Forza Motorsports 3 Review
Coming through an acoustically perfect tunnel, pushing the car to its limits and pulling the hand brake to slide around the final corner before going into the home stretch of the final lap to see and hear the roar of thousands of fans with cameras flashing can be quite an exhilarating experience.
Unfortunately, though the emotion and excitement can feel real, as you cross the finish line you are pulled back in the real world. This is the way you’ll feel during a race in the ultra-realistic Forza Motorsports 3.
Make Space on that Hard Drive!
The third sim racing game in the Forza Motorsports series comes with two discs. Disc one is the actual game, which contains a lot of tracks and around 300 cars. Disc two, which you are prompted to put in as soon as you start up the first disc, gives you the option to install the rest of the games features on your Hard Drive. This massive install requires 1.9 GB of free space and consists of 29 additional tracks and 104 cars!
The install requires a lot of space, but only takes a few minutes and is definitely worth it to get the full effect of the game. Though yes, you could technically get through the game on Disc one without ever knowing the second disc exists, if you have the option for more content, take it!
Starting the game
To test your skills and get you used to Forza controls, they give you a high-end Audi to race with. I was excited thinking I would get to start with this car. Nope! Right when you finish the race, you lose the car and must select a starting car (I chose the Honda Fit). After selecting your car, the announcer will explain how Forza works and you can start racing immediately.
Gameplay
Forza 2 was a little dull and had no real depth to the gameplay. In Forza 3, they really stepped it up by running it at 60 frames per second and showcasing the speed and beauty of every car. The AI has had a major upgrade, if you play aggressively, the AI will slam right back into you, sometimes sending you spinning into a wall.
The Career Mode is extensive. It offers a lot of options and races. The Career Mode is laid out in a calendar system that takes you through six seasons and 55 events. During the two weeks between every championship race, you race in events. When you choose an event, you get three choices, based off your current car, type of races you most frequently play, and other dimensions of the game, making every play through the career mode completely different.
There are more than 200 events in total. After powering through about 50 hours of gameplay to “beat” the career mode, you still have well over 150 more events to beat if you want to master Forza 3.
Place in the top three and you begin earning Credits (Cr), Forza’s form of currency. This will allow you to upgrade your car, get paint jobs and tune ups, and later in the game, allow you to purchase your dream car. The harder difficulty you play on, the more Credits you will get, but be careful of slamming into other cars to take the lead because you are docked point based on how much damage you do to your car.
In addition to racking up some money, you will be awarded experience points along the way, which increases the level of your driver, as well as your car. The more races you win, the more companies will recognize you and offer you discounts on parts and services, as well as giving you brand new cars!
Each car has its own Performance Index (PI), which changes based on how much you upgrade your car. The series races also have a classification that your car’s Performance Index Number must fit into.
The graphics are incredible. The cars are stunning and so are most of the tracks. Some small graphical elements remind you that it is indeed a video game, but for the most part, you could get lost in awe of how amazing the graphics are.
Multiplayer
The multiplayer is an extremely original way to customize your races and play with your friends. It offers an endless amount of options for you to customize what type of race you are participating in. Turn 10 built in some race type that they felt people will be most likely to gravitate towards, but they have built a revolutionary system that will become standard in the future of sim racing games.
Features
Unlike previous Forza games, you won’t find the braking system as a near impossible hurdle to overcome. For the casual racer, you will find new auto-brake system that allows you to just hold the throttle and make the turns. In addition, Turn 10 added a new rewind feature that allows you to on-the-fly rewind the game and re-take a turn that you just screwed up on.
The car tuning system has become more of an art form. It’s a lot of work to get good results, due to the mass amount of options that you have to tweak you car. Everything has options from spring stiffness and brake balance, to adjusting the differential of the car. This can take some serious amount of time, but can completely change the performance of your car.
Customization of your vehicle is near limitless, offering more than enough colors, rims, ground kits, and parts to upgrade your vehicle. You can even add decals and custom paint jobs to make your car as personal as you want. You can also find even more options in the Forza Motorsports 3 Storefront.
The Storefront is where you can purchase decals for your cars and designs that are made for certain cars. Its creator sets the prices and number of copies for each item. Ultra-rare single download items can be sold for a billion credits and so can something that can be downloaded unlimited times. You can rate each item and find the most popular designers in the leaderboards to set them as your favorite.
The Storefront is not only limited to designs. Experienced tuners can create tuning sets that can be sold on the storefront as well. Since I don’t know enough about cars to take on all the advanced features, I just stick to the auto tune, which sets all of your settings to best fit the track you will be racing on. I trust that they do a sufficient job.
Overall
This is a great game. If you have ever enjoyed playing sim racing games, Forza Motorsports 3 should be a part of your collection. This game has the features and great gameplay that I haven’t experienced since Grand Turismo 3. Bottom line, buy this!
Related posts:
- Trials HD Review
- Brutal Legend Review
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles™ : Turtles in Time Re-Shelled Review
- Halo 3: ODST Review
23 Nov 2009, 2:27 pm
This review is awesome! Im gonna go buy the game right now! I LOVE GT3 and if this game is anything like it…it will be amazing!