Written by: Ian

 

 

 

Forza 2 has long been regarded as the nearest successor to GT on the Playstation. But it’s worth noting that all 3 games have now come out since GT4 was release for the PS2. Surely, with 3 attempts, "Forza Motorsport 3" must be better now, and ready and willing to take on GT5 when it comes out next year.

 

Is the game revved up, or has it stalled over the last two years?

 

 

I moan time and time again about the half-assed ‘stories’ you get in driving games. Forza tries to go one up on it’s rivals with a decent shot. You start off in a tutorial race to see how good you are, and then get offered a choice of cars and difficulty settings depending on how well you perform.

 

From there, you get given a selection of events that you are eligible for, and you get to choose one. You then take part in a season, being offered bigger tournaments depending on what new cars you either win, or can afford to buy with your winnings. It’s a decent system, and feels more realistic because you have an actual calendar, and only limited time for events- and you are also forced to finish a championship within a season before you can move on.

 

However, each season is roughly double the length of the last (why not a consistent length?), and there’s no personalisation at all- you get no pit crew, no advice from anyone, no choice of helmet or overalls etc, so there’s still plenty of scope for improvement.

 

 

As I just mentioned, season mode is pretty good. You always get a choice of three varied events to race from- one that normally lets you see tracks that are new or you’ve not seen for a while, one that keeps your current car, and one that will require you to use or purchase a totally different car.

 

 

The choices are a little more cosmetic than they first seem, but are ultimately a good decision. You then get to enter on weekends a larger tournament, in a specific class, with bigger, more dangerous tracks and opponents, and longer races. These last the season, over multiple events, and offer big rewards if you can nail them and win. Either way, the game tries to mix things up, and is constantly offering you new cars as rewards, or discounts on cars, parts and tunings in order to make you try out as much of the wealth of content that the game has to offer as soon as possible.

 

This is a great idea, because with over 400 cars, and a huge number of parts and options available, some people just wouldn’t see some of the cars on offer. And don’t think you have to spend hour racing round in fiesta’s either- within a couple of hours, I’d won some decent Class A & B cars (think Ferrari good), and also had enough to upgrade them to Class S (think Maclaren F1 or Veyron territory). Having said that, it will take weeks or even months of solid play to have a go in all the cars, such is the variety.

 

Having said that, better pacing would have been good- having six seasons of ever increasing length is pretty baffling, and considering you only do about half the events anyway, I would have maybe even preferred a shorter single player, with a little more focus, with the other events an added bonus for completing your six season apprenticeship.

 

If you do get bored of season play, you can enter individual events which you missed out on in season play, just do a free race, or obviously hang out online or tend to your storefront- there is always plenty to do, and Turn 10 have promised loads of further DLC.