Forza Motorsport (2005)

Forza Motorsport (2005) is a racing video game released exclusively for the Xbox in 2005. It was developed by Turn 10 Studios, and published by Microsoft Studios. It is the first installment in the Forza Motorsport franchise.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The game's career mode is set up very similarly to Gran Turismo, except there are no mandatory license tests to complete. You just create a profile, select a starter car from the chosen region, and go racing on any of the available events.
 * 2) There are over 220 cars to choose from with a nice variety of old and new cars, and they all look pretty good by Xbox standards.
 * 3) The graphics are amazing for an Xbox game, and push the system to its limits. The courses, such as Maple Valley, Rio de Janeiro, and the night courses, look incredibly vibrant.
 * 4) The player can toggle various race modifiers to alter the difficulty of the race; the higher the difficulty, the bigger the payout.
 * 5) The player can unlock various cars by winning races and levelling up.
 * 6) Similar to the Need for Speed games, there is extensive car customization, where the player can not only apply various wheels, bumpers and spoilers which may affect performance, but also create their own custom liveries for the cars, which could be shared on Xbox Live when the servers were active.
 * 7) *The visual customization options also affect the car's rarity, which may give out additional credits after winning a race.
 * 8) Good menu music, courtesy of Junkie XL (famous for the soundtracks of Deadpool, the 2018 Tomb Raider movie, Mad Max: Fury Road and the 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog movie).
 * 9) Unlike in Gran Turismo, there's a damage model for each car, which can affect performance. Damaging the car also reduces the race's credits payment as penalty.
 * 10) The handling feels very responsive and fitting for each car.
 * 11) There are many events to partake in, ranging from circuit races, point-to-point races, endurance races, and so on.
 * 12) There's an arcade mode with its own progression system, where the player can unlock extra courses and race cars by winning races, similar to Gran Turismo.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Compared to the later Forza installments, this game only runs at 30 FPS.
 * 2) Some of the later events can be a bit difficult.
 * 3) There's no music during the gameplay, though this can be alleviated with the custom soundtrack feature, where the game will play music stored on the console's hard drive.
 * 4) The Xbox Live servers were shut down, meaning the player can no longer share their creations or race against other players online.

Reception
Forza Motorsport was universally acclaimed, with an average score of 9/10 from most publications, and is considered to be not only one of the best racing games on the Xbox, but also one of its killer apps.

Videos
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Trivia

 * Forza Motorsport was originally going to have downloadable content, as there were DLC-related icons hidden within the game's files, but it was scrapped. DLC packs would eventually become available starting with Forza Motorsport 2 for the Xbox 360.