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Forza Motorsport 6 is introduced by a toe-curling live action video which, in its anodyne, expensive pomposity, might as well be a banking advertisement. As you play, new features are explained to you in the soporific tones of a supermarket checkout kiosk. It is saturated with commercial tie-ins: for its cover star, the 2017 Ford GT supercar, which itself is really just a fantastical advertisement for more humble Fords, and for Top Gear (although, amusingly, Jeremy Clarkson's voice is nowhere to be heard). It's one of the most corporate video games ever made.And yet: Forza Motorsport 6 is also a generous, handsome, impressive and beautifully engineered package. It has hundreds of cars and dozens of tracks, of course, and a commanding feature list accumulated over 10 years and six games which includes the best online service in racing games, and to which it makes meaningful new additions. It's also a game that can serve up 24-car races at a flawless 60 frames per second, online or off, rain or shine, without sacrificing its stirring good looks. And none of this is a contradiction with the above paragraph, because that kind of heft is exactly what corporate wealth and experience - in the case, the corporate wealth and experience belonging to the software giant Microsoft - buys you.
The important thing for followers of the series to note is that Forza 6 is also a big improvement on its misguided predecessor. Developer Turn 10 made three serious errors with Forza 5 (or perhaps one, since they were all likely by-products of the decision to make it an Xbox One launch game). One was to submit to an internal fad at Microsoft for aggressively priced micro-transactions. Another was to settle for a limited content roster - of tracks especially - that felt like a backward step for the series. And the third was to ship with a broken tyre simulation that pushed the series' traditionally tail-happy handling over into outright twitchiness, which made for a frustrating and nervy drive.
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