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Forza Motorsport is a simulation Racing game series for the Xbox and Xbox360 by Microsoft and their internal Turn 10 Studios division, aimed at competing with Sony's Gran Turismo franchise, and is noted for extensive customization and a massive car list. The first game was released in Spring 2005 for the original Xbox, and Forza Motorsport 2 and Forza Motorsport 3 followed in 2007 and 2009, respectively, for the Xbox 360. Each successive game added little things on top: Forza 2 added a storefront and auction site where people can buy and sell tuning setups, cars, and car designs, while Forza 3 added an in-car camera, rollover damage, and a rewind mechanic to give players the option of redoing corners without starting from scratch. Forza 4 adds Kinect functionality, 16-player multiplayer, Top Gear branding and features, and an "Autovista" feature where you can look at high-res models of featured cars while Jeremy Clarkson talks about it.
The series features examples of these tropes: - Amateur Photographer: The games let you take pictures (adjusting focus, aperture, all that jazz) ingame and upload them to the Forza website to download.
- An Entrepreneur Is You: You can earn plenty of credits solely by selling liveries (2 onwards) and car setups (3/4) you have created. There's also the Auction House.
- Anti-Frustration Features: The rewind feature in 3. 4 has it, too, but it can be turned off for bonus credits.
- Artificial Brilliance: The AI in Forza 4 will adjust their behavior based on how you drive. What this means is that if you drive like it's a demolition derby, they will smash into you just as often as you try to smash into them. Forza 3 and 4 have the "Pressure" system - if you ride on the ass of an AI player, the AI will be pressured into braking later and later in order to try to pull ahead of you. Keep on them long enough, and they will usually eventually miss the braking point entirely and go flying off the track.
- Artificial Stupidity: AI drivers will occasionally spontaneously swerve all over the road and mash into each other, and it's easy for them to get stuck on each other
 . Forza 3 AI is infamously slow, as they did not upgrade their cars, making singleplayer more of a series of hotlaps than an actual race. - A Taste of Power: 3 begins with a practice race in an Audi R8... and then makes you pick between a Honda Fit or a Ford Fiesta.
- 4 starts with a practice race in a Ferrari 458 Italia, and makes you pick between a Toyota Agyo or a Chevrolet Spark.
- Awesome, but Impractical: SUVs and pickup trucks. They can toss other cars around like toys, but they're so heavy and top heavy that they tend to plow through corners. Pickups are basically death traps online, as they're very light in the back, rear wheel driven, and it's very easy for other players to accidentally or purposely hit it, and cause it to spin out.
- Awesome yet Practical: Turbochargers, which provide a massive speed boost for almost no weight gain.
- Boring, but Practical: Weight removal and tire upgrades, which are likely going to be the most commonly used upgrades.
- Breather Level: Bowling and Car Passing events in Forza 4.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: The Hired Driver in Forza 3 and 4. For a mere 50% of your winnings (which some players can make up for by removing driver aids they'd normally use and upping the AI's difficulty), he'll basically guarantee a win in any race on any difficultly. The Hired Driver basically drives like The Stig.
- Car Fu: There are gametypes where you get points for mashing the other cars. The Cat and Mouse gametype requires you to defend your team's Mouse (a slow car) and take out the enemy Mouse and their Cats (high performance cars), which usually means mashing into the enemy Mouse as fast as possible and trying to flip them over. There's also a more standard demolition derby gametype, where you get points for ramming players at high speed.
- Online play can frequently turn into Car Fu, unfortunately. The Forza 3's netcode means that a slight bump can cause a car to act like you did a full blown PIT maneuver, and can result in a pileup with every player mashing into each other; the first corner of a track is notorious for causing these pileups. The problem of slight taps sending cars spinning has been fixed in Forza 4, but there are usually pileups at the first corner because people drive like idiots.
- Character Tiers: A game mechanic, each car is given a numerical value called their Performance Index (PI), which is then matched to a letter grade; higher letters mean faster classes. Cars can be upgraded to higher classes, and a few can be creatively downgraded to lower classes too, with engine or aspiration swaps or by installing heavy rims. In general the classes can be thought of as: -
- F class - City cars, old economy cars, hybrids
- E class - Hot hatchbacks, '60-'70s sports cars
- D class - American muscle cars, '90-'00s sports cars
- C class - European and Japanese sports sedans, high performance hot hatches
- B class - Late '00s/high performance sports cars and sport sedans
- A class - 90s/early 00s super cars
- S class - Modern supercars, "track day" cars
- R3 class - Hypercars and road-car based racing cars.
- R2 class - Purpose built racing cars which still resemble roadcars.
- R1 and X class - Le Mans Prototype cars.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Most obvious in 4, where the cars each AI driver drives are the same colour, when a car's colour can be chosen.
- For instance, M. Rossi's cars are [almost] always red, as close to Rossa Corsa as possible.
- Cool Cars: Hundreds of them! And that's before you start loading them with performance upgrades and light body kits.
- Cross Over: Forza Motorsport 4 features the Top Gear (UK) test track, and Jeremy Clarkson will provide commentary on dozens of cars in the Autovista mode. All the Reasonably Priced Cars from the UK and US Top Gear will show up as well.
- The Warthog from Halo will appear as an Easter Egg in the Autovista mode. Unfortunately, it's not drivable.
- Creator Provincialism: Not to the same extent as Gran Turismo, but there are a lot of classic and modern muscle cars.
- Downloadable Content: Mostly in the form of car packages and the occasional track. Forza 4 has monthly car packs, which have an assortment of cars - so far, the packs usually contain at least 1 classic car, a few modern cars, a truck, a newer-model year of an existing car or a racing version of an existing car, and purpose built racing cars.
