Every Forza Motorsport Game, Ranked

No, seriously, it’s been almost 20 years since Microsoft decided it was going to go head-to-head with Gran Turismo, introducing the world to Forza Motorsport.

Despite arriving eight years behind GT, such is the pace of releases, Forza has now overtaken ‘The Real Driving Simulator’ for the sheer number of mainline titles now totalling eight. Naturally, we’ve taken on the task of ranking them.

Before you ask, we’ll be ranking every Forza Horizon another day and for the purposes of this list, we won’t consider spin-off titles like Motorsport Apex or Street. This is also purely based on our opinion and little else. Feel free to @ us if you disagree.

8. Forza Motorsport 5

We had big hopes for Forza Motorsport 5. With Motorsport 4 (spoilers for the rest of this list) going down as one of the all-time greatest racing games to date and 5 arriving as a launch title for the Xbox One, the hype was very real.

Only, in the end, 5 proved a rather large disappointment – rather a lot like the Xbox One itself, really. The game sat on a new engine and was a sensational showcase of the console’s graphic capabilities as a result, but that came at the cost of everything else.

There were far, far fewer cars and tracks than Motorsport 4 with series favourites like Fujimi Kaido and Maple Valley missing. The career mode felt like a shell of its former self, and the same can be said for the limited multiplayer. Even voiceover work from Clarkson, Hammond and May couldn’t save it.

7. Forza Motorsport (2023)

Had we done this list at Forza Motorsport’s launch in 2023, it could very well have been at the bottom.

Pitched as being ‘built from the ground up’ in its five-year development, it soon became apparent the title was using a lot of recycled content and without much care put into it.

While the gameplay itself hasn’t been the problem, the lacklustre content, a questionable choice to rely on ‘Car Points’ for upgrades rather than in-game credits and a heavy use of abysmal, outdated car models were just some of its many issues.

With several updates over the last few months, though, the ‘reboot’ (which is why it’s not called Motorsport 8) has slowly been recovering from its problems. It’s still not quite there, but there’s hope of a decent game being made of it in the future.

6. Forza Motorsport 7

Forza Motorsport 7 did improve on Motorsport 6, but it never felt like quite enough to justify becoming a title of its own.

Visually and technically, it played a lot like its predecessor albeit with more content and a slightly more expanded career mode. Multiplayer was a little fleshed out too, and it did add dynamic weather for the first time in the series.

However, as a title that arrived two years later, it felt more like a slight update than a real leap ahead. Also bogging it down was the controversial choice to bring loot crates into the Forza series – a feature that was never repeated following strong backlash.

5. Forza Motorsport (2005)

Many games came along to challenge the behemoth that was Gran Turismo as the king of its self-created ‘simcade’ genre of console racers. However, none had really managed to capture the same magic – which made it all the more intriguing when Microsoft announced its challenger.

Forza Motorsport was born, arriving on the original Xbox in 2005. Like Gran Turismo, it promised a career mode focusing on building ordinary cars into bonafide racers and working your way up through the ranks.

The result was promising, if not quite on a par with Gran Turismo 4 which was released globally the same year. In its favour, it did offer up Porsche and Ferrari – both absent from GT – and would lay the foundations for one of the biggest franchises in racing game history.

4. Forza Motorsport 6

While Forza Motorsport 5 offered up a disappointing debut on the Xbox One for the series, it did at least provide a platform to build on.

Motorsport 6 did just that, taking the beautiful graphics and sprinkling in a heap of fresh content and bringing in wet weather and night racing for the first time in a Forza game, albeit both in fixed conditions.

With a proper career mode to play through and much more lively multiplayer, Forza 6 felt like it was steering the series back to its high points – although it has ultimately proven to be the closest thing to a second peak for Motorsport to date.

3. Forza Motorsport 2

With Forza Motorsport establishing itself as a serious racing title late on in the life of the original Xbox, the sequel arriving on Xbox 360 – when the console was absolutely lighting up the world – had a lot of promise.

It delivered, too. It was a genuine generational leap ahead graphically and in the way it played, while offering up arguably the best online multiplayer experience of any driving game at that point in time. More tracks and cars sweetened the deal, along with a pretty impressive single player mode.

Perhaps Forza Motorsport 2’s biggest legacy was the ability to give players the ability to sell their cars in an online auction house, offering up a whole new world of livery creation and a way for creatives to express themselves in the game. It would prove to be seismic for the series.

2. Forza Motorsport 3

Arriving just two years after Motorsport 2, and on the same console, there could’ve been fear of the title proving a bit stale. Yet, developers Turn 10 managed to bring yet another generational leap for the title.

With another 18 months of development on the 360 under their belts, it graphically took another leap ahead and added further polish in pretty much every aspect of the game.

A new online storefront was added, giving creators a new way to make money in the game by selling liveries to other players, along with the ability to do the same for tunes. Forza had gone from a simple racing simulator to a community-driven title in a short space of time.

1. Forza Motorsport 4

Arriving in 2011 as the final Forza Motorsport title on the Xbox 360, Motorsport 4 took everything that came before it and perfected the recipe.

A huge roster of cars ranging from economy superminis to LMP1 race cars and everything in between offered a whole new level of diversity in racing, and there were more tracks and races to compete in than ever before.

New additions include Rivals mode, giving online leaderboards a seriously competitive new edge, and ‘Autovista’ – a virtual showroom for a handful of cars allowing you to prod around engines and interiors as if the car was in your living room, all beautifully narrated by Jeremy Clarkson.

Forza Motorsport 4 is inarguably the peak of the series, and it remains a wonder why Microsoft hasn’t simply modernised the template with up-to-date cars, graphics and multiplayer. In doing so, it could well have the single greatest racing game of all time on its hands.