FM4, thinking of getting it. Need some answers.

[Negrumir]

And I figured you guys would probably give me the best answers. Being a sister site to GTPlanet, a lot of you are probably in the same boat as I. (Play GT5 and Forza.)

So Forza 4 looks interesting to me: Better graphics, (a bit too shiny for my taste but graphics aren't everything) Better physics, (what I'll be asking about) better sound (GT5 and FM3 sound quite bad to me.) More cars... etc.

Anyway, I've played FM3 for about half a year, and frankly I'm beginning to hate it, whereas I got GT5 at launch and still love it despite its many shortcomings.

FM3 is completely lost in the area that GT5 seems to completely nail it: Driving.

Now, maybe GT5 is a bit unrealistic or something, but I've never actually driven a full race car so who knows. In GT5, I have a feel for the car, I can reasonably handle most any car, all the way up to F1s. (and that's with no assists except ABS at 1) I sometimes run racing slicks on the true race cars, but I can handle all tires reasonably well on appropriate machines.

Thing is FM3 is awful for me. Nearly any car I use can burn the tires off in 1st or 2nd. And if, from bumps or weight shifting, the tires lose any traction, even the slightest amount of throttle will send me sideways in a "cloud of smoke." (FM3's smoke is a joke) Again, I run with assists off, I even turned ABS off because it didn't help at all. Now I've spend many hours tuning my cars and I try to avoid "noobing it up" by slapping an AWD system on a car. I like high power, rear wheel drive cars. I like getting a little sideways when I throw down on it. But even if I straighten up and ease on the throttle at speed (about 60 - 80mph) I can still break the rear tires lose and wipe out entirely.

Now I'm talking about 500+hp cars, my Lotus Esprit has around 800hp in it and I want to love using this car. But even with Racing slicks, extra tire width, and the air pressure as low as possible, it's never enough. I can spin the tires through 2nd and sometimes 3rd. If there's already any traction loss, I can bump it into 4th and still lay rubber.

Anyway, enough complaining. Simply put, high-power cars feel impossible to drive. If they're actually like this in real life, then I just can't see how the drivers sling them through corners and blast down a straightaway without leaving behind thick black lines and a cloud of smoke.

Is Forza 4 better in this respect? Is it possible to drive a high powered car at a decent speed? The A.I. do it, shoot, I can go to the drag races and never be able to win because they only chirp the tires on launch.

And speaking of the A.I. are they any better? Both GT5 and Forza 3 have awful A.I. In FM3, if I'm behind them, I can overtake them by a huge margin if I brake late into a corner, but if I'm in front, they slam my car nearly every corner no matter how late or early I brake. They love to spin me out when I'm holding a line down a straight away. Constantly rubbing against my car no matter what I do. I've seen a line of about 6 cars all giving each other proper space and driving smoothly when going through a long, narrow corner. But when I was in the middle of the pack, holding the same line in the same corner with the same cars, the guy behind me kept bumping me, and the guy in front of me would stomp the brakes, make me rear end him, and then speed away.

So, needles to say; I hate the A.I. and I'm beginning to hate the driving. I picked up and got used to GT5 and every other racing game I play in about a day or two. But try as I might, FM3 seems unplayable in the sense that I have to try so hard just to not wreck a car (or be wrecked).

Forza 3 also had pretty bad sounds as well. Nearly every car sounded the same, no engine roared, no engine whined, there was no rumble of pop; everything just sounded kinda grinding. It reminds me of Gran Turismo 2 in this respect. From what I've seen on the internet, FM4 has gone all out and sounds great.

How about the career and all that? I liked the way it was handled in FM3 but it seemed that you never made much money. It could be that I didn't make it far enough in the game, but I was never able to buy any of the really high end cars. Like a 5 lap race at Road America in R3 cars got me about 21k (plus about 17k in bonuses). I get a gift car every level but I don't want to sell them 'cause I know I won't be able to buy them back for a long time.

So, explain to me, relevant to what I've mentioned above, whether I should get this game and why. Maybe I'm misguided an biased, but I want to know what to expect at least.

Cars feel like they're on ice, rubber-band/angry and hostile A.I., wealth acquisition... How does this game improve over FM3, how does it compare to GT5, how does it stand on its own?

Thanks.

 

[Luminis]

I'll answer your questions in a reversed order.

4) Money gets thrown at you from everywhere. Left, right and center. I'm making more money than I can spend, to be quite honest. I haven't even tried to make money yet, and I'm sitting on nine million credits.

3) Soundwise, FM3 was already pretty much better than most games on consoles, I think. There's only one game that, to me, can compete with FM4 right now in the sound department, and that is Shift 2. Aside from that, there really isn't much left to be desired. If you can tolerate GT5, FM4 should be quite the pleasure to your ears.

2) AI seems better now, but reflects your driving style and has rubber banding in the lower difficulties. So, you'd better be a clean and fast driver. If you're slow and you suck, the AI won't be as good as it could be. They're still pretty slow, though. Faster than they were in FM3, I think, but slow none the less.

