It would be very easy to say that racing games have been the saving grace during this generation of consoles, and in 2023 it was Forza Motorsport winning out as the best racing game of the year.
While NBA 2K23 won the award for best sports game in 2022, in 2021 we actually gave the award to Forza Horizon 5. In various forms, Forza has been a big factor in our end-of-year awards, and while F1 won the racing award last year, Forza returns to the top spot with Forza Motorsport.
The racing game competition was not quite as strong this year overall, but it did still come down to Forza vs. F1, and we felt Forza was just the best of those two options. Forza Motorsport does feel “safe” in a way that doesn’t feel as great as, say, Forza Horizon 5 — which also arguably was “safe” but still felt like the ideal open-world racer. That said, Turn 10 shows such respect for racing and the cars themselves that it’s hard not to come away impressed.
This version of Forza does have a greater chance of scaring off people than a Horizon, but Turn 10 does a good job here of giving you so many cars that you’re going to be interested in at least trying out a couple. Then after you try out a couple of those cars, it’s likely they’ve got you and you’re in for plenty more races.
A beautiful game filled to the brim with cars to race has always been a good formula, and it remains the case with Forza Motorsport.
Community Vote – Forza Motorsport
The community was in agreement with us also giving the edge to Forza over F1. Forza Motorsport got over 40 percent of the vote and EA Sports F1 23 got a little over 30 percent of the vote. No other racing games approached even 10 percent of the vote.
