Forza Motorsport 5 was truly "developed from the ground up", that didn't happen again.

Its weird remembering how cripplingly disapointing this game was when it came out. But now it looks like a high effort passion project compared to what forzas doing now. This was really franchises turning point.

If I may,

I was playing Forza for content when FM5 came out. I was active in a ton of communities, hosting and participating in drift events and leagues constantly. Even if I wasn't making videos I'd probably put 10-20 hours a week into the game at minimum. It wasn't GT, but that's what I loved about it. You weren't just playing a game, you were playing a community platform. The user-created content kept those games alive. When FM5 came out it wasn't just the lack of content (and a lot of other things pertaining to the single player like the doofus and unfair AI with the "driveatar" feature which was just your friends gamertags over the same AI as before, not that FM was known for killer AI. Just watching your review the AI are identical to what I remember at launch with driveatars) but a lot of community features were gutted. Arguably, the storefront system from FM4 has not fully returned to how easy it was to use. No auction house and by the time the auction house came back it was never the same.  The killing blow was no online custom lobbies, which also have not returned (although it's rumored Microsoft is to blame). It started to be work to get lobbies together and organize community events vs just booting up the game and figuring something out for the day.

I think this game could have been okay if a lot of the online and community features weren't gutted. It would have went over a lot like GT3. Yeah, lack of content but what's here is really well received.

But at the same time, nobody asked for Forzavista. It was a neat side-piece in FM4 but was a selling point in FM5. It felt as a whole if you were a long-time fan it went from being a true alternative to GT (which were also putting out great games!) to just a tech demo with cars. We expected glitches and issues that had been present since Forza 2 but they were still there (a paint glitch on the AE86 springs to mind but that's a drop in the bucket). We were promised and expected, at the trade of content, a game built "from the ground up". Sound familiar? If anything they took stuff like body kits and removed them from cars. I know there's some parts for the S13 Silvia that NEVER came back.

I hate this game not because it's an awful game. Standalone it's.. fine? I hate this game because of what it represents. It was the beginning of the end from a studio that really could do no wrong minus some wacky updates and silly glitches sometimes. Their patterns of greed, lack of communication to anyone outside their tight-knit circle of yes men they called a 'community', and ignoring what their community asked for to appease 9s and 10s from IGN became impossible to ignore at this point and even though 6 and 7 were better games that I put a lot of time into, it never felt like an Xbox 360 ever again. Cold, soulless and by the numbers (at least on the Motorsport side, but I'd argue that's what we're seeing in Horizon now to a degree). I remember once the honeymoon phase fell down for FM5, most of my friends went back to FM4 and either never came back to the Forza franchise again or waited until 6 or 7 to dip their toes in on PC.

The franchise was never the same. The community was never the same. FM4 was a good mix of good people with a few bad apples. FM5 and beyond it got worse, and more toxic and a lot of those community pillars moved onto better platforms and franchises whether that's GT or to PCs and sim racing. I think that's why the Forza fandom hates this game so much. It was the beginning of the end of the heyday of Forza Motorsport. It was and to this day has never been the same. The new game is just a Forza Motorsport 5 sequel but worse. I dunno what changed with the move to the Xbox One but it really feels like a lot of the people at Turn10 do not care anymore, and that Playground have recently made a turn down their own road of apathy.

Edit: tl;dr great review as always! but a lot of the reason the community hates this game has more to do with just the single player and gameplay, but a lot more for what the game represents and the shift from user-created content and community features and feedback to beating to their own drum, reception be damned. You just had to be there.

I liked how Forza Motorsport 5 was the last Forza game to get the tail lights correct on the 2013-2014 Mustangs.

I think you're misremembering a little.  Xbox talked about pretty much nothing but games at E3 2013.  It was their debut of the XB1 weeks prior where they had a separate show about the non-gaming capabilities of the XB1 that got people so riled up, which they did deliberately so they could keep E3 to talk purely about games.  Also, GT6 was never on PS4.  Until GT7 came along, XB1 genuinely had the better single player 'sim lite' racers with Forza Motorsport 5, 6 and 7.  Gran Turismo Sport had even worse content problems than FM5 and the absolute shittiest, worst single player experience of the entire FM or GT series.  Was quite good if you liked multiplayer racing, though.

After the current ones...

"Perhaps I've treated you too harshly"

Can we just appreciate how good that Audi R8 Sounds at 8:49?

at 19:36 they actually talked a lot about the vibration control on the controller. It was one of the selling points because the Xbox One created brand new design to the controllers adding ramblers in the triggers. So Forza talked about that a lot in E3!

I hated this when it was initially released, no cars and tracks🤣. I was not aware of the horrific deadlines though, so I have to concede you have a point when you said "It's not a bad game, it's just the worst Forza game". Arguably not the fault of Turn 10 really. Great review mate 👍

It's crazy how little graphical update Forza Motorsport got in 11 years. This game looks pretty much the same as the current title

I wish they would add back the giant event selection from FM3 and FM4 where there was like 100’s of different events you could take on at anytime assuming you had a car that met the entry requirements instead of following the career mode path

Let me know when humanity has made enough progress to emulate this one

Compared to the Forza Motorsport 2023... FM5 is a fucking masterpiece. I'd say even the graphics look better in it which is astonishing. More track variety too. Better UI, better everything? God, I still can't believe how MS fucked it up

Bro said "ooh that's Sexy." Got me crazy. 😂

Hi!
19:30 The Vibration of the controller is dependend on the gas and break pedal, so when you break and your wheels lock up, the left trigger will vibrate. If you accelerate and your wheels spin, the right trigger will vibrate. They made a huge deal of that when presenting the new controller back in the day.
That should explain whyl one side vibrates more than the other sometimes.

So it's not just you, but it has a reason behind it.

Second thing: You spotted them having almost the same names as real drivers because the Drivatar System is offline for the old games. So these are just deafult NPC Drivers, no drivatar system is active there anymore. It needed the online connection too.

Can’t wait till this game comes out

I posted a longer comment but YouTube ate it, so I'll just point out again that the widely mocked Xbox One reveal was a separate event a couple of weeks before E3. Also, having Yas Marina as one of the few tracks in the game itself is just adding insult to injury.

"Honey wake up. Colourshed just uploaded another racing game review"

To clarify: at 9:24 you mentioned the DLC being delisted. Delisted items can still be redownloaded and used if you already purchased a license.
The impulse triggers are an amazing feature though. Was a huge step up from the 360 controllers, along with their better (imo) shape.

I feel like why gt3 probably gets away with having less cars than GT2 is it was built for the ps2 and didn't have a tight deadline like forza 5 had.