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Genre: Racing Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios Developer: Turn 10 Players: 1-8

By Keith B (30th Oct 2009)

Gliding over the crest of a hill in a Lamborghini Murcielago, barely clinging to the tarmac as momentum lifts the car for a moment, and then the vista comes into view, a marvellously recreated piece of the Japanese countryside, with a mountain lake on the left and a forested valley on the right, is the sort of moment that would live with you for a long time should it have happened in the real world. It didn’t, it happened on my TV screen, but it was a magical moment nonetheless.

Forza Motorsport 3 isn’t just a pretty game, it’s a staggeringly gorgeous one, and everything gets the treatment with the wonder brush. The circuits – both new and old – often cross into realms of imagery where words like ‘beautiful’ get bantered about, and that doesn’t happen too much in game reviews I’m afraid.

There are over 400 cars and over 100 combinations of track, and they’re all just so damned pretty, with the sunlight glinting off the paintwork of the vehicles as the scramble across the track making them seem almost real. Consider also that there are interior shots for all 400 cars – recreated dashboards for all – and the detail wand hasn’t missed anything. But the game had to be pretty, didn’t it? I mean, you don’t put out a press release saying that the guys from Polyphony Digital, creators of the upcoming Gran Turismo 5, have spent ages playing your game at E3 if you’re not damned sure that you’re on the money with your work to date. And they have been.



As the adage goes, looks aren’t everything. Although Gran Turismo Prologue was released what seems like aeons ago, it too featured a wondrous mountain vista that served to drop the jaw of anyone who saw it. True, it lacked any form of worthy damage model and most of the circuits were all but empty of life, but it meant we at least had high expectations for FM3.

If you are to break down a racing game into key components, I would offer five: a good collection of cars to drive, a decent career with longevity and variety, a physics model that makes racing feel like racing, rewarding multiplayer and online, and an AI that had personality and just a little bit of grit. Forza Motorsport 3 ticks the boxes of them all.

I’ve already said there are over 400 cars, and eulogised over the visuals so there’s not much more to say, because I really could sit here typing for an hour if I wanted to mention all those moments burned into my brain, babbling on about bloom effects and the shifts in lighting as you move in and out of sunlight, but I don’t need to because you can see as much from the screenshots.



The handling and physics of the game are wonderful, both punishing if ignored but rewarding if handled properly. Learning the different styles of driving depending on whether your car is two or four wheel drive, front or rear wheel drive, and where the engine happens to be sitting is possible and encouraged. It is possible – although difficult – to correct a wobble while travelling at 300km/h through some seriously fine adjustments and power management, a claim that can’t be made by many other games that offer realistic racing. Open up the tuning options and the subsequent effects are tangible, making the tuning system an integral part of shaving seconds from lap times and saving the department from the bin that other racing titles seem to drop their tweaking system.

The options for customising your car are great and varied, allowing such fine changes as widening your tyres to considerably larger jobs like dropping an entirely new engine into your vehicle. Changes increase the Performance Index of your car, the numerical representation of the overall grunt of your vehicle. Keeping the particular car being worked on within a class – From F through to R3 – to give you an edge in races becomes a tricky but rewarding exercise in trial and error.



All of this becomes important because beating the AI cars on the field is no easy feat. Beyond the actual adjustments you can make, from the general difficulty of the AI to the variety of driver assists you can flick on or off to make the game more or less challenging, I mean the driving styles of the AI now challenges like never before. In previous Forza games you could rely on the other cars staying on the driving line with impossible regularity, and similarly could rely on them pulling back if you began to drift your car towards them as they tried to overtake.

Well not any more. The AI doesn’t give up the racing line without a fight, and will nudge and bump you without hesitation if your bullying approach is hindering their progress. It isn’t just with the player either – it’s a refreshing sight to come through a corner to see an AI driver trying to get back on the road, the victim of a head-to-head battle with another AI driver. This simple thing – giving the AI ‘personality’ - is probably the biggest overall change I’ve noticed.

The career mode is handled differently than before, with players able to choose from Season Play (your career mode) but also able to race any event they like through the event list. The career mode spans eight seasons with each following season one month longer than the previous. The event list is massive. I haven’t played to completion – and if you really expected me to by the time I write this then you need your head examined – but I have seen to level 42 and at that point perhaps 30% of events had been completed. The longevity will be staggering.



The auction house returns through Xbox Live, offering the chance to buy and sell cars, and purchase liveries and tuning setups. Although only a small part of the overall experience, there is fun to be had by partaking in a frantic last minute auction for a particular vehicle. Racing online is as you would expect, with all the racing modes present. From simple races through team events, cat and mouse and a plethora of other modes there is plenty here to keep the devout fan racing.

If I had to pick faults (and one glance at The Man tells me that I do), then, surprisingly, I’ve got a few to throw out there. First of all is the obvious step away from the hardcore racer, evident by the inclusion of the Rewind feature – as featured in Racedriver GRiD and DiRT 2. Now drivers that push a car too hard in single player can rewind play to moments before an impact. For casual gamers it will probably serve well, but it makes a mockery of those who like their driving realistic. You can’t turn it off, but you can turn off the terribly annoying message that pops up every time your tyres leave the track.



Similarly, the achievement structure has been stripped back completely. In the previous title, players with a score of around 700 points wore it like a badge of honour, and you knew that they had driven all manner of endurance races and more to get there. Now, do eight seasons (finishing wherever) and reach level 50 over as long as you want and you’ll have most of them. While it doesn’t particularly bother me, aficionados I know are very disappointed.

Finally, although a damage model exists and applies itself to a variety of components from your car, the external model isn’t great. The game may offer flips and rolls but the damage tends to look