Game Details

Title: Forza Motorsport 3
Developer: Turn 10
Publisher: Microsoft
Website: Official Site
Game Type: Racing Simulation
Multi-player: 2 Player Local Splitscreen, 8 Player Online
Age Rating: 3+
Length: Long (20+ hours for Completion)

My Impressions

Thanks in part to the UK postal strike and pre-ordering, I managed to get my hands on Forza 3 early and I am glad to say it was definitely worth (not) waiting for. If you enjoyed Forza 2 then Forza 3 offers more of the same but in a more highly polished and streamlined package.

This however is also my greatest complaint about Forza 3, that at the end of the day despite the improvements I ended up feeling that this was more like Forza 2.5 than Forza 3. However given that Forza 2 was up until now the best “serious” racing game on the Xbox 360 and has so much content, this impression is actually not that surprising given there was little in Forza 2 that needed improvement.

In terms of the driving style and graphics Forza 3 offers little over Forza 2 with the game appearing to use the same engine as Forza 2 albeit with a few minor improvements. The Hud has gone through some minor modifications, there is now a car dashboard view and the graphics appear marginally better than in Forza 2 but if you played Forza 2 on a regular basis then you should be able to get into Forza 3 without needing to adapt your driving style too much. There are a few more tracks and cars available but the main changes to the driving are the rewind function and the introduction of scoring points for drift.

Of these two features I found that the rewind function was much better implemented than the drift, as drift felt like a last minute add on or test for a PGR style Forza game. This feeling is compounded by having to press left on the D-Pad to show the drift score, and as far as I am aware there being no single player drift events. If it wasn’t for the drift achievements it would probably be possible to play Forza 3 and not care about drift at all. The rewind function however is prominently featured and I found myself using it on a regular basis and was grateful for its inclusion, though I did end up thinking that there should have been some limits or noticeable penalty on its use.

The more significant changes to the Forza 3 single player component seem to be in the menu layout, the community features and how the career mode is set out. I found that after a little initial disorientation due to being used to Forza 2, the menu’s were more user friendly in Forza 3 and the garage system was easier to navigate. There is also the welcome addition of a quick upgrade system so that you don’t have to mess around as much to get your car to the right class. You may still need to do a bit of manual fine tuning with tires and aero upgrades to get your car to the exact class level limit, and there is no auto tuning.

The car class system has also been changed with Class E and F being introduced and class U and R4 removed. Cars now go through a progression of F, E, D, C, B, A, S, R3, R2, R1 with there no longer being a distinction between “race” cars and production cars in the system as road cars higher than S automatically become R3 rather than U. This can cause some amusement when you upgrade small cars like Fiesta’s to R3 level or above.

There is also a lot more emphasis on community features in Forza 3, with each player being given a “storefront” which is very similar to the file share in Halo 3. In the storefront players can sell paint jobs, tuning setups and decals to other members of the community and upload replays and photos, or if they are feeling generous give them away. It is also possible to make short videos in Forza 3 from parts of saved replays, though I found this feature limited and there is no way to review videos in game or on your Xbox 360. The only way to check the footage is to upload them to Forzamotorsport.net in game then download them to your PC.

The final significant change in single player is to the career mode, and instead of simply being given all the events and told to do them, it is now structured into seasons with the events you can compete in determined by your current car and cars in your garage. While this works better than the “structure” in Forza 2 you will still need to complete all the events (or hire drivers to do so) to get all the achievements.

The multiplayer has also been revamped with the party system in mind, and again lessons have been learnt from Halo 3. Rather than having a host and lobby ranked system as there was in Forza 2, there is now no given host and the events are randomly selected based on the type of race and car class selected in the multiplayer menu system. Each inter-race lobby is now on a timer and races start automatically with the option to vote to skip tracks if a majority of people in the lobby agree.

Before choosing the type of event you wish to compete in, you can now see how many other people are in each game type which is very useful when there are few people playing as it maximises your chances of getting into a game. I did still find the problem of joining races in progress however, and I found the lack of a “ready button” annoying. For the most part though I think this system works better than that in Forza 2 as it prevents abuse of the system and being reliant on the whim of the race host. Importantly there is still the option of hosting private matches if you want to try out more unusual types of race and track.

In terms of flaws in Forza 3, aside from not being a “quantum leap” over Forza 2 I found three of note the first one I found being that the manual for the game is quite frankly pathetic given the amount of features in the game as it is a “mammoth” 8 pages long of which only 3 of which are text describing the game. Now I dont normally read manuals but there were a couple of occasions when I wanted to find out more information about something, only to find that the feature wasn’t even mentioned in the manual.

The second flaw is that the Time Trials are hidden away in the leaderboard section, and there is no easy way to find them. This problem is of course exacerbated by them not being mentioned in the manual, and if it wasn’t for seeing it mentioned online I could have missed it entirely.

The final flaw I encountered was that in a multiplayer game one of my opponents cars appeared at some points to be levitating similar to the Delorean in back to the future just without the wheels moving inwards! This flaw while possibly being a lag issue also carried over into the replay of the game I saved and it did not appear to be due to the car jumping, as the track was relatively flat during the time the car was floating.

These flaws are relatively minor given the high quality of Forza 3, and only real competitor to Forza 3 in terms of serious racing games is Forza 2. It should be noted though, that some more casual racing fans may find that it does not offer enough over Forza 2 to justify a purchase, if however you are a racing game fanatic then Forza 3 should not disappoint, as it has dethroned Forza 2 from its title as “king of serious racing games” on the Xbox 360.

My Recommendation

Buy

If it wasn’t for Forza 2, Forza 3 would be far and away the best serious racer on the Xbox 360. As things stand, it is still the best just by not as much!

Screenshots

Note: Clicking on Image Takes You To Picassa

Forza 3