Forza Motorsport 6

I'm a Forza veteran, and this is by far the best of the series, not just for the improved graphics and tons of content, but for subtle gameplay adjustments that make the game feel rewarding whether you're just starting out or have been playing for months. Bottom line - if you or your kids have any interest in racing games, you should pick this one up. By turning various Assists off or on, you can make the game as hard or as easy as you like, and you can handicap better players to even the odds between you and your kids. And, unlike the Forza Horizon games, Forza 6 still features split-screen multiplayer, so you can compete with someone on the same couch, not just online. There are, however, three concerns that parents might have with this game. 1) Open multiplayer chat. Like most online games, the chat is not monitored. In my online experience, the majority of players online seem to be adults, or at least teenagers. In a game where you can crash into people, spin them out, or run them off the road, tempers can flare and the language can get fairly abrasive. However, there is a great multiplayer mode in the game called Ghost League, where collisions are turned off. All your opponent cars are semi-translucent, and you simply drive through them. If someone runs off the road or crashes, it's no-one's fault but their own, so the tempers are decidedly cooler and cursing is a rarity. 2) Advertising. Like real auto racing, ads are everywhere - on billboards, footbridges, guard walls, and the cars. There are a few scattered ads that your kids might have some interest in (e.g. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Sargento Cheese, etc...), but the VAST majority are for car companies or car-related products (e.g. Mobil 1 oil). Your kids won't even give them a second thought. "But, MOM, why can't we get Recaro seats for the minivan?!?" Any remotely objectionable ads are only on the cars (e.g. Marlboro, Jack Daniel's), not the racetracks, and they are few and far between. 3) Mature Car Designs; or rather, immature car designs. There is a burgeoning community of people who create "Vinyls" (i.e. stickers or decals) and whole car designs (i.e. paint jobs), which you can easily download, change, or use to make your own. The majority are racing-oriented liveries, but they run the gamut from the abstract, to superheroes, SpongeBob, and Holiday themes. There is, however, a trend for (mostly) Japanese cars to sport anime/manga-style girls on them. Some are quite tame, of the Final Fantasy or Pokémon variety, but other cars are draped with doe-eyed females of impossible proportions and dubious legal age, straining their skimpy bikinis to the limit. Most of these require a dedicated search to find (or so I've heard...ahem), but a few of the more well-done ones can occasionally show up in the default assortment of available paint jobs you are presented with when you buy a car. Your eight-year old probably won't care, but your teen will definitely take notice. It's actually quite remarkable that these and all the other designs were painstakingly created using the game's simple painting controls, but it's amazing what you can accomplish when you put several thousand (or more) polygons and other simple shapes together.