Nowadays, if you want to rip it up in a driving/racing simulator on a console, you really only have two different series: Gran Turismo on the PlayStation consoles and Forza Motorsport on the Xbox consoles. While Gran Turismo is about to hit its 5th iteration next year sometime, Forza Motorsport 3 released today in North America to further the Forza Motorsport series. While neither of these racing simulators really ever has a story, Forza Motorsport 3 has tried to put things into context, by arranging things onto a calendar rather than just dropping a whole list of events you have to complete, this makes the player’s goal more attainable and relevant. So how about we break this review up into sections so you can keep pace?

Graphics

First off, let me begin in saying that Forza 3 looks good, real good.

The car models in this game are highly detailed, and unlike Forza 2, you can see the tire and their treads. (In Forza 2 it seemed as if the tires were just a black hole for any and all light.)  The cars are rendered to near perfection with every nuance of the car’s body being reflected in the game.  The reflections in the cars are equally spectacular. Each of the cars also has a rendered interior, which if you like racing in that mode, is great.  Of course hardcore players will use that, but most casual racers usually opt in for the behind-the-car view, rendering this mode nearly irrelevant.

Personally, I would be inclined to say that the car renderings in Forza 3, inside and out, look better than those in Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, particularly if you add in the fact that Forza 3 has damage and Prologue does not.  How FM3 will stack up against next year’s Gran Turismo 5 when the full game releases, still remains to be seen.

Even by zooming, the cars still maintain their visual integrity.

Next up are the tracks, or how the game calls them, “environments.”  The game contains over 100 different track configurations, whether those are full circuits, reverse circuits, “old” circuits, point-to-point sections and even several drag strips.  While the tracks are very realistic, lifelike and detailed, they take a long time to load, even if you have the first disc and content from the second disc loaded to your hard drive.  That said, they’re a blast to drive around and you can tell how much work actually went into them. You can even feel minor bumps in the road, and if you’re not careful, they’ll throw off your exit out of a corner. Take a look at the two shots below, and tell me you can’t feel the love from Turn 10.

Fujimi Kaido is probably one of the best looking tracks in Forza Motorsport 3.

The game also really pushes the feeling of speed, but surprisingly without using any motion blur.  Forza 3 behaves so real, it can even make you feel things like the chills or even pain.  Flying down the back straight of the old Circuit de la Sarthe (old Le Mans circuit) at 260 MPH and covering a football field per second, trees disappear in mere instants, all while giving you the chills from going so fast.  There’s also the feeling of pain when you’re on a tight and twisty track like Fujimi Kaido full circuit, and where after a mere lap of the circuit will cause your fingers to hurt from the constant alternation of braking and accelerating.  Forza 3 does make you feel the game.

Overall, the game looks fantastic, with the car models being extremely highly detailed, almost to the point of excessiveness.  The environments you race in are truly believable and will make you feel as if you’re actually at the track.

Gameplay

In all honesty, the formula Turn 10 used in Forza 2 worked, really well.  Now, in Forza 3, they’ve improved on the formula to make things feel even better than before.  The most major additions and changes include the rewind feature, movie creation, the new storefront and accessibility.  I’ll discuss these ones in detail, as detailing the rest would just make this review way too long.

First off is the rewind feature. This isn’t a new concept, games like GRID had it over a year ago, but FM3 has taken a different approach to how this should work. Every 5 seconds in a race, the race “checkpoints” your progress so far, and you can rewind to there.

Pressing the back button will rewind the race by 5 seconds (provided you’ve actually been racing for more than 5 seconds) and then stop the game to give you a chance to choose next. You either have the option of continuing there, rewinding more (if possible) or canceling the rewind.  It really helps when you mess up, or even cause minor damage to your car. For some players, this may be a crucial feature in having them have fun.

Next up is movie creation.  Forza 3 allows players to render movies from replays and upload those renders straight to their My Forza section on ForzaMotorsport.net.  This tool is very useful for allowing players to record clips of their driving.  The tool works at 2 resolutions 360p (SD) and 720p (HD) and lets you to record between 5 and 30 second clips (in 5 second increments).  While I can understand that rendering these videos may require the full power of the 360, the uploading process surely doesn’t harness the 360 to its fully potential and so should not disallow the player from playing the game. It’s a minor annoyance, and while it may be fixed in the future, is only a minor flaw of the whole movie creation feature within Forza 3.

Yes, that is me driving. This “movie” was made up of about 9 clips.

Forza 3, while still only limited to a single file that is only stored for 24 hours on their servers, does it for free, and at awesome quality.

