Forza 3 offers a strong enough experience to please even the most casual racing fan.
That said, even for a more casual fan such as myself, Forza Motorsport 3 is a great game. The quality of the gameplay is unparalleled among racing games, and it offers enough in customization, presentation, and content to satisfy any level of fan. I do have a few issues with the game, but some of these may be issues I have with the genre in general rather than Forza 3 itself, but they bear mentioning, at least.
Forza 3's greatest strength is the sheer amount of content the game offers out of the box. In fact, the game comes with so much content, that some of it must be installed via a second disk that comes packaged with the game, which includes extra cars and tracks. If you buy the game used or rent it and do not have this disk, there likely is still plenty enough content to keep you satisfied on the main disk. My copy of the game even came with a code that downloaded a car pack and two track packs, so a new copy offers more content than the average player will likely ever use. The amount of cars available in the game is simply incredible, as there are multiple cars available from every major car manufacturer. Every one of these cars is great looking, from the highest level speedster to a lowly station wagon, which is an impressive accomplishment. These cars cost money to purchase, however, with the higher performing cars costing quite a bit, so even if you wanted to, you will likely never touch most of them. Still, if you've ever wanted to get an idea of what it is like to drive a Ferrari around, Forza 3 is probably your best bet.
There are also an incredible number of courses available to race on that come with a copy of Forza 3. The game offers some new tracks as well as some tracks from older Forza titles, which offers a nice mix of familiarity and freshness to a racing experience that is, unavoidably, a bit repetitive. Each track also has three or four variants of it, where certain sections of track are blocked off or rerouted, which offers a different experience on the same basic track. The sheer number of courses to race on means that you won't often see the same track twice in a row, which keeps things nice and varied from race to race. The game's box claims that Forza 3 features over 100 tracks to race on, which is a pretty impressive number, even with many of these being variants of the same track.
Another strength of Forza Motorsport 3 is its dynamic and customizable difficulty settings. The goal of the game, of course, is to win every race you enter, and Forza 3 makes this interesting with a risk/reward system that is fun to explore. There are, by default, driving assists on that make controlling cars in-race significantly easier, like antilock brakes, automatic transmission, a suggested travel and braking line, and the ability to toggle car damage and tire wear. With the assists on, the game has a more arcade racer than a simulator, as you, the player, need not worry about damage that comes from hitting other cars, walls, or obstacles; nor about spinouts when using certain types of cars, brakes locking up if you jam the brake too hard, or other real-life racing difficulties. However, turning these assists on does have a consequence-you earn less money from completing races. With most assists on, a 1,000 credit base prize may actually go down to a 900 credit haul. Racing with assists off increases prize money, but makes the game more difficult. It truly is fun to experiment with turning off certain assists and seeing if you can still perform up to a level comparable to what you are used to, and before long you will find a comfortable balance between difficulty and assists that works for you. As you get better, you can earn more credits by turning more assists off. The difficulty of the racers you face can also be controlled on the same screen as the assists, with medium being the difficulty most will want to race on.
One gameplay enhancement that really sets Forza apart from similar titles is the race rewind feature. This feature allows you to rewind the race to a point before where you may have screwed up. For example, if I took a corner to quickly and smashed into a wall, I could press the rewind button, watch it all happen in reverse, and have another shot at that corner. This eliminates the need for restarts for particularly large errors, keeps the game moving, and helps you immediately learn from your mistakes, making it an essential tool for every player, skill level aside. There is no penalty for using it, which unfortunately may lead to a bit of reliance on it at times, which unavoidably feels a bit cheap. The rewind feature does get a bit buggy every so often (especially in longer races), warping you back an entire lap, not operating at all, or causing your AI opponents to drive off the track, so relying on it can be dangerous, but it is an outstanding feature nonetheless, one which the casual fan like myself welcomes.
As you continue to complete races, no matter the difficulty you play on or assists you use, you will start earning credits slowly but surely. These credits can be used to purchase new cars, upgrade owned cars, as well as a few other things. However, purchasing cars is usually unnecessary, because as you complete races, you quickly earn experience towards a universal racer level linked to your profile.Moving up to a new level rewards you with a new car, and before long you'll have enough cars to compete in the majority of the races across most of the car classes available in the game, though the best of cars and their races are unavailable for quite some time.
Most of your credits will therefore go towards upgrades, of which there are many for every car in the game. Cars are ranked by a performance index, which is a number displayed with your car that basically says how good it is. Higher numbers represent better cars, and certain ranges of numbers represent certain classes (F through A, S, R3, R2, R1). Since races are often restricted by class to keep them competitive, upgrades become very important very early in the game. There are two methods of upgrading your car, the best choice for most people being the "quick upgrade" option, which upgrades your car up to as close to the maximum allowed for a certain event as will make a difference. For example, if you have a mid-rated C-class car and enter it into a B class race, the quick upgrade will push it as far into the B category as will help you against the other cars, maximizing your chances of winning. If you want to pick and choose what upgrades you want to install manually, the intuitive upgrade menu allows you to see what each and every upgrade will do to your car. Forza 3 does a very good job in this regard, the best I have ever seen in a racing title. The game also offers an extensive tuning menu which allows you to really fine tune your car's advanced settings, but the average user need not apply here, as it is not very intuitive and has a steep learning curve to become skilled at. Custom paint jobs and decals can be added to you cars as well in a separate menu, but for most, this feature is a novelty which will be played around with once or twice at most.
