As comparisons to Gran Turismo 4 are inevitable, it's probably easier to get them out of the way now - yes, Forza is essentially Microsoft's answer to the Gran Turismo series. Whether it's the better game depends on what you want from your racing games. GT4 has more cars, more tracks, and a more robust career mode. Forza has better graphics, offers customization, and in addition to smart AI and crash damage has an online mode that is integrated extremely well into the whole package. Your all-encompassing game profile requires you to select a starting location when you begin - you can choose from North America, Asia, or Europe, and your choice will affect both your starting car as well as a handful of the unlockable cars along the way. The prices of foreign versus domestic cars also differs, although as money is rarely in short supply this aspect isn't as big a deal. If you choose North America your starting roster includes models from Dodge, Lexus, and Acura, and where you'll find the Saleen S7 available for purchase from the start (providing you can pony up the 200,000+ credits it costs) if you chose Asia you'll notice that Saleen isn't available until you hit level 46. The leveling is Forza's way of progressing in the career mode. Total money earned piles up like experience and periodically you will level up. Leveling results in specific parts discounts and, every five levels, improved relationships with car manufacturers in the form of unlocked cars available for purchase as well as a gift car. The other milestone for the five-level marks involves the races - certain races are locked off until you reach the appropriate level. This applies to both individual races in each category (amateur, professional, circuit, etc) as well as the categories themselves. Endurance races, for example, are not available until you hit level 30. Forza provides you with a little over 230 cars and a couple dozen tracks to race them on. The car selection is diverse, although there are still repeats present - most notably duplicated forms of the NSX for Honda and Acura. The pared down list results in very few cars you won't want to race - no longer will you stare at that Daihatsu spinning around in your garage with a blank look on your face. Each car can be customized - cheaper and more common models usually provide a wide assortment of body kits that can be fitted on for appearance as well as increased downforce. The more expensive cars generally lack those options, but can still be painted and have the wheels and tinting swapped. Each car is ranked - Forza has ranks from D to A class, S class, and GT, GTS, and P1 race classes. Each of the non-race classes includes ranking from 1 to 4, so a D1 class car is probably going to be better overall than a D4 car. Changing tires or anything that affects the power-to-weight ratio results in an increase in class. Most of the time certain cars are better suited for certain classes - so while you can upgrade your starting Audi TT to A class if you want, you'll find it simply won't be able to compete with other A class cars in the same way it is a viable car when limited to D. Forza's best feature with regards to car customization involves the decals. In addition to a base paint colour, you can enter the decal editor and apply any of several dozen shapes. The colour of each can be changed, and moved and rotated and resized however you wish. Each part of the car allows you to place 100 layers of decals, and with a bit of patience and the ability to deconstruct images in your mind you can create pretty much anything. User-created cars so far have displayed everything from basic racing stripes and blended paint jobs to full re-creations of popular movie characters such as Darth Vader and The Iron Giant. Early on in your Forza experience you might even find yourself spending more time with the decal editor than actually racing. And how is the actual racing? Well, the core aspects of a good racing game involve how good it feels to throw that two-thousand piece of metal around the tarmac. Forza has no problem providing that, as the cars feel as heavy as they should and the sensation of driving is extremely well done. The tires provide just as much feedback with the different sounds of squealing. When you go around a corner too fast, you'll feel the rear end slide out and hear the tires losing grip. The sensation of speed is also well done, although the drafting effects could be better - the only way to know if you're taking advantage of the reduced drag by following another car is the lit 'draft' indicator below your speedometer. As for your opponents, Forza has some of the best AI in any racing game. Though the difficulty mode seems to have no effect other than how often they miscalculate turns, they are always reasonably competent and are very aware of others on the track - you included. Bumping them on a corner will often result in a later retaliation, and if you spin out and block the track at any point, they will either halt until you move or sneak around the sides, unlike most racing games where the AI drivers simply smash straight into you as if they were completely unaware of your car. The difficulty is split up into a number of categories that also affects how many credits you earn after each race. Dropping the AI difficulty down to Easy, for example, results in a 20% reduction in winnings. Bumping it up to Hard gives you a bonus. The other difficulty modifiers all provide a bonus when turned off - traction control, ABS, stability assist, and the recommended driving line are all enabled by default, but do give an incentive to learn to drive without them. Some, like the recommended driving line that shows a suggested driving line complete with braking and acceleration indicators, are great learning tools. The downside is that it becomes extremely hard to disable them, as doing so will handicap you relative to others online - the recommended line feature can be enabled online and unfortunately, cannot be disabled for everyone in an individual race. In other words, if you want a level playing field, you won't want to turn it off when racing online. The online racing is extremely well done. After every single-player race your top score (and best lap) are uploaded and you can view your ranking on every race. Pulling off an excellent race is as satisfying itself as coming back to the menu to see you've scored 4th place on the leaderboard. Though unranked multiplayer games are available most of the action takes place in the online career mode, where races are grouped by class and the top spots are awarded with credits. The only downside to online racing involves cheating, as there are a number of exploits people have used to accumulate large amounts of money and hit the level 50 cap, unlocking all the best cars with minimal effort. This isn't a huge problem, as avoiding S class races on those courses that require no skill (the two oval ones) even out the playing field and ensure that the best racer comes out in first and not someone who was able to exploit the game. Even better competition comes in the lower classes, as careful tuning of the slower cars is essential to doing well, and cheaters tend to avoid it because the less powerful cars have to be finessed around corners rather than placed on a wide straight with the accelerator mashed down. The rankings continue to all aspects of the game, and leaderboards are available for online driving, hot laps, time trials, and basically everything else. It's satisfying going into the leaderboard to check your position against the tens of thousands of other people who are up there. This sort of online integration is as well done as it was last year in Project Gotham 2, where the leaderboards sneak their way into every part of the game. Racing invites and Live status can be checked at any point, as the white button is dedicated to this on the main menus and message alerts pop-up on the top of the screen in-game. The graphics are quite well done - the game only runs at 30 frames per second, but isn't really a problem as it never drops from that point. Car models and tracks are very well done, and the only blemish involves the reflections on the cars. For some reason they seem to run at half the speed of the rest of the game, which results in a bizarre effect when you drive underneath a sign or tree. The deformed car models also display well after crashes, and the subtle effect of paint scraping walls is displayed both as bare metal on the body panel of your car as well as your paint visible on the wall. The sound is just as well done, from the various tire squeals to the throaty engine notes and the satisfying crunch of metal during crashes. One thing you will want to do upon loading Forza for the first time is enter the option menu and turn off the game soundtrack in favour of your custom playlist. The standard music is just plain bad. Forza is easily the best racing simulator on the Xbox - though it sort of takes that crown by default as its only competition is the old and mediocre Sega GT 2002. Perhaps that's somewhat of an unfair comparison, so even when piled together with racing simulators on other platforms Forza is easily able to hold its own. From the online racing to the limitless ways to customize your car, Forza offers a lot to anyone with even a passing interest in cars. Add to that a great tuning feature (including near-instant results both in the form of a benchmark tool as well as tuning via a menu while test driving), fun tracks, and extremely satisfying racing physics, and you could do much worse than pick up a copy of Forza.
This is one of the greatest racing simulators to hit videogames so far. It even beats GT4! There are a total of 231 cars in the game, unless I remembered wrong. These, like you would expect, range from Honda Civic SI ... Read Full Review
If i had to descrbe Forza Motorsport in one word, i would have to say its Unbelievable. I had never been addicted to a racing simulation game until Forza came along. I usually just played gran turismo for a week and neve... Read Full Review