Also, reworked this time round is a player’s Storefront. Players now have the option of selling a design, vinyl or tuning setup via their Storefront, as well as storing up to 18 screenshots and 9 replays, which other players can view or download. Cars as packages are still be sold in the auction house.  This setup is really nice and well fleshed out until you want to look at multiple storefronts or a specific storefront. It’s fairly complicated, not very intuitive and requires a lot of repeating steps.

Also, the web integration with the Storefront is  a little pale.  You can look at a player’s screenshots and download them and look at a player’s favorites.  Sadly this is the extent of everything on ForzaMotorsport.net as it stands now, but the team has promised to add much more integration in the near future. And one last thing that is missing: queuing up and downloading from your browser, directly to your game. I’m keeping my fingers crossed some of this gets addressed.

Last but not least, is Forza 3’s accessibility.  This is the part of the game where I think Turn 10 nailed the game. Making the game more accessible by adding such things as quick racing, and especially features such as auto-braking make the game appeal to a much larger crowd.  I’ve had numerous friends, who aren’t fans of racing games, tell me that they’re actually having fun with Forza 3.  Really and truly, I think that says it all about the accessibility of Forza Motorsport 3: more people like it and a lot more people can fall in love with it.

In summation, Forza 3 feels very similar to Forza 2 in terms of the race dynamics but Turn 10 has done a lot more to make the cars feel realistic, by adding more of a heavy feel to them.  The additional content like movie creation, the new Storefront and accessibility options that Turn 10 Studios have built into the game just make it appeal to a wider audience and allows some of the more hardcore to flaunt what they have.

Audio

There’s not much different to be said about the audio in Forza Motorsport 3, because it’s just quite similar to Forza 2.  And yes, it still sounds great and nails the sounds of the cars.  Ferraris still sound like Ferraris, Lamborghinis still sound like Lamborghinis and the Porsche Carrera GT still sounds almost like a Formula 1 car.  I think I did notice that the team upped the relative volume of some of the sound effects, specifically the turbo’s spooling, the blow-off valve’s hiss and the supercharger’s whine, which was very welcomed.

How do those squealing tires sound?

Other than that, the game still sounds amazing, and does its best to get as close to the real car sounds as possible.

Achievements

The achievements in Forza 3 are fairly bland. Quite a few will be awarded to you as you make your way through season mode, leveling up your driver and progressing through seasons.  The rest of the achievements will come from trying out the various new offerings Forza 3 has, from creating a vinyl a tune setup or selling something from your storefront.  There are really only two somewhat fun achievements, one requiring you to crack the 200mph barrier, and one requiring you to get 100,000 drift points in a single lap.

Probably the most technical achievement in Forza Motorsport 3.

The only real daunting achievement is the one that requires you to get gold (or 1st place) in all the events the game has to offer.  With 220 events in the game and nearly all of them having at least 3 races in them, you’re easily looking at 650 or more races to pick up this achievement.  That said, the achievements in this game are still quite monotonous; they’re not nearly as fun as something like GRID.

Xbox Live Multiplayer

For FM3, it seems like Turn 10 really listened to the community to see what they wanted. In terms of online racing modes, there are various preset ones that weren’t available in Forza 2 like Cat and Mouse, drifting, drag racing and others. The team has also implemented Halo 3 style “hoppers” that they intend to modify every week based on how much they are played and what the community wants to see and play.

Of worthy note is that while online, you can also use “bot” racers, also known as AI or CPU racers. That way, it’s not just you and a friend racing, but rather you, a friend, and up to 6 other AI drivers tearing up the track.

While Turn 10 has upped the multiplayer offerings of Forza 3 compared to its previous iteration, there are still some things that are lacking, mostly asked for by the community.  The multiplayer component of Forza 3 has a ton of robust options and gametypes that’ll keep players going at each other for a long time to come. And then there are always the leaderboards for the various storefront sections for players to vie for.

Conclusion

Forza 3, however similar the underlying concepts may be to Forza 2, is a very different game. From the re-worked graphics of both the cars and the tracks, to the re-worked physics of the racing and to the added options to attract new players, Forza Motorsport 3 firmly establishes itself as a full contender in the racing genre. Then aglain we wouldn’t expect anything less from the studio that brought us two solid previous iterations.  We definitely have to congratulate Turn 10 Studios on such a well-made and feature-packed  game!

If you’re interested, there is a demo of Forza Motorsport 3 available on Xbox Live.

Note: For the sake of readability I cut out some large parts of this review because it would have been way too long. Oh, and keep your eyes peeled for a Forza 3 related contest, very soon.