I knew I shouldn't have watched that 'hyperbolic' Digitial Foundry tech analysis video...
... because I ended up buying the game last night even though I was adamant that I wouldn't and would instead pick it up at a later date and a lower price instead. Ahem. What can I say but "I am weak"?
Anyway, on my ageing 2013 PC with an i7-4770K at 4 GHz, 16 GB of DDR 1600Hz memory and a 4-year old GTX 1080 Ti the game's benchmark defaulted to the Ultra preset at 1440p and returned an average framerate of 72 fps. However, I maxed the settings, which included ray-tracing on High (!!!???), MSAA set to 4X and FXAA, and re-ran the benchmark after the usual game restart (*sigh* is this really necessary on PC?) and it returned an average of 54 fps. That is obviously less than the ideal 60 fps but still surprisingly good considering the age of the hardware. I ended up capping the game at 45 fps using RTSS as the game has no framerate cap and the refresh rate option seems bugged (on my PC it defaulted to 165 Hz but only offered 330 Hz and 660 Hz as alternatives!!!). Thanks to G-SYNC, this resulted in a game that is about 99.8% stable with only the odd stutter here and there, most noticeably during the 30 fps cinematic transitions during the opening tutorial sections where you switch between different vehicles separated by pre-rendered high quality 4K video sequences.
The game itself is good as expected if you've played any of the previous games but it is very, very familiar. The HUD and menus are pretty much identical to Forza Horizon 4 with tweaks to things like the Garage where you access your vehicles and so on. It plays like a re-skin of the last game and while the visuals are very nice, I don't think they are as much as a leap as others are making out. For example, even on the Extreme settings there is very noticeable draw in of grass and foliage as well as shadows which kind of make the game engine feel a little dated, at least in my opinion. The quality of the car models, the textures and the overall environmental detail is impressive but the change of location from the UK to a semi-tropical setting makes it difficult to quantify if this is a big leap visually over the last game. I cannot remember the last time I played an ugly looking racing game so at this point I kind of expect them to look good so it's hard to be that impressed by what I'm seeing. This is what I would expect from a 2021 racing game and if anything the visible draw in of shadows and grass is kind of a letdown. Also, the lack of temporal anti-aliasing means that mid-to-distant objects suffer from noticeable shimmering that even 8xMSAA plus FXAA cannot hide. You can see very obvious aliasing right at the start on the bonnet (hood) of the vehicle that drops out of the plane during the opening tutorial section!
Also, the game has several bugs and annoyances. For one, the mouse cursor remains visible on-screen all the time for me even though there is a setting that is supposed to hide the mouse pointer after a period of inactivity in the settings! And I've already mentioned that lack of a framerate cap and the buggy refresh rate option (does anyone have a 330Hz or 660Hz display, I wonder?).
Secondly, the replay camera is still absolutely awful. There's the usual game cameras plus a selection of dull angles from different positions around the vehicle (front, rear, topdown, side etc etc), including some that rotate or fly-by etc They have not changed from the previous games which is disappointing. There's no action or TV style camera like you see in the Gran Turismo games. This game's replays feel very static and dull and lack the dynamic ones you see in other racing sims. This is an area where even Turn 10's Forza Motorsport franchise pales in comparison to the Sony legend that is Gran Turismo which manages to make replays addictive to watch. At least in my opinion.
Finally, the game throws vehicles at you at an alarming pace that it feels overwhelming. I accumulated some 22 cars in the space of 15 minutes, I kid you not, and I only bought/earned two of them. The rest were unlocks from the Premium Edition and rewards from having played the previous games. I guess this isn't a criticism for some but I prefer to earn vehicles at a gradual rate so I can try them out as I get them.