Forza Motorsport 4: Week in Review 9/14/12

 I debated on whether to start this week’s edition of the Forza Motorsport Week in Review with this story, or close with it. In the end, however, I find it too moving not to let you all know about it up front. Check this out: A father from the UK recently found out that his 11-year-old son, Connor, was terminally ill, with just weeks to live. He puts up a post on a British Subaru forum, looking to organize a car show in honor of his son, a big car fan. Overnight, the post goes viral and, in a matter of hours and days, this event goes from being a humble car meet-up to a world-class show featuring more than 1,000 cars of every make, model, and year imaginable.

Talk about heart-wrenching and heart-warming at the same time. Here’s a quote from the article:

 "Over the course of one week, car enthusiasts from around the world came together to organize a blowout car show for young Connor. After three days there were more than 200 cars committed. Then there were 600 cars and finally, day of, double that number. People who never met each other before and hadn't met Connor came together from around the world." 

For more on this astonishing show of support from the worldwide community of automotive enthusiasts, which has come to be known as “Connor’s Day”, see the story on Jalopnik and don’t miss the photo gallery as well. It’s this kind of thing that makes me proud to be a member of the larger car community.

Now, on that note, let’s review what’s been happening in our own community of Forza, in the Week in Review!

Community photo contest winner from Seps1974 

GWD Recap 

The week kicked off with our latest Forza Motorsport 4 Game With Dev event. This was the biggest event we’d held yet for Forza 4 – if only because this GWD event featured six, count ‘em SIX, Forza community team members in the event, including the newest addition to the team – Ian Webster, our EMEA community manager. Here’s Ian with a recap of his first GWD experience:

 "Jumping into the chat lobby on Facebook for my first GWD session, the main thought running through my head was to not make a complete pig’s ear of things and embarrass myself out on the track. I decided that, as a Brit, my first GWD session should reflect my country of origin, and with that in mind I decided to kick things off with an 8v8 game of football (it’s not called soccer!!). The match itself was a scrappy affair, and due in most part to 5 minutes of defensive frailty towards the start of the match, me and my team sadly found ourselves on the wrong end of a 3-0 trouncing.  

The game may have been a bit of a scrappy affair but it was played in a great spirit, and my congratulations go out to IV Siebe and Scottish Boydy who, as goalscorers, were gifted their choice of unicorn car, with all the rest of the match participants receiving random unicorn gifts. In the end IV Siebe plumped for the MINE'S R32 Skyline GT-R, with Scottish Boydy deciding on the MINE'S R34 Skyline GT-R, two fine car choices, I’m sure you’ll all agree! 

For my next lobby, and again in keeping with my British background, I plumped for a B-Class circuit race around Silverstone. For my car choice I decided to go with the Opel Speedster, mostly due to the fact that recently I’d been starting to get pretty comfortable with the car after using it a lot whilst leveling up in career mode, and wanted to see how my performance would stack up against the community.  

Community photo contest second place from JI T 500 

Once everyone had picked their cars we ended up beginning the race with 14 cars on the grid and, for me, the race itself started off quite nicely….well at least it did until I got to the first corner, which was where disaster struck and a nasty accidental shunt sent me crashing all the way down to 13th place. Despite this initial setback I managed to pull things together and, over the subsequent three laps, I managed to crawl my way back up the field to finish a respectable seventh place, something I was actually quite pleased about considering what happened at the start. My thanks go out to everyone who participated in the race, which was a thoroughly sporting and keenly contested affair, and special congratulations go out to Shikeri Kaizer, RubberDave, Vx Skylinezz xV, xiSTOREYix, and minpat1uk, who by finishing in one of the top five positions bagged their themselves their unicorn car of choice. 

My thanks go out to everyone who participated this week for being so welcoming towards me both in the chatroom and in-game, you really made me feel right at home and it’s very much appreciated. I must say that after my first GWD experience I’m now counting down the days until the next one, so that I can have another opportunity to meet more of you both in chat, and out on the race track!" 

Thanks Ian! Now, a note on future Game With Dev events: With Forza Horizon to be released in just about a month, we’re absolutely looking forward to hopping into Horizon and exploring Colorado with the community. Starting with the release of Forza Horizon, we will be holding Game With Dev events for Forza Horizon and for Forza Motorsport 4. Who knows? We might even hold the occasional “Forza wild card” GWD night where we play both games (Heck, we might  even crack open Forza 3). As always, our GWD events will be a great chance for us to connect, talk, and play Forza, and a great opportunity for the community to earn free stuff like unicorn cars and DLC codes. Stay tuned for details on the inaugural Forza Horizon GWD, coming up in October!

Community Bounty Update 

Due either to innate talent or sheer force of will, our man Christian (aka VoodooUomo) managed to crack into the Top 100 times on his Community Bounty event, thus preventing eternal shame by losing the community side bet and being forced to don his racing helmet and stand next to a SMART Car. Instead, we got this:

That's Christian in his helmet, standing next to his track-ready BMW. Talk about a slap to the face. That T-shirt. Ouch.

