REVIEW – Forza 3

Videogames, since their inception, have often strived to more and more accurately simulate the reality of what exists in our world. Perhaps seen initially as a technical challenge to prove the worth of computerised graphical experiences in the faces of those decrying the fanciful depictions of alien invaders and cartoon heroes, the simulation has moved forward in time into several gaming genres, but none is still quite so energetically battled for as the quest to deliver the perfect car-racing simulation.
While Gran Turismo was largely regarded to be leading the pack for many years, with only the likes of the Project Gotham series trailing its heels for the serious racing sim mantle, it was a little-known studio named Turn 10 that appeared in 2002 to begin challenging Sony’s throne with Forza Motorsport.

The secret of Forza’s success, which really started becoming apparent with 360-bound Forza 2, was that lead director Dan Greenawalt wasn’t so much a car man as a physics man. Forza 2 offered body, engine and (especially) tyre physics to a level of reality-aping astonishment never seen before or, arguably, since.

But where do you go from there, aside from fixing the game’s frankly shabby visuals? Well, to confirm, Forza 3 looks absolutely gorgeous, so no worries there. Direct sunlight doesn’t turn the roofs of vehicles bright white any more, and each and every bend and curve of the 400 stunningly modelled vehicles reflects absurd amounts of the surrounding area, the angles and hues shifting utterly convincingly as the car undulates around the tracks.

But back to the quandary. Where else could Forza go? The answer, as you’ll be somewhat aware of if you’ve been following our coverage of the game of late, is that Turn 10 decided to investigate the rather controversial matter of accessibility. Well, and the not-so-controversial world of even better physics, but you might take that as read – the new tech, especially the tyre system, adds just that extra feeling of realness as you nuzzle into bends or spin off in a moment of idiocy.

Still, it all became a bit of a case of ‘when is a sim not a sim?’ as Turn 10 began to design a game that Greenawalt happily acknowledges “even a six-year old could play”. Stealing the Rewind function from Codemasters’ Grid and DiRT 2 and adding braking assisted to the point of actually doing it for you are two of Forza 3’s wildest deviations from its predecessor. There’s precious little to be penalised for using the auto-braking, and the Rewind costs you absolutely nothing – it’s not even limited. This effectively means, unless your finger hovers away from its spot guarding the v button, that you’ll never lose a race again, regardless of your difficulty setting. It’s features like these that place us in a slight predicament. For many, the skill of Forza 2 was in the learning curve of the game – really growing to know each and every foible in a track, and developing the skills utilised to get around them in each of your garage of favourite cars, with each of their idiosyncratic handling and customisation setups. It might just be us, but the ability to rewind each and every mistake you make seems to slightly separate Forza 3 from the track-learning geekism that provided one of the greater hooks of Forza 2.

But, on the other hand, the detail with which you can now zoom in on individual elements of a track fits so perfectly with the sim environment. Want to absolutely perfect one particular bend of Silverstone? Now you can repeat it over and over and over again, tidying up your approach ad infinitum until it becomes second nature. And then, magically, next time you cross paths with the notorious raceway, you’ll find yourself able to hurtle around it in one go. So we’re pretty torn on the Rewind business.

We’re fairly sure this could all have been ironed out by either limiting its use, Grid style, or simply forcing a sizeable race reward hit on you for its use. What we’re not at all torn about, though, is how badly the intense linearity of the career mode has aged.
It’s a controversial element of debate to bring into play, as many would argue that, Gran Turismo aside, the Forza series is more or less in a league of its own when compared to the DiRTs, Need For Speeds or Grids of this world due to its sim stylings, but we still feel the flow of its gameplay – the places and situations in which all of these unarguably fantastic cars can be enjoyed – lacks a little in its scope.

It appeared from all the previous chats we’d had with the developers that the calendar-style format for the career would be a self-managing experience that loads itself up with events it feels you might want to try in accordance with what cars you own and what tracks you’ve not seen yet. It does just this and, very successfully, helps by pushing you in various different directions to discourage the age-old habit of nerfing out one car to incredible levels and battling through the game unimpeded. But, despite this improvement, the upshot of it all is still that you basically just race standard track races time after time, gathering points and levelling up your player and cars. While there’s the occasional end-of-week or end-of-season championship, we found ourselves sorely missing the drama and added interest of something like DiRT 2, with its buddy system and extremely clear visual representations of where you can race and what you can do there, with a distinct feeling of conquering the world. While we’d never dream of criticising Forza 3’s focus on vanilla track racing (full technical realisation of such being precisely the game’s exercise), we also wonder why the much-vaunted rally, point-to-point and drag styles of race are hidden so many hours into the game you’ve almost given up looking for them by the time they make an appearance. It just doesn’t seem to fit the game’s new atmosphere of accessibility.

So it’s judgement time, people. What have you got here? You have a Forza game that stands distinctly ahead of its predecessor in terms of graphics (which are always great, sometimes excellent), in terms of physics (the improvements made to which are palpable even to those without a PhD) and content. With 400 cars (beware, though, many are little more than resprays) and 100 tracks, this is some seriously comprehensive racing. You can play it in every single way you played the last one and enjoy it immensely if, to go back to the age-old cliché on this, Forza is ‘your kind of thing’. But it does feel to us that the various concessions made to supposedly widen the formula for six-year-olds and the more artistically inclined via a heavy online emphasis on the artwork have served, though generally in a distinctly optional way, to draw Forza sometimes dangerously away from being a game at all.

How much this bothers you depends on your self-control to stay away from Rewind (we have none) and how likely you are to poke about behind the menus to take the reins back in terms of car customisation and your racing career path. The purist who knows what they want should be able to steer such a course, but we question the game’s appeal, behind the new bells and whistles, to truly recruit a new audience of the same kind of intensity, and we caution Turn 10 to consider reining it all in a bit next time. In the end, though, this issue still lies on the periphery – Forza 3 is the greatest racer currently available on 360, and indeed any console. Until Gran Turismo 5 comes along, anyway.

SUMMARY
Everything you’d want and expect from a new Forza game. While it adds nothing particularly new to the formula, the wealth of new cars and tracks coupled with the improved graphics make this the greatest racing simulation available on any console for now. Just use the Rewind function with care to keep things exciting. 5/5
Peter Gothard