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Forza Motorsport 3

Published: Fri 30 Oct, 2009 | On:

OK, so we all knew, before it arrived, that F3 would be well wicked - yeah, getting hyped up for games prerelease is a specialty of mine - but this game is one of those rarities: a title that ends up being even better than we expected.

Forza 2 was solid already, and #3 just does away with the few complaints that could've been levelled against the old game, and adds a whole lot more of the good stuff.

Start with the graphics. 2 was competent as it was, smooth and colourful, if a little plain and flat. Well for F3, Turn 10 have just gone into the game and cranked the scenery knob up to freakin' 11, and then some! Yeah Baby! Car models are more detailed, but it's the trackside scenery and vistas that will just instantly win you over anew. Go for a spin on one of the new point-to-point road tracks on the mediterranean coast, or Japanese mountain course Fujimi Kaido, and you'll be utterly smitten as soaring mountain cliffs part, giving way to a vast expanse of azure ocean or alpine lake. The best free-roaming rpg adventure game would kill for views like this.

It's not just skin-deep either. A lot of the new tracks in F3 are just really thrilling to negotiate, mainly because the developers have made the EXCELLENT decision to add so much... verticality... to the latest proceedings. Big stomach-churning downhill plunges, and brutal uphill climbs that will really make you kick yourself for not having bought that displacement increase.

Handling doesn't need much explaining. It's perfect OK? Just trust me on that one. You couldn't ask for a better sense of weight and heft. I love the way you can really feel the performance of a car change as you carry out incremental changes. Car behaviour generally has changed extremely little from F2, and this is a good, good thing. Plus, you can flip cars. I have spent many happy hours randomly plowing into walls at 300km/h in attempts to make this happen. POW!! BAM!!! SCREEECH!!!! Ah, memories.....

One point of curiousness (not a real word, I think) is that the attitude of some specific car models seem to have changed. I remember the Ferrari 430 GT race car being quite a decent drive in F2, but in the new game it feels very twitchy and tail-happy, badly so. Boo. I wasted $350,000 on you, you worthless cur. Such is life.

Car noises are sweet. Engine tones seem to represent their real-life counterparts well, and the collision smash noises rock hard. Engine and exhaust noises change as mods are carried out, nice touch. Can't tell you much about in-game music though, I race with it off, it spoils the atmos. Menu music... well, do you care that much? It's "inoffensive".
I want to specially mention that highly-tuned engines in the game sound nice and "angry"; some games make engine noises sound a bit limp-wristed and gutless, but F3 does well in this aspect.

The play flow of the game is similar to that of yore, though the new 'season play' lays events out before you in an interesting and varied manner, I give it a thumbs up. You can still select events at your own leisure as per F2.

Any downers in the game? Very few. The rather hyped "cockpit" view is underwhelming, it looks and feels half-baked. I'll stick to my favourite bonnet cam, ta very much. The replays still don't have much on Gran Turismo, and load times are kind of long. But that's it. I'm hard-pressed to think of any other criticism to level at Forza 3.

This is it. This is the new king of sim racing games. Gran Turismo better put in some overtime at the office if it wants to beat F3. Can you believe it took me till the very last paragraph to make a reference to GT5? Judegement and opinions on that game will be reserved until it has been released, but for now, you can all bow down to Forza 3. His Royal Vroomness, haha, snort snort. Sorry.