- Drives Like Crazy: M. Rossi, the fastest AI driver in singleplayer. He will occasionally mash you off the starting line, and use the PIT maneuver on you if you get in his way on corners.
- Dynamic Difficulty: Shows up in Forza 4's World Tour. The AI starts ridiculous easy, but the more events you win, the harder they become.
- Easier Than Easy: All the games (but 3 in particular) have plenty of ways to make things easier on yourself. You're encouraged to crank up the difficulty and turn off the driver aids, though: the harder the difficulty is, the more money you earn.
- Every Car is a Pinto: Averted, despite having an actual Ford Pinto in the game.
- Every Car Is Rear Wheel Drive: HEAVY DUTY Aversion - if the tail end is sliding on your SEAT, unless you're doing it on purpose, it's because you ruined the suspension.
- Fragile Speedster: Small cars like the Lotus Elan and Mazda Miata offer extremely good handling, but they're tiny and slight nudges can cause them to spin out.
- Green Aesop: Forza 4 has hybrids like the dreaded Toyota Prius, and electric cars like the Chevrolet Volt, Nissan Leaf, and Tesla Roadster. There's a player title reward for driving 1,000 miles in hybrid or electric cars.
- Hard Mode Perks: Disabling driver assists (such as anti-lock brakes, traction control, racing/braking line) and increasing the AI difficulty nets you more cash - disabling every assist and enabling the hardest AI will give you an extra 165% cash on top of the regular winnings in Forza 4.
- Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence A few, but the most egregious being the low tire walls, which stop you as if they were made of cast iron.
- Itasha: Can be done from 2 onwards.
- Jack of All Stats: Sporty hot-hatchbacks like the Ford Focus ST offer a good blend of speed, acceleration, handling, and braking.
- The Junkie XL Version: A lot of the songs in the first game were done this way.
- Joke Character: Hybrids, which for the most part, are outran by everything else in the game when stock. You can of course, turn them into insane drag racers because of Forza's huge customization, though.
- Lethal Joke Character: The city cars are ridiculously fast when upgraded, and handle very well.
- Loads And Loads Of Cars Forza 4 has almost 500 cars, with at least sixty more to come from downloadable content.
- Magikarp Power: The Datsun 510 and VW Rabbit in the third game absolutely dominate with enough modification, although any heavily modified car applies.
- Mighty Glacier: The HUMMER H1 Alpha in Forza 4. It's nigh-impossible to really damage, and weighs the better part of eight thousand pounds. The "Weight removal" upgrade on it effectively acts like removing an entire Ford Focus from the weight of the truck.
- And even after applying full weight reduction, it's still heavier than the second-heaviest car in the game.
- Multi Track Drifting: There is nothing (besides common sense) stopping you from tuning the 4 ton HUMMER H1 Alpha to be used as a drift car.
- Nintendo Hard: R1 class production races with all assists turned off and the AI on hard. The R1 Le Mans Prototype cars have ridiculously insane amounts of power, and the slightest twitch in your finger on the throttle is almost guaranteed to cause you to spin out and mash into a wall.
- Old Save Bonus: Having a Forza 3 game save will reward Forza 4 players with additional credits, some cars importing, and an achievement.
- Pass Through The Rings: Autocross events in Forza 4. Cones are set up to form gates along the track, and you pass between them as you go along the track. Hitting the cones results in a +5 second time penalty to your lap. The cones are set up to form slaloms and create extremely tight corners, making them excellent ways to test a car's handling and stability.
- Rare Vehicles: Has both actual examples of rare cars (eg. The Ferrari F50 GT), and in-game examples, known as "unicorn cars" in the fanbase. These pop up once in a while on the auction site, usually adorned with some very well done, elaborate paintjob and/or heavily modified. As a result, they tend to sell for millions of in-game credits. And yes, 4 has an achievment that's acquired by winning a unicorn in an auction.
- Rice Burner: Some people do up their cars like this.
- Painting and selling cars was such a major part of the Forza 2 community that it got turned into an entire section of the game in 3, complete with leaderboards.
- RPG Elements: Each race in career mode gives you experience as well as money. At certain levels you are gifted what should be an appropriate car...
- The third and fourth games also have manufacturer levels, which give cash and increasing discounts on aftermarket parts. In the fourth game, you can (eventually) get all manufacturer upgrades for free!
- Scenery Porn: The Fujimi-Kaido track in 3; cliff faces, rivers, waterfalls, and none of this is in the skybox. You can actually look alongside the track and see some rapids with water flowing over them. They even put in a small scenic overlook so you could stop and gawk at it all.
- Shout Out: The "Out of time achievement in 4 is to reach 88 miles per hour in a Delorean.
- Subsystem Damage: Forza splits your cars into sections; bodywork, engine, gearbox, brakes, steering and suspension. Damage to each section reduces your car's performance accordingly.
- For instance, a shunt in the rear will damage the rear bumper and can usually be shrugged off. However, changing down a gear without lowering the revs sufficiently will wreck the gearbox and severely limit your top speed and acceleration.
- Technology Marches On: The Autovista description of the Delorean's interior describes how advanced its tape player and AM/FM radio is
- Technology Porn: The Autovista mode in 4 is this.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: According to Jeremy Clarkson's Autovista for the Mercedes McLaren SLR the designers couldn't even agree what the car sounded like. (The Germans say it's like a Messerschmitt, the Brits said it is like Spitfire)
- This is pretty much taken exactly from the review he did of the car on Top Gear, but without the additional [paraphrased] line of: "Personally, I think it sounds like the God of Thunder... Gargling with nails!"
- The Rival: Gran Turismo.
- Vanity License Plate: While none of the cars have license plates affixed, it's easy to create (or download) a decal to use as a license plate. You can then stick whatever you want on it.
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