Forza Motorsport 3

The car racing genre is not what it used to be. Before there was a clear distinction between arcade racing, driving simulations and sports racing. All three categories aimed to please different market segments, namely the twitch gamer looking for instant gratification, the car enthusiast and the hardcore racer. When Forza Motorsport series started out on the first Xbox console, it was clearly defined as a driving simulator – there were assists but you needed to be a serious enthusiast to make the most of it. Well, obviously a lot has changed since then.

To tag Forza Motorsport 3 simply as a racing game would be misleading. Sure there are cars and tracks and tons of racing events to participate in, but that’s just one aspect of the game. In true sense, Forza 3 is a social platform for car enthusiasts. I’ll explain that in detail, but let’s talk about the racing first.

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As a racer, Forza 3 aims to please everyone from the most hardcore simulator players to a fresher who prefers to play through all racing games by just pressing down on the accelerator. There are a lot of driving assists to keep things smooth for a novice driver, but the credits you earn at the end of each race in the Season mode are also bare minimum. As the assists go off, the game does get a bit more challenging, but the rewards would be worth it.

In the season mode, races are divided into weekday and weekend tournaments, both rewarding in their own ways. As your driver avatar and the car you use level up you get special bonus items from part manufacturers, plus discounts on parts. Not to forget that at the end of each tournament, you get a new car in your garage compliments of the manufacturer. There are around 400 cars in total, which can take a very long time to unlock in the season mode. Thankfully, Forza 3 lets you get easy access to almost all the cars in its library in the quick race mode.

There’s a tremendous amount of content in Forza 3, and once you see that, you realize why the game is distributed on 2 DVDs, with a requirement to install approximately 1.9 GB of content on your hard drive before you can experience all the cars and tracks.

It’s pretty obvious that Turn 10 intended that everyone who bought Forza 3 should be able to enjoy all its content without getting stuck in unconquerable challenges. To ensure that, they also inserted the Rewind feature (where you can turn back time and avoid a collision or an over-take that can hamper your race results), that was made popular by recent Codemasters racing titles. The only difference here is that you are not penalized in any way for using that feature. The game gives you the freedom to rewind to a safe position as many times as you want during a single race, which pretty much works as a cheat, but it’s a feature that would be well appreciated by novice players especially if they try to race with fewer assists.

Even the car upgrades give you multi-level options depending on how much you would be interesting in spending your time in the garage. Advance users can spend quite a while upgrading and tuning their cars to suite their racing style and even the track conditions, but if this doesn’t interest you, you can easily opt for quick upgrade to get you all the optimum upgrades.

Going back to the part where I referred to Forza 3 as a social platform for car enthusiasts, the game is all about boasting your skills online. On the very basic level you have leader boards that have your race timings, regardless of which mode you play the race in. But that’s not all.
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One major upgrade in Forza 2 which happens to be the best in the genre so far was the decal customization. With the impressively high number of options in primary and advanced shapes and fonts, your decal design is only limited by your imagination. To simplify things further this time around, you have the option to create your design first on a blank canvas and then apply it on the car of your choice. This makes things a lot easier as you don’t have to constantly struggle with the camera controls to get a better look at your design. With a little patience, even the most artistically-challenged person out there can create a custom look. The best part about this is, of course, being able to sell your designs online for credits.

It’s unbelievable how good some of the user-created car designs look. Just about every current fad, pop icon, comic book hero, and shameless self-boasting has been recreated as a custom design. You can actually spend a big chunk of time going through the gallery and maybe even buy a few of those designs for yourself if you can afford it.

Moreover the great photography tool from Forza 2 has also made its reappearance here. Once you discover the tool in the pause menu, you’d find yourself pausing the game frequently when racing through picturesque settings so you can take a picture and post it online. I even found myself letting other cars go ahead in quick race mode, just so I can get a good shot of my car against a good looking backdrop.

Visually, Forza 3 is quite an improvement over its predecessors. Gone are the barren landscapes and the plain grassy environments. Instead you get some excellently detailed scenarios filled with environmental props to keep you going ahead just to discover what comes next. There are some real world race tracks and roads you can race on as well, complete with all the elements that would keep the look authentic. The best part about this is that the draw distance never fails you. You’ll never see any pop-ups in between the races and just about everything around the race track would be sharp and detailed.

The audio seems to be inspired by a lot of racing games released before it, but that’s not really an issue, since the track selection is peppy and works well with racing in general.

However, I should mention that the load times in the game are really high. You’d find yourself waiting through 2 different load screens before the start of any race and these screens can take between a total of 15-20 seconds. The load screens are a bit informative with some interesting trivia, but that’s just a distraction during those wait times.

There’s no doubt about it. If you want a game that you’ll be playing (or socializing with) for the next few months, then this is it. The sheer amount of content in terms of cars, tracks, customizations, decal-creating and even retrying older races with some assists off will keep you busy for a very long time. Car enthusiasts will love the fact that the game has practically every manufacturer that matters with cars ranging from small hatchbacks, to SUVs, to high-end sport cars and even authentic racecars.

The best part is – Turn 10 has ensured you’ll enjoy the experience whether you’re a hardcore enthusiast or new to racing games altogether. If you own an Xbox 360, Forza Motorsport 3 is definitely worth a spin!