[BLOG] Console War Fight 1: Forza 5 (Xbox One) Vs. Drive Clu

[Lonesamurai]

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Ok, we had a teaser of both games at Eurogamer, but we've seen more at Gamescon this week, so time to look at both big franchise games and start the console Death Battles! (we'll do FPS and others later)



Now before we start, whichever way you go, you're in for a stunning, indepth game with lots of beautiful cars and lots of tinkering

Both have stunning graphics. Both have ways to play with your friends and play alone, but lets look more in depth into both



Forza 5







Forza Motorsport Roars onto Xbox One in style.

Get behind the wheel of some of the fastest cars on the track and road in Turn 10's latest automotive offering powered only by the Xbox One.

Forza Motorsport 5 is a cinematic automotive journey starring the world's greatest cars and tracks. Built from the ground up to take advantage of Xbox One and the vast power of the cloud, no game better delivers the wide-eyed thrill of racing.



-Never Race Alone - By learning how you and your friends drive, the power of the cloud delivers real human behavior. Drivatar technology creates an ever - evolving network of opponents who are always ready to race. Real tendencies, real mistakes, real victories.

-Rivals Everywhere - Every corner a new challenge, every event a new chance to win. Compete against your friends’ top times in rotating challenges for in-game credits and bragging rights.

-Unprecedented Visual Realism - A new graphics engine recreates thousands of physically-based materials at a level of precision never before possible; the play of light on a perfect coat of paint, the texture of hand-stitched leather and brushed metal, the history written onto scratched rotors and worn concrete. A world of speed, beauty and danger real enough to touch.

-Your Ultimate Car Fantasy - Own and race the cars of your dreams. From purpose-built race cars to classic sports cars to modern tuners, every car features a customized career true to its heritage.

-Fast and Fair Multiplayer - With Smart Match; matchmaking and Xbox Live dedicated servers, experience epic, fast and  competitive multiplayer perfectly suited to your skill and style.

-Curated Customization - The power of the cloud means the best custom content now finds you. With a system that learns your preferred cars and paint schemes, seamlessly experience the most compelling user-generated content available.

-Your ever-growing Garage - Your automotive journey continues long after launch. Download, drive and explore the most anticipated new cars in the world, months before they hit the showrooms, then challenge your friends in continuously updated online race events.

-Living Busy Worlds - Racing comes alive with fans crowding the walls, helicopters circling overhead and the vibrant hum and spectacle of race day.

-Laser-scanned Tracks -  Drive the world’s most legendary race circuits and exotic road courses, captured with millimeter accuracy.

-Top Gear Exclusives - The world’s biggest automotive TV show teams up with the most innovative racing game yet. Take on Stig’s Digital Cousin in unique car challenges, turn a Power Lap on the Top Gear Test Track, and hear show hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May share their distinctive automotive insights throughout the game.



Drive Club







Get ready for a racing game like never before. Developed exclusively for the PlayStation 4 (PS4) by Evolution Studios, the team behind the best-selling MotorStorm franchise, DriveClub is all about you and your friends.  It’s about teamwork; it’s about everyone fighting for one another and earning rewards together – and most importantly it’s about sharing in the sheer thrill of every race. Enjoy the excitement of high-speed solo racing, or join a racing club to discover what DriveClub is all about. Created specifically with the next-generation gamer in mind, DriveClub permanently connects you and your friends, always allowing you to share your experiences, send and receive challenges, and keep up to speed with your team’s performance.

DriveClub brings to life the heart and soul of car culture. An incredible, authentic and immersive driving experience, DriveClub makes you feel the exhilaration of driving the most powerful and beautifully designed cars in the world, all rendered in staggering detail, inside and out. Race them in richly detailed real-world locations, alongside your teammates.



Driveclub exclusively on PlayStation 4 Features:

-Join A Club – Get more by playing within a Club. Gain access to more races, special challenges and events by joining a Club. Join an existing Club or create your own to team up with ~12 drivers and get more in-game currency and earn bonuses. Everything they do helps you, and everything you do helps them achieve more. Unite together and represent your Club with customized team colors and logos for your cars.

