Forza Street everything you loved about Horizon, but everything you hated about Motorsport 7

Forza Street is everything you loved about Horizon, and everything you hated about Motorsport 7. It employs every reprehensible in-app purchase coercion trick in the book and yet you still can’t stop playing it. But there’s one obvious mistake.

A free Forza game sounds amazing. Forza is easily the best racing game series available, whether it be Forza Motorsport for the hardcore sim fans, or Forza Horizon for the casual racers who still want everything to be both pretty and accurate.

The only problem is that Forza Street has everything everyone hated about Motorsport 7, such as the contemptible loot boxes and excessive number of currencies, without any of the soul of the hardcore series.

What it does have, though, is an addictive nature and a story full of intrigue, much like Horizon.

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Forza Street.

It also has a control system that will be revolutionary and brilliant when the game eventually comes out on phones later this year, even if it’s excessively simplistic for PC.

The game starts with you joining an underground car racing club run by four billionaires who have chosen to use their money to chase the brief high felt by going death-defyingly fast, instead of solving world hunger (so, like most real-world billionaires).

As you race you get to know the other characters, and find out more about the ominous warnings given by your new friends.

You also earn approximately eleventy billion currencies — gold, credits, wrenches, energy, loot boxes, car part upgrades, tuning cards, and several others I’ve likely forgotten.

As you progress, you need to unlock new cars, upgrade old cars, and repair your car after every race, and then wait four minutes to earn more energy so you can race again.

This game employs every reprehensible in-app purchase coercion trick in the book, and yet still I can’t stop playing, and know I’ll play even more when it comes out on mobile.

As for the controls, they’re excessively simple. They will be great for people with limited mobility, but those of us with average mobility will feel as though this game is more of a spectator sport.

You hold down the space bar until you hit a corner, lift the space bar at the perfect moment, wait until you hit the end of the corner, and then hold the space bar again. Occasionally you’ll earn enough Nitro to press the B key and speed up. That’s it. That’s the game.

Bottom line: Forza Street will be pretty good on mobile, but releasing first on PC was a mistake.

Forza Street

** 1/2

Available now on: Windows 10

Coming soon for: iOS, Android

Price: Free+

Reviewed on: PC 24GB RAM/Intel i7/Nvidia 1070 Ti