In terms of core gameplay, Forza 3 is nearly unparalleled in quality. It is difficult to describe why, but everything just feels right. This is probably because Forza 3 is a simulator at heart, which is especially noticeable with most of the assists turned off. If you go too quickly around a corner, you will go off the track, as you would in any real life situation, which the game punishes you for appropriately. Thus, proper braking becomes very important. However, be too careful with braking, and your opponents will easily leave you in the dust, so proper acceleration becomes important. Accelerate at the right time out of a corner and you will be rewarded, accelerate at the wrong time and you'll go spinning out in circles with the more powerful cars. Forza 3 is all about learning the strategy and timing of real racing, and it does this better than any other game I have seen. Assists keep the learning curve nice and steady for new players, with the suggested travel and suggested braking lines being the most helpful in learning how to race properly. Forza also nicely deals with the different drivetrain types featured in cars, which consist of four wheel drive, rear wheel drive, and front wheel drive cars. Each car type has its advantages and disadvantages over the other types. However, almost every top car is RWD, the most challenging drivetrain to control, so sticking with the easier drivetrain types is not possible for long.
The main hub around which races are entered operates slightly differently in Forza 3 than in the previous games in the series, in that the career mode is handled a bit differently. The game is divided up into seasons centered around different car class championships. These championship races occur biweekly as shown on a calendar, meaning there is room for a standard race to fill in the time gap. The first season features almost exclusively F Class cars, which are slow, small, and little fun to drive, but they are good cars to learn with. There are six seasons in total, but once you get to around the third season, the championship becomes seven or more races long (and each championship race is more than double the length of a standard race), so here progress really slows. The game becomes much more fun once you start hitting the A class and above races, but it feels like these take too long to get to, and that you spend too much time bogged down in the F through C class level races, at least in season play mode. There is also an event list that contains literally every race in the game, so you could play this way as an alternative, racing one-by-one down the list, but there is less incentive to do so. Your season play will not advance and you won't earn the season play achievements, if you care about that sort of thing. However, the list is nice if you want a break from season play or a source of more races if you manage to complete season mode. The list is huge, so the content is there for those that want it. Also featured are different race types such as endurance and drag races, which act as nice change of pace from standard races now and then.
The game's presentation is absolutely top notch. Every car is immaculately detailed, the tracks beautifully made, and the sound effects as realistic as can possibly be imagined. The loud roar of a high-power engine revving up is a sound that never gets old. Cars can be driven from couple of different perspectives, including an overlook view (above and behind the car), a driver's seat view, and a view centered on the hood of the car. Each is fun in its own way to use, though overlook angle is the most practical. The graphics lose no luster when playing from the more zoomed in driver's view mode, which is impressive. I simply cannot find a single major flaw with this game's presentation; it is simply that good..
While so far my praise of the game has been nearly universal, I must now mention the game's biggest flaw: the fact that it is a racing game. Racing games have a tendency to become boring rather quickly, since most races are about the same experience once you have tried most of the car classes and driven on most of the tracks. Forza 3 is a fun game while it lasts (for most I'd wager 8-10 hours), and if you are a true racing fan it will last you quite a while longer than that, but for the casual player, the lasting appeal of this game isn't really there. Forza 3 eventually burns you out because there is so little variety in the gameplay, as solid as it is. There almost feels as if there is too much content, as sometimes the lack of progress made in career mode can be frustrating. This necessarily must bring the score I give this game down, because as good as I feel the game is, for most players, I don't see a lasting appeal, unless you love racing games or have a lot of friends who will play this game with you. Xbox Live does offer online races, online lap leaderboards, auction houses where you can exchange cars for credits with other players, and other custom player-created content, but this did little to extend the appeal for me. Once I hit the racing game wall, even the most innovative mechanics could not save Forza 3 from collecting dust on the shelf.
What, in the end, is my recommendation for the average person looking to buy Forza 3? I say buy it if it is less than $30 or so (which it seems to be now in most places). The content in the game will keep you busy for some time, but be warned, if you aren't a fan of racing games, Forza 3 won't do much to change your mind. While it is probably the most accessible racing sim ever created, racing is still racing. For fans of the genre, if you do not already own this game, go out and get it. Nothing more needs to be said, you owe it to yourself. The final score of 8.5 reflects the high quality of the game, while at the same time reflecting its limited variety. Forza 3 is an outstanding game, and do not let anything I have said change your mind from that truth-by any measure, Forza 3 is one of the best racing games ever made and a top 10% game across all genres this generation, period. Unfortunately, all things considered, it simply does not have the necessary variety to create any lasting appeal for the casual fan of racing.