cleaner, and uniform than GT4's only replay look sweet. The car in-game graphics are much more detail and doesn't pixellate, which is a complaint of GT4 that the "draw distance" is too short and very difficult to drive fast and see traffic ahead.
I am quite impressed by the level of detail, if you think PGR is detailed, Forza blows it away. When you hit a metal fence, you actually feel and hear the fence scrapping the car!
Graphically it is much more "technical" than GT4's blurring tricks to fool you, which does the job on non-techies, but Forza be prepared for eye candy. Pixel Shader is at work everywhere. I hit somebody, my hood is dented and scrapped, looks the part...
Night time racing is quite cool, the lighting is quite realistic. In GT4, the headlights of cars illuminates similarly and not very unique.
With damage, 1 of my headlight was smashed up and it uses xenon hids which is well represented.
Lots of sweet dynamic lighting, shadows, and smoke trails!!
Ok, how's the control? Its quite fast and responsive. Very touchy at 1st but after I lapped the car 3 times and tried all buttons, its quite good. The hand brake works like a hand brake, not like GT4's unrealistic handbrake. Spins, drifts, and induced mild understeer and oversteer quite easily achieve and felt in Forza. GT4 upgraded the handling, but not upgraded the feel, the cars still has that car rotating screen feeling and not a real sense of speed and grip on corners.
I believe tremendous work to fine tune the handling & control here, I think the Forza guy nailed it. The braking is still quite tricky but it is quite realistic.
If you guys liked PGR where realistic physics such as wind, drafting, and tapping other cars, Forza goes even further. Nothing like drafting and tapping out the other car in the lead and watch they spin out or ram the car in the wrong corner and you end up hitting the wall.
Sound, huge leaps over GT4. I can't even begin to start from the sound of the STI's boxer rumble to the V8 in the RS6 and the sweet sound of the Ferrari 550, and the Zonda.
Now the reason GT4 is huge because the modding, I'm actually quite addicted to modding cars in Forza now starting with my MR2 turbo, Forza allows even more levels of modding than GT4. Near every car can be modified without the usual limits in GT4. The Civic Type R can get either Supercharged or Turbo, as well as modifying the shifter, ignition system, suspension, flywheel, etc. Think GT4 tuning even further.
The best part is you get to paint your car for free, the only mods you pay are the bolt on stuff.
Like adding front lip, diffusers, side markers, wings, and hoods.
Check out my custom MR2 MKII Turbo.
The tracks are convincingly realistic and very well done like GT4, I can say which is better since I haven't unlocked all the tracks but I can tell the GT4 has the greater number and variety.
Look at the dynamic reflections!
RX-8 drifting action.
RS6 Drifting.
Finally, I can honestly say this is the faster, cooler, and more innovative racing game on the market today. GT4, now feels dated, more like a GT3 expansion pack, and lacks the innovation that Forza packs.
I give Forza 4.5/5 - GT4 4/5
So much more cooler things to do in Forza than GT4, don't forget Xbox Live!!
All the comments about Forza being "arcadey" is not looking at the game correctly.
If we compare GT4 & Forza, the sum of all the features, content, etc.. the game that is more arcadey is GT4. Because it suits a broader appeal by making the game cinematically more production looking and gives this false sense of a simulator just because it has Nurgurgring and more licensed cars does not hide the facts that GT4 still lacks damage, physics, controls are setup for general audience and even with TSC turned off, the cars feel still lack feedback and more realistic handling.
GT4's value is content and polish, it uses it to hide the fact that the game is still pretty much the same as GT3.. that's not such a bad thing but Forza has *convinced* me that it feels quite dated now.....
**Update**
Stunning Visuals!!
Laguna Seca
!! yea nice one!
Now if I only had an X-Box 
... Well Microsoft's hitting Sony as hard as they can!! Sony and PD will need a lot of quality control in their next gen PS and GT5... I hope PD is playing Forza... They need to look at a game that may as well be better than their game... Veterans losing to Freshmen... They should be ashamed of themselves!! (j/k?)
