One of the staples of the racing simulator genre… and I never actually played it until now. This is my first game in the series, so I had no idea what to expect. With the pretty good Need for Speed Shift before, and the upcoming Gran Turismo 5, I actually put the odds against this game. And boy was I wrong. It not only leaves Shift in the dust (sorry Shift, you had a good run), but it gives a lot to Gran Turismo 5 to catch up to. And GT5 has it tough already because it has a TON of hype to live up to in addition to this.

So let’s go and talk about why this game is so good right away!

Read on!

Developer: Turn 10
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Date of Release: October 27, 2009
Platforms: Xbox 360

Genre: Simulation racer
Players: Up to 2 players offline, I don’t know how many online since I don’t have a Gold Live account

Looks and sounds
The cars definitely look great. Not exactly at the level as you can see in the game’s commercials, but still, the detail is great, the shading is nice, the reflections are relatively realistic. The game seems to lack Anti-Aliasing, but it’s not TOO bad. The environments look really nice as well, not much to say about them. The roads would need a bit more work, , and the grass just looks like a crappy texture. The effects like the tire traces on the road when you brake and suck work really well and are quire realistic. Graphically, if you don’t nitpick extremely minor details, the game looks fantastic. The only problem would be the damage model. Getting hit, or just scrapping some paint off just adds basically randomly picked texture to the car in places where the hits or scratches occurred instead of actually putting a scratch on the car. Harder hits will bend the metal and blow parts of the car away, no problem there, but smaller impacts look kinda lame, especially if you zoom in just a bit on the car to see the extremely pixelated “scratch” textures.

Sound-wise, the cars just sound fantastic. Great detail and work was put into making each car and engine type authentic. And of course the sound can change if you put certain upgrades on the car, just like in real life. I’m sure big car buffs will find things to complain about here, but from my standpoint, and that of a friend’s who is really into cars, it sounds awesome. There could only be one minor problem here: tuning the car’s engine won’t change the cars sounds much. The rest of the sounds…. well actually you barely hear anything else than the roaring engines. There’s always music playing, but unless you pump up the volume you won’t ever hear it. The song list is lame other than Tick Tick Boom, but it doesn’t really matter since you won’t hear the music anyways. And you can always just use the 360’s custom soundtrack feature, so nothing to really complain about in this aspect.

Gameplay
I love it. It can have a bit of an arcade feel to it, but all in all it’s a really good simulator.

Driving
The driving is solid. You can set various assists, which will definitely help newer players to the genre. You can get the game to brake for you, make the car more stable and keep traction easier. You can also set the AI’s intelligence, put a racing line on the track, and decide if damage will actually affect your driving or if it’s just cosmetic. Needless to say the game has tons of options to make sure the game is playable by anyone without much trouble. And, as you get better, you can take off the assists and drive more and more on your own. This makes the game really accessible.

The driving itself is great. Each car drive just like it would drive in real life, different types of engine perform differently, different types of tires and suspensions will make your car handle differently. Taking turns and such is pretty much like what you’d expect from this kind of game, but the controls are smooth and really easy to handle, whether you’re new to the genre or not. Nothing much to say here, but I have literally no trouble handling a car in this game, while other games of the genre give me trouble.

A fun feature here is the rewind button. This will take you back a few seconds in the past and let you redo curves you might have screwed up. This is actually  really nice feature. Mostly for new players who might not instinctively know when to brake and such to take a curve without crashing or spinning out of control. For veteran players it’s also a pretty nice feature since it can let them constantly retry curves to find the optimal line and entry speed until they can master each and every curve in every course to become more fearsome players online.

In the end the driving makes you rely on your own skills, but also on the car you bought and upgraded. Which brings me to my next point.

Customization
Each carhas a bit over 30 different kinds of upgrades you can give them. Air filters, ignition, valves, pistons, intercoolers, tires, the texture and size of the tires, you can put on new rims partly for the look but also to remove or add weight to the car, suspensions, dampers, weight reductions… the list goes on and on. Each upgrade type will usually have multiple upgrades you can put on, though you can only have one in each upgrade type. Obviously you can’t put in multiple air filters. Also, when you buy an upgrade, you can put it back on anytime if you bought another one afterwards. If, for some reason, you need to lower your car’s power, just go back to a few older pieces and your car will be able to take the power you need. Obviously, not all car have access to all parts you can get. It all depends on what kind of updates you have on the car already, and what type of engine the car has and such.