-Take on Challenges – Constant and varied challenges keep the game feeling fresh and unique, offering pick-up-and-play gaming experience to suit every player’s lifestyle. Every section of every track offers a new opportunity to face-off with your Clubmates and rivals, so there’s always something to play for. Overdrive, and earn fame for your Club by beating recent times, high speed records or pulling off incredible drifts. Then create custom challenges to take on your friends and rival Clubs for fun, or up the ante by wagering on the outcome.

-Immersive Driving Experience – Every detail of high-speed racing has been painstakingly recreated to give you an authentic and thrilling first person driving experience. Feel every inch of the road beneath your tires, the thunderous roar of the engine and the rush of adrenaline coursing through your veins as your knuckles whiten on the steering-wheel.

-#DRIVECLUBLIVE - There’s always something new to do and big rewards to play for. Take on individual challenges where you can go at it alone and earn prizes for yourself, race in special events with Clubs around the world, or enter weekly tournaments to see who the ultimate driver behind the wheel is.

-The World’s Coolest Cars – Hand-picked for their power and beauty, each car in DriveClub is a pure pleasure to drive, recreated with an insane level of detail and accuracy both inside and out. Personally customize the cars in your garage to show off your unique look or represent your Club’s colors out on the track. Take care not to get your paint-work scraped and carbon fiber chassis torn in high-speed collisions.

-Stunning Real-World Locations – Inspired by real-world roads from diverse regions across the globe, the racing tracks in DriveClub present a variety of different challenges for every driver. Practice technical maneuvers on the open, fast-paced freeways of Canada, check your reflexes on the unpredictable UK roadways, or sharpen your high-speed steering skills on the mountain and dust-filled roads in India.

-Stay Connected with the DriveClub Partner App – No matter where you are in the world, you and your friends can stay connected 24/7 with the iOS and Android DriveClub app. Keep pace with your teammates performance, watch the races live as they happen, set and send challenges, plus check out all of the latest and greatest from the DriveClub world.



Now lets look at the friend options of both:

Drive Club has a guild system, or a club that you can join with friends or make new and similar to many MMO's now, the club can open up new races and other things to do together.  Now as an MMO guild leader myself, this is great for having people to play with, BUT arranging everybody to be free to do stuff together is always a nightmare

Forza 5 has your XBox Live friends and they don't even need to be online to play against.  Forza is going all out to use the XBox cloud system to new and fun ways and for Forza, that means your freind AND other XBox Live users driving the cars as a recording of their driving style.  Which going by some of my XBox live friends means they'll be careening across the road causing a pile up.

For me, the winner of this one is Forza.  It's using the new technology to showcase not only what the console can do, but also what the rest of teh technology linked to it can do with cloud computing and AI.  Drive Club is a new IP, but its still an old school driving game, but the inclusion of the guild system is good, but just like with MMO's, there will be people who don't want to join a guild and in this instance that means they miss out on the content only a guild can unlock.



DLC...

Ok, Forza is going to end up with a ton of DLC, just like other Forzas have before.  I spent a ton of cash on Forza 3 and 4 DLC's and played with loads of different cars, this was the fun of doing it and I can guarantee I will do the same with Forza 5, unlike other DLC's that sometimes feel like it should have been released with the game, Forza's DLC's have always felt like an addition to the game.

Drive Club has no info on this yet. But it's more than likely there will be some form of DLC for the game, we'll have to wait and see what happens.

This one is another tick for Forza, Drive Club is a new IP afterall and nothing has been confirmed yet, but the fact that all the previous Forzas have had immense amounts of DLC ticks this box



Graphics (the bit we really care about huh?)

Ok, they are both stunning, you can see that in the trailers above

Both developers have gone all out to put a pathological level of detail into the graphics and plenty of other articles have covered this already, it's a tie



The Winner?

Well its a win to Forza 5 on this one

Ignoring XBox Live/PSN cost of course as thats a console level detail, just on the game itself, Forza is the stronger contender here with a pedigree

What surprised me when I started this article was that Gran Turismo wasn't a launch title for the Playstation 4.  GT6 is coming to PS3 in December, if GT6 was coming to PS4, it would have been a different fight, but Drive Club had to step in this ring and Forza's pedigree won out

[Digmbot]

Burnout FTW, you n00b! *runs*

[Lonesamurai]

Burnout FTW, you n00b! *runs*

Meh...

Not into arcadey racers...