Forza Motorsport 3 completes the race and finishes in 1st place. It's beautiful, massive, and entertaining.
Pros:
Slick, easy to use menu
Simply gorgeous
Features the most fun racing ever seen
Lots of cars to unlock or purchase
Plenty of choices to suit anyone's playing style
Massive level and progression, along with a good currency system
Split-screen is a blast if you have some friends
Intense online racing
The storefront and action house are awesome
Plenty of events and a lengthy season play
Cons:
Character models for watchers need some work
What you always want in a video game is a slick and easy-to-use main menu so the player can do what he or she wishes with ease. Luckily, Forza 3 features a extremely slick and very simple main menu, and load times are pretty decent for a pretty massive game like Forza 3. Accessing Season Play (primarily, the singleplayer mode/primary mode) is as simple as pressing two buttons, and then you're immediately racing against your opponents. However, it's a good idea to alter the difficulty settings to suit your skill level. There are really about 5 or 6 difficulty settings, but you can change each specific option to completely detail your difficulty. So, essentially, you can make it so that the controls are extremely realistic and pretty difficult to handle, but make the other A.I. controlled racers easy to pass up. It's really nice of the developers to allow you how you want to play Forza 3.
Once you begin a race, you'll be instantly greeted with a beautiful environment and your beautiful car. A Lamborghini has never looked as slick in a video game, neither a Porsche, Maserati, Audi, Acura, or any other of the hundreds of brands and cars in Forza 3. The game is brimming with beautiful, realistic-looking cars. But, in Forza 3, you can alter the appearance of any of your cars so that each car in your garage looks different. You can do this by switching tires, rims, tinting windows, putting decals onto your car, or by downloading other decals and designs from other players by utilizing a feature called the Storefront. Every player in the game has a Storefront; it's their choice whether to put items for sale into it. The Storefront mainly deals with decals and designs, while the Auction House is where to purchase cars from other players. But, instead of the game choosing your price, you choose the price. You can sell you decal for 100 CR (the currency), for free, or for a million CR. However, selling items works just like selling items in real life. You have to choose a reasonable price in order for people to buy your items. It's all really cool, and it adds on to the replay value.
But of course, what would a racing game be if it didn't have entertaining and thrilling races? That's another place Forza 3 excels. The racing and controls are tight and responsive, and there are plenty of racing tracks. Playing in season play, however, is arguable the most entertaining. Season play is separated into seasons, and in each season, you play week-day and weekend events, and the season is concluded with a huge championship game with a massive cash award, assuming you place 1st in the race. But, you must have the correct car class for each event. You can't use an R3 class for an S class only race, so be sure to fill your garage with a good variety of car classes. But season play is so beautifully managed and so elegantly paced so that you never feel rushed or out-of-place. The game is timed pretty perfectly so that the races are upgraded in class around the same time you upgrade your cars' classes. It's really, really fun. However, you will miss out on some events, but luckily, you can go back to any event you passed up to take on a different event via the events page, which tracks your progress in your season play.
Finally, you can race against other players in local split-screen or online multiplayer. And both are very fun. In online multiplayer, you race against other players over Xbox LIVE, and while you don't get a massive CR reward, every time you finish in first feels wonderful. Your racing experience is tracked, so highly skilled racers will be rewarded with the Pro or Champion title next to their Gamertag, while novices receive the Beginner title. It's great to find players with similar skill levels as you, and the title system makes it all so much easier. In multiplayer, you can use your custom cars from your garage, or the host of the match can override everyone's car to just using the same car. It's really entertaining when you're racing in slow Beetles. Split-screen is somewhat similar; however you don't get a cash reward, or a title. It's just racing; however you can still use your cars from your garage, assuming you have some. There are plenty of tracks, plenty of cars, and plenty of fun.
Forza Motorsport 3 is beautiful, fun, competitive, and simply perfect. The only problem is the watchers in the stands looking at your races, but it's easy to forget about them. There's so much to this racing game, from the Storefront and Action House, to the massive amount of cars and tracks, to the competitive multiplayer. It's one of the greatest racing games, exclusives to Xbox 360, and frankly, one of the greatest games ever made.
Gameplay: 10/10 - The menus are slick and easy to navigate and the racing is responsive and perfect.
Graphics: 9.75/10 - The environments and cars are picture-realistic, with the only problem being the ugly character models.
Sound: 10/10 - The music is great, and the engines and crowd's cheers are extremely realistic.
Entertainment: 10/10 - The storefront and action house alone are fun to play around with, and the racing is so. Much. Fun.
Quality: 10/10 - The game is beautiful, responsive, and glitch-free.
Replay value: Very high - Getting to Racer level 50 will take months, while dominating the storefront and action house will take some time, too.