In addition to normal upgrades, you can do various swaps. You can put in engines from other cars, change your drivetrain, and change the aspiration (adding turbos or superchargers). When you do a swap though, you’ll have a whole new bunch of upgrades to get, since upgrades from the old engine/drivetrain/aspiration won’t transfer to the new ones.

In addition to the upgrades, there’s a slew of options in the tuning menu. There’s no end to it. Tire pressure, angle and such, differential, and a bunch of other crap I have no idea what it does. For a newbie, or someone without car knowledge, such as me, leaving all the tuning to default is the best possible option, but people who know what they’re doing can definitely bring out all the cars potential to make it perform at their maximum. I have no idea what most of the tuning does, but just randomly screwing around with the tuning options I did find that the way my car drived became totally different. In the same sense, any upgrade outside of tuning you do to the car will change how you drive it. I think that’s really cool.

Game Flow
The game flow is quite simple. First you choose a series you want to play through, which includes 2 to 4 races. In the weekends, you get to play one race in the current season’s championship. Races all have a required car type you might need, though most let you use what you want. Each also has a car class requirement (your car class is determined by your performance index, which is determined by your car’s various stats), though I found that sometimes it doesn’t matter and you can go up against C ranked cars using an S rank one, which definitely lowers the challenge. For championship races, even 1 too high in your performance index will not let you do the race. As you win races, you get credits to buy cars and upgrades, and you can get bonuses for various things like getting all 1st place in a series and such. You also get extra money depending on the race assists. Those will give an extra percentage of money you get from winning, and a bigger boost of credits the fewer assists you have, up to 100% more if you turn off all assists.

In addition to credits, you get experience points for winning. Those points go both to you as a driver, and your car itself. Enough experience levels you up. Car levels go up to 5. Each time a car levels up, you get discounts on upgrades, usually for the manufacturer of the car that leveled up, but sometimes a few more. As your driver level increases…. actually not much happens from what I’ve seen. Each level you get a new car for free. The car you get at each level up is pre-determined.

The game flow is really straightforward, so anyone can understand it quite easily.

Overall
Keep in mind that all I said is from someone who isn’t exactly 100% familiar with cars and who hasn’t really played or been any good at simulation racers. So I might be wrong on some things, or just not informed enough on them.

That being said, Forza 3 is really good. Good graphics, great sound, and awesome gameplay that isn’t too complicated for newbies but deep enough for veterans of the genre. the rewind feature might be considered cheap by some, but since it’s only useable offline it’s not too bad, and it’s actually what makes this game more accessible to newbies than the average racing simulator. The assists can also help new players to the genre.

The huge amount of customization is actually pretty easy to deal with for people who are new to the genre, but you can go pretty deep in personalising the control and power of your car if you know what you’re doing, and the tuning options are really nice and let you do pretty much what you want with your car.

So overall this game is a good start for newbies in the series, and a great addition to the video game collection of any racing simulator fan AND car enthusiasts.

It’s hyping me up nicely to Gran Turismo 5. I can’t wait to see which of the 2 will be best, and will most likely do a comparison post when both are out. I can’t wait to try out  GT5, for the most part because of the inclusion of Toyota’s and Subaru’s new FT-86, and the fact that it’s been in development for so damn long, but until then Forza 3 is more than awesome enough. Everyone should at LEAST try it out.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Looks great
- Sounds great
- Plays really well
- Rewind feature is actually quite good for beginners and veterans alike
- 400 cars is a great number, with a very interesting selection including a bunch of rare/nearly unknown cars
- It’s actually quite welcoming to newbies of the genre

Cons
- Some might find the rewind feature really cheap, though it’s only used in single player, and totally optional
- Damage model definitely needs some work
- Apparently the online sucks, but I haven’t experienced it (no gold live account) so I won’t comment further

The Save Factor
The game has a starting price of $60, and if you’re a car enthusiast or a racing simulator fan, this is a must, even at full price. Otherwise, if you’re unsure, wait for a price drop or 2 until it’s around $40, or rent before buying.

jobocan Console, Games, Review, xbox 360