Best racer on the Xbox 360, barely.
Graphically, F2 looks beautiful on a HDTV, cars are well detailed and you would be surprised at how much of your extra mods show up on your car...very nicely detailed! If you are going to play Forza 2, make sure you play in surround sound and in HDTV...the difference playing in stereo TV and surround sound is simply amazing. You can hear the turbo charger in the car behind you, and even hear the cars that are pitting and getting repaired...very neat. Now, the game play. To simply put, this is the most realistic racing simulator you will play in a long time. The grip of the tire, right tightness of the suspension, and even how much pressure you have on your tires makes a HUGE difference on the way you drive. I took my Lingenfelter Corvette, updated the HP to max, and took about 700 lbs. weight off of the car...the car now felt as if it wanted to take off and fly or something; yes, its that good! When you first start out, the game does seem slow. You cant get enough money from your races and the cars (regardless of your region) you have to choose are just not worth it. Just be patient, once you reach level 10-15, races get lot better, faster, and your choice of cars gets a lot wider as well.
Balancing among cars is excellent, you can tune a class-D car to class-B or A, but when you race a tuned up class-D-to-class-A car against a class-B car you will notice that your tuned up car is having trouble taking the corner at higher speed (probably because you didn't properly tuned your cars). Its very realistic. Crashes are nicely done as well, but its not totally-realistic because you can crash in to the wall at 100+mph and still have the engine running. However, it is there, and does a very good job of hurting your performance if you do bump in to other cars.
The game does support Xbox Live, and its very good. Its always fun to see what people does with their car, and you can even auction your car (or buy someone else's)...the overall experience is very nicely done. The best part is when you are racing and you would expect the higher rated cars to be way ahead of you, but instead they are only about 1 or 2 seconds ahead of the other cars because he/she has an "unbalanced" cars.
Overall, I am having a lot of fun with Forza 2 at the time. If you can get over the thing about tracks looking "OK" for an Xbox 360 game, you will love F2. Again, if you want the best experience with this game, play it on a HDTV (and with a surround sound TV).