Forza Motorsport 3 Review for Xbox 360.

The Forza series has always prided itself upon it's uber-realistic approach to the racing genre. Forza can be simply described as the mirror-opposite of racing titles like Burnout and the upcoming Blur & Split Second: Velocity. For the true petrol heads out there, you may not want to read this review! :-)

GRAPHICS & PRESENTATION

+ Wax on! Wax off!! Graphically, Forza is an absolute delight to look at. Every car model is rendered with painstaking detail. Each race track, from New York to the Nurburgring, has been recreated in perfect detail also. There is very little to criticise. Lighting is put to excellent use with shading and light sourcing hitting the cars and tracks at the correct angles at all times. Reflections are virtually jaw dropping with every car having a crisp visual sheen.

= You're so vain! This may just be me being picky but, as nice as Forza looks, it does seem a bit sterile in places. Now maybe this is because I prefer tracks that have been created from imagination and not reality but everything looks a bit too clean for me.

SOUND

= I've heard it all before. There's nothing bad about the SFX or music in Forza but there's nothing that really stands out either. Each car sounds like they should from small engines to muscle cars. Screeching tyres and revving engines sound like....well....screeching tyres and revving engines. It's all appropriate but nothing outstanding. Music is fairly un-inspiring stuff and I found myself hitting the mute button after 10 minutes and listening to my MP3 player instead.

GAMEPLAY

+ Look what I made! One of the first things that needs to be mentioned here is the level of customisation. There are 400 cars in the game and every single one of them can be tuned and tweaked to racing perfection. From tyres to suspension to steering, there's enough here to keep the most ardent car-fiddler happy for hours on end. And once you've finished tinkering with the inside you can then customise your ride with a paint job of your choosing. Forza's paint+vinyl editor is so detailed it boggles the mind. If, like me, you have no interest in fine-tuning but want your car optimised for the races ahead there is a very handy quick tune tool before the beginning of the race! :-)

+ It's just like Ebay! After certain races and events you'll be given cars as prizes but if you're really impatient you can always go into the in-game auction site and try and win cars there for a fraction of the original price. Not only cars but custom paint jobs are available too. You can place your own items for sale and make yourself a few credits in return.

- This isn't an RPG. After each race, you're given a set amount of XP which is determined by the position you finish in, the difficulty you raced on and the amount of damage to your car. You can reach level 50 for your driver and level 5 for your chosen car. This is okay in itself but when you constantly have to race and re-race the same tracks it becomes very boring, very quickly. Turn 10 games claim to have over 100 tracks in this game but many of those are simply shortened or reverse tracks of the originals. And when there are 6 seasons in career play which contain an ever increasing amount of races....well, you do the math! Grinding, thine name is Forza 3!!

- Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz! I like to think I can give games credit where it's due but I'm making an exception here. I'm not sure what happenned during development of Forza 3 but someone, somewhere forgot to make this game FUN. Y'know, what games are meant to be. I have never played a game that is so emotionless, lifeless, stark, sterile, humourless and boring. Please bear in mind that I am NOT biased against realism. I used to play all the TOCA games on the PS1 and since then have played many games that are realistic. Forza 3 just doesn't feel like an involving racer at all!!


SHOULD I BUY OR RENT?

Definitely rent first. I cannot, in all good conscience, recommend buying this game.


Forza 3 is an Xbox 360 exclusive. Hours played: 40+ on medium difficulty (Realism mode is for sadists and masochists)! Developed by Turn 10 Games.

Achievement difficulty: 5/10. The only reason it's a 5 is because the 'Solid Gold' achievement will take you a VERY long time! Every thing else is easy.