Not to take that kind of insult lying down, the Forza community has struck back with one of its most potent weapons: Photoshop. To wit:

Ah, sweet revenge!

This week we’ve got a chance for the Forza Community to rally and redeem itself, thanks to another Turn 10 employee who has graciously agreed to be this week’s bounty. Our back-end Web developer Mark (aka Inspector Lunge) is taking on all comers on the “Modern Roadsters” Rivals Mode autocross event from now through 8 a.m. Pacific on Sept. 18. Mark’s also taking your suggestions for how to improve the Web site and forums experience here on FM.net so share your most thoughtful suggestions with Mark before, you know, attempting to destroy his leaderboard time and leave him a humiliated husk of a man in Forza 4.

In addition, we've got a new community created Rivals event going up next week. This one came to us from Forza community member Ssrdemo, and features a cool concept and a great name. Here's the details:

Event: Oh Manga!

Description: Take to the mountain and join us in a celebration of the popular Japanese manga series, Initial D. The series focused on the iconic AE86 and displayed several other favorite drift cars from the era. Do you have what it takes to best the downhill and climb the leaderboards? 

Starts: Tuesday, September 18

Forza Garage 

Have you been keeping up with the Forza Horizon car announcements? This week saw another batch of cars released on our official Facebook and Twitter feeds, and wrapped up in our weekly Wednesday installment of The Forza Garage. Three new cars—never before seen in Forza—were unveiled on Wednesday: the 2009 Lamborghini Reventón Roadster, 2012 Eagle Speedster, and the 2012 Infiniti IPL G Coupe and we have lots of car announcements to come. So, after nearly a month of car reveals for Horizon, which cars are you most excited to drive in the game when it’s released starting on Oct. 23? Let us know in the Week in Review thread on the forums.

Community photo contest third place from Turkeyboy696X 

Playseat Winners Announced 

Last month we held our August Playseat Challenge—sponsored by our friends at Playseat, makers of the awesome Forza Motorsport 4 RacingSeat. The month-long Rivals Mode competition was hotly contested between some of the best Forza 4 drivers in the world. Here are the winners:

First Place Winner:

Robin Betka (GT: TPR b0x)

Runners Up:

Samuel Toledano Gonzalez (GT: V12 EsdinioMan)

Dario Suman (GT: V12 DarioLegend)

Gianmarco Segura Cordova  (GT: ZeraTuLLLL)

Alex Harrison (GT: Chemical)

Forza Petit Le Mans Challenge 

The Playseat Challenge might be behind us but we’ve got another great contest kicking off today – the Petit Le Mans Challenge. Tied in with the ALMS’s season-ending race at Road Atlanta, we’ve got a special Rivals Mode event where the top three finishers will win some awesome prizes, including copies of Forza Horizon! Here’s how it works: Once the dedicated Rivals event opens in the Community Monthly section of Forza Motorsport 4’s Rivals Mode, simply set a time on the leaderboard using either the 2013 Viper #91 SRT Motorsport GTS-R or the 2013 Viper #93 SRT Motorsport GTS-R from the September Pennzoil Car Pack. The top three eligible players when this contest closes at midnight on Oct. 12 will win the following:

First place: One Xbox 360 console and one copy of Forza Horizon

Second and third place: One copy apiece of Forza Horizon and ALMS merchandise.

In addition to those prizes, the overall winners will have their names announced during the live broadcast of the ALMS Petit Le Mans powered by Mazda race, which airs on ESPN3 and the ESPN app on Xbox LIVE on Saturday, Oct. 20 beginning at 11:15 Eastern.

This contest is not available to U.S. residents of Vermont or Maryland and you must be 18 years old to be eligible for the prizes. See here for full rules. Good luck to all participants!

Community photo contest honorable mention from SilencedMykham 

Driftcrossing 

Have you heard of driftcrossing? It's a term dreamed up by Forza community member Prime Barricade and it involves a cool combination of autocross events and drifting. In essence, the goal is to drift through the cones on an Autocross course in Forza 4 and, judging by the videos that have come up in Prime's thread, it looks like a lot of fun. In fact, I'd like to see more driftcrossing videos. Give it a shot and post your best driftcrossing video in Prime's thread and we'll award our favorite examples with a free unicorn car. 

VIR – Turn 10 Track Day 

The second-to-last race of the 2012 American Le Mans Series season is upon us and we’ll be holding another Turn 10 Track Day event to celebrate. Come join us on our official Facebook page and chat with us during the race (simply click the “Turn 10 Presents Track Days” button just underneath the banner). As always we’ll be chatting with you about the day’s racing action, vividly describing our lunch/dinner choices, and giving away prizes to boot. There’s only two ALMS Track Day events left this season, so let’s make them count!

That’s about it for this week, everyone. Next week you can expect to see a bunch of new Forza Horizon previews and features hitting the Web from our recent European press tour with the game. Our man Ian Webster attended one of these events and will give us a full rundown next week, so be sure to look out for that. And of course we’ll have more Forza Horizon car announcements and more cool content here in FM.net.

Until Monday, have a great weekend everyone!