Forza Motorsport Vs Gran Turismo 4 #blogpost

It has been a while since I’ve done a gaming post, but here is something different. I’ve recently got my original Xbox working and to test it I played Forza Motorsport for about 7 hours. This got me thinking about the differences between the first Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo 4. Why Gran Turismo 4? Both games were made for the same generation of consoles (Sixth Gen) and there’s only about two months between their release dates in Europe. Forza Motorsport was also known as Gran Turismo for Xbox.

Physics

The physics engine in Gran Turismo 4 is the same as it is in Prologue, mainly because Prologue was seen as a huge Gran Turismo 4 demo. I mention this because Gran Turismo’s creator Kazunori Yamauchi said that fans and professional drivers can learn from the game, and I can see what he means. The license tests aren’t just something that gets you through the game it also shows you how good the physics engine is.

Forza Motorsport was originally going to have a physics engine that was as good as Gran Turismo’s, but it was apparently not as fun as it could have been and the solution to that was to make a tiny bit arcadeier, but not to a point where it was like other Xbox titles such as Project Gotham Racing and Sega GT 2002. I like racing simulators, so I think that the driving in Gran Turismo 4 is more fun and I think that it’s physics engine is better, but a part of that is because Polyphony Digital had 11 years to develop it from the beginning of Gran Turismo 1’s development in 1992 to the first E3 demos of Gran Turismo 4 in 2003).

Graphics and general look

Forza Motorsports graphics are better than other Xbox titles, but I don’t think it’s better than Gran Turismo 4. There seems to be a blurriness what has no need to be there. This blurriness also appears in Forza Motorsport 2 and 3, so it looks like that it was done on purpose. Gran Turismo 4 also has a slight blurriness to it, but that was down to the limitations of the Play Station 2.

Forza Motorsport has way better reflections even though they run at a much lower frame rate to the rest of the game, but that is expected of a sixth gen console. The lighting in Gran Turismo 4 is slightly better than the lighting in Forza Motorsport, but Turn 10 studios did a brilliant job on the shadows in Forza Motorsport. Both games are equal when it comes to the graphics and the general look.

Tracks

There are a lot of tracks from all over the world in both games including ones made just for each game. Forza Motorsport has 35 tracks which is nothing compared to Gran Turismo 4’s 51, but you have to remember that Gran Turismo 4 also has snow and dirt tracks as well. Polyphony digital also spent years building up their track library. The One thing that Forza Motorsport that Gran Turismo 4 doesn’t is point to point and autocross tracks which are brilliant, but they don’t make up for the lack of rally courses.

When you drive on a track on Forza Motorsport, you would notice that everything is perfect. Everything looks brand new and it seems like only races that are done on the track are the ones that you are entered in. Whilst in Gran Turismo 4 things look used and that gives the game a better look when it comes to racing.

Cars

There’s no point in comparing the amount of cars in each game but I’m going to anyway. Forza Motorsport has 231 cars, which is a lot but it’s nothing compared to Gran Turismo 4’s 721 cars. Even though Gran Turismo 4 has more than three times the cars, a lot of them are different versions of the same model. That gives the illusion of there being a lot less cars and I think Polyphony Digital should have chosen one version of each model and used the extra space on the disc for other cars that have been in the Gran Turismo series in the past (mainly Gran Turismo 2). I think that Forza Motorsport’s car list is better managed than Gran Turismo 4’s.

There’s a wider variety of car types in Gran Turismo 4 than in Forza Motorsport. If you want a small car in Forza Motorsport then the best option is the Honda CR-X SiR, but you can go way smaller in Gran Turismo 4 as there are kei cars and kei trucks such as the Daihatsu Midget II D-Type. Gran Turismo 4 also beats Forza Motorsport on the other end of the size scale with Pick-up trucks and SUVs of which Forza Motorsport has none. Porsche and Ferrari and included into Forza Motorsport, so the lack of certain car classes is forgiven.

Gran Turismo 4 broke a world record for the most amount of polygons used in a car model and you can’t get much better than that. It broke the record with 5,000 polygons being used in a single car. I should point out that record has since been broken by every newer racing game, but Forza Motorsport isn’t that far behind Gran Turismo 4.

Car Upgrades, tuning and customisation

Since the beginning of Gran Turismo you have been able to upgrade your car, and up until Gran Turismo 4 that hadn’t changed. The one thing that had changed was the addition of NOS. Out of ten, the car upgrading system would be a seven and that is because there isn’t the option to do engine swaps. The engine swap option would have made it a ten out of ten. You can do all of the things to your car Forza Motorsport as you can in Gran Turismo 4, but you can also do engine swaps on a lot of cars. So the upgrading system in Forza Motorsport is a lot better the Gran Tursimo 4’s.

There are only two customization options in Gran Turismo 4, and that is the addition of a wing and being able to change the wheels. You can do so much more in Forza Motorsport such as almost every body panel and even the rear lights on a small number of cars. You can also change the wheels as well, but there aren’t as many wheel options as there are in Gran Turismo 4. In Gran Turismo 4, there’s an option to put wheels from some cars on to others, but it does change the size which I think is a bit weird.

In Forza Motorsport, you can make your own decals and put them on your car but you can also choose decals that are already in the game. You are able to paint the Hood/Bonnet, Door mirrors, and the rest of the car different colours. Gran Turismo 4 has none of that.

Racing

There are three forms of racing in Forza Motorsport, track, point to point and autocross. The track racing doesn’t seem to get boring unlike in Gran Turismo 4, but I can do a race more than once in Gran Turismo 4 but I don’t like doing that in Forza Motorsport and I don’t know why. Point to point racing is brilliant and it’s a shame Turn 10 studios took it out in the following games. The one think that I don’t like about the point to point races is that some of them are Hill decent races and that mainly down to the camera angles where it doesn’t adjust to the car at certain angles. Autocross races are where you drive in between cones in a car park of some sort and if you hit one of those cones a second gets added to your time. I’m not a huge fan of the autocross because it gets really boring and repetitive over time.

Gran Turismo 4 might not have Point to point races or autocross, but it does have something that Forza Motorsport fans have been asking for since the series debuted in 2005 and that is rally. The off road physics had been improved for Gran Turismo 4 but it isn’t perfect. Not all cars can be driven on the dirt and snow tracks and there’s no reason for it. I could understand it if it was really rocky because some cars wouldn’t be able to drive over that, but it’s only dirt and snow.

As it is in all racing games the AI gets faster and the races become longer, but the AI in Forza Motorsport drive like actual people and not computers like they do in Gran Turismo 4. That makes every race feel a little bit different.

Conclusion

In conclusion Gran Turismo 4 has more cars and tracks that have had more effort put into their digital recreation, but there are way more upgrading and customising options in Forza Motorsport. The physics and graphics in Gran Turismo 4 are a lot better than Forza Motorsport due to more time being spent on them, and the Racing in Forza Motorsport is only slightly better. Overall Gran Turismo 4 is better because it’s more realistic which is what both games were to be.