1) Race cars feel more managable now, and RWD cars in general do, too. However, you still need some throttle control. There's no tyre compound like GT5's racing soft slicks that have twice the grip anything in real life could ever muster. Compared to GT5, I find most race cars a tad more challenging to drive, while most road cars are a bit easier to keep on the track.

From what I can tell from your post, don't get it. It's just the feeling I've got from your post, but I think you'll miss the very passive and slow AI GT5 has and the exaggerated grrip of the slick tyres. Also, if you didn't like the sounds FM3 offered, FM4 is probably not all that much different. One of the best games there is, in that regard, as far as I am concerned, but FM3 wasn't that much different from FM4.

 

[FPScott]

Rent it first to see how you like it. I kinda have the same feeling as Luminis that you might regret purchasing the game.

 

[GeekCred]

I would also say rent it first. The tire model is improved and generally feels more grippy and responsive than FM3, but it's subtle, not like a completely different physics model. In summary, if you hated FM3, I don't think you're going to like FM4.

 

[Spagetti69]

Do you use a wheel in Forza?

 

[BryCivicSi]

Until a month before Forza 4 came out, I played GT5 on a daily basis since the day it came out. I loved it. I picked up Forza 3 two weeks before Forza 4 came out. I liked it. And I've played FM4 about everyday since the day it came out. What this game does well, it does far better than I could have hoped. That being said, career mode is lame. I don't get playing it one race at a time. If I want to stick with a certain car for maybe a dozen races and rake in the money, i can't. I have to find a specific car that fits into guidelines. The flow from race to race breaks up what would be some fun racing. However, not playing online a lot with GT5, FM5 online but more specifically Rival mode, is far better than anything in the game. I spend most of my time killing friends from this forum. This alone has made me a far superior driver and it means I don't have to race the rubberband AI in career mode. I feel GT5 AI is far superior to FM4 AI but I've played GT series since the first game decades ago so maybe I am used to it.
Just because you seem to gripe a lot about both games, I don't think you will like fM4. It ain't perfect and it ain't a GT5 extension. The graphics are too shiny, the career mode ain't much and the rubberband AI suck but there are ways around those flaws to enjoy the game far more than I did GT5.

 

[Luminis]

If I want to stick with a certain car for maybe a dozen races and rake in the money, i can't. I have to find a specific car that fits into guidelines. .

You could always just exit World Tour Mode and go to the event list... There are about 35 races that have only one restriction, and that's the cars PI.

 

[imported_barny0111]

Ok, I was in the same boat and this is my opinion. If you enjoy racing, get it. But it's a very different experience than GT5.

The AI is way more aggressive, to point of it getting frustrating in some of the later staged races. Trading paint is mandatory.

The physics have a more floaty feel, which makes it much more challenging. ESP the race cars. Wheel spin is fairly easy, but you just need to ease into the accelerator. Which makes sense to me.

I'm not sure if it's more or less realistic than GT5. I'm no race driver. Which do I prefer??? Hard to say, I am favoring GT5, but I haven't got into the tuning of cars in f4 yet.

I feel neither game is suited to the controller. Your much better off with a wheel. I don't have the patience to master a race car using the controller in F4.

The graphics are shiny and Sound is more beefy than GT5. I like the gritty feel of GT5 much better. It's most prob what I'll be playing n the long term.

Rent first if your unsure. I like it, i like most racing games.

 

[R6Boy2005]

More of the above. If you a racing game snob like me (That's what my wife calls me). Then I think you'll love it. Now I haven't played GT5 so I can't compare the two but to me FM3 beat GT5 just based on features. I don't have a wheel either. I am breaking out of my tuning shell in FM4 and I'll tell ya, I really love being able to tune every last component of my car. I hardly ever drive a car out of the box anymore. All I can say is rent, rent, rent!

 

[Negrumir]

Thanks guys. It's nice to hear that some of the "issues" have been worked on.

I'm not going answer each of you individually but I did read all of it.
Renting, not sure what options I have in this area, but I almost never rent anything. It usually turns out that I end up buying something that I rent and that makes the final price closer to $70. Maybe I can bum it off a friend for a couple days.

And no, I don't like GT5's AI more, I can run circles around them in nearly every event and unless I take a wildly underpowered car, it's less fun because of it. That said, I know it's "Artificial Intelligence," but I felt FM3's driving skill was more "A" and less "I."

And for tires, sure GT5 has some pretty crazy grip with Soft slicks, but I see those more like drag racing tires, or some specialty tire. Yes, they last too long to be fair. But the best tires on Forza feel more like sports mediums or softs to me.

I recently saw a thread here with some people praising how much better the true race cars felt. That and the AI are probably some of my biggest complaints. Were the driving a bit easier, I'd have significantly less problems with the A.I.

Anyway, whenever I get a bit of extra cash, I might be grabbing FM4.
Thanks again for giving me a run-down of what's what in the game.