In the days leading up to Forza Motorsport 4 I decided to go back a few years to it's predecessor. Forza Motorsport 3 developed by Turn 10 and Microsoft is self boasted to not be a simulation, but an Invitation, I’m guessing to a party or something cos to me this is definitely a simulation, and a damn fine one at that.
It is going to be hard for me to keep out my personal feelings with this review seeing as how I'm a slight racing game fanatic, all starting with Porsche Challenge, Gran Turismo and the Formula 1 games on the PS1. But anyway let's try to keep this responsible shall we…
Story
… are you kidding. Fine I’ll make one up. You start off as a nobody, a worm, a maggot on the racetrack. Everybody knows you used to be the champion, you had all the fastest cars and best trophies, rich beyond your wildest dreams. But then Forza 2 got outdated and you had to switch to the new one and that is where you are now. Starting with a paltry 10,000 Credits you are forced to buy a car that will haunt you for the rest of your life knowing you will never drive it again but cant bear to sell.
In other words there is no story here, you simply race to win money to buy cars to race to win money and so on. Lets move on shall we?
Gameplay
Right then, first of all the basic stuff. This is a simulation racer, meaning that the developers have gone to extraordinary lengths to make this game as realistic as possible. As you race you can almost feel every bump and crack in the track. When you lose control you really have to fight to gain it again. As with all racing games you have an accelerator and brake button to control speed and you use they joysticks to control steering and looking. There is also an option to turn on manual transmission to manually choose gear changes and even the option to turn on a clutch button, for serious fanatics.
There are also certain assists that can help with beginner drivers and ones who are just getting used to the game, but even most of these are things that you can get in real life such as Anti-lock Brakes and Traction Control Systems.
This game really does take itself to be a true racing simulation and so the parts of the car work as you would expect them to and that includes when they are damaged. If you decide to shift up too late or shift down too early you will break your gear box making it harder to change gear next time. If you crash side on into a barrier you will find your car steering to one side, and if you flip… well you can car dance.
There is also online multiplayer which varies from 8 player racing to online muckarounds with friends. The gameplay in online is similar to ordinary gameplay but some aspects such as damage and collisions are autoset in order to avoid putting off players by players who may cheat.
Graphics
This area is without a doubt Forza Motorsport 3′s strongest area. Simply looking at the tracks themselves would be enough to make your eyes explode, and that is before you see any of the cars. Both track and car have been carefully created to make them accurate and very graphical. Together they work so well together that you can really feel like you are at these places if you didn’t have the HUD, Controller in your hands and weren’t staring at it through a 50 Hz TV.
Damage modelling is fairly accurate, if you have small crash then the damage will be brilliantly modelled to where you crashed according to speed and what you hit. You will also spin out as you would expect but strangely not die. Anyway back to why I said fairly. As I said with a SMALL crash it works well but with a big crash, such as flying headlong into a barrier at 250 mph, well the damage modelling just decides to heap it all on in 1 second, leaving you with a tangled mess of a silver scratched thing that was fine just moments before.
Longevity
This game has a certain amount of longevity especially for completionists and for achievement whores with up to 50 Driver Levels, over 100 Cups and 400 Cars to collect which will take even the best racers a long time. Also with a great online play it can keep many people occupied at least until the next variation of Forza comes to our XBOX screen.
Hence it comes to the final verdict, along with a score and overall opinion. There is no doubt that this is the finest simulation racing game to come out so far, and it will be a tough one to beat, although for people who aren’t into sim racing this game is not one that I recommend as it has a difficult learning curve.
Story N/A
Gameplay 9/10
Graphics 9.5/10
Longevity 9/10
With every area having high scores I found it hard to penalise it with no story, so it isn’t counted in the total.
OVERALL 9/10
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