Excellent racing game, built to a price
So it arrives, Forza 3. Starting out as a humble response to Polyphony's behemoth Gran Turismo, Forza has now carved its own niché in the console sim genre. With heavy focus on the community, Forza is quite unlike much else on the market today. But the series is starting to grow out of it shoes.
The Good
Let me first start by saying that Forza 3 is worth your money. The amount of content you get is a lot. But its no more, no less. Depending on how you break it down, at first it looks like maybe two or three games rolled into one. 400 cars with cockpit, upgrades and excellent sound design, each car has been given at least a certain amount of attention.
The amount of tracks is nothing to scuff about either. With plenty of licensed tracks like Nürburgring (obviously), Le Mans and Laguna Seca, the usual suspects are there and many classic battles can be recreated. Turn 10 made the brilliant decision of including every DLC from Forza 2, so Road America and Motegi are still there. The mountain track, Fujimi Kaido, is back and makes for a good change to race in uphill battles with plenty of blind corners and elevation changes. Some obvious tracks are still missing, but the amount in the game is plentiful and you will not have a hard time finding a track you haven't raced yet.
Rounding off the package is the new excellent Storefront. In my opinion this is the most radical change to the franchise and can only be compared to the mod community for the racing sims on PC. You can now buy vinyls, designs and tuning setups made by other players for in-game credits from a store. Why is this important? Well, since racing cars can now be painted, any team's racing livery can be applied. Even if Turn 10 haven't acquired the license for a racing series, they can create the base models and let people make all the vinyls themselves. This could only work with a robust livery editor and an active community, both of which Forza 3 has.
The Bad
So why isn't worth more than its retail price? Well, its a pretty scruffy game frankly. Just like a car built to a price, it rattles a bit and it feels like it was put together by a bunch of British Leyland-workers, on strike. Car models can vary a lot in quality. Some look fine while others have misplaced textures, details out of proportion and other inaccuracies. Some patches have been released, but few things have been addressed. The game even ships like a mess. Two discs, one with the game and one with just content. Some of the content was released as free DLC one day, having previously been in the game. So you'll need a couple of gigs free on your HDD to experience the full game. This is partly to blame for the now ancient DVD-9 discs, and partly because Turn 10 didn't package the game properly.
I'm not a big fan of the new career either. Cars are only rewarded for new levels when you EXP your driver profile, making each event into a grind for cash and experience. Car restrictions and rules for each event varies little, and you'll definitely feel the monotony of your quest towards the Solid Gold achievement after a few hours.
The Trivial
Before a race, your car will roll up on the starting grid and the AI will rev your car for you. You are given control a second before the clock stops. This makes for some very unexciting drag races and since you cannot have rolling starts anymore because of this feature, you'll have to reverse and go back and do the rolling start yourself. Was the auto-revving so important they had to make this compromise?
The Volkswagen Rabbit GTI. Why the Rabbit GTI? WHYYYYYY?!
Conclusion
Forza was never the prettiest game on the block. Nor had it the best sound or the most content. Its not the most realistic racing game or the most ambitious. But its currently the most well-rounded with cars, sounds, cockpits, tracks and graphics kind of looking like real thing. The car list doesn't hold many surprise inclusions or omissions, but its solid list. Turn 10 didn't make any dramatic changes and it still holds up as current-gen racer. But it feels unfinished and unpolished. They should have delayed it a couple of months to let it cook in the oven and maybe quality control it. I consider it the weakest in the series and I hope Turn 10 doesn't cut any corners and aim for the apex next time. Its not a bad game, its worth your money. But no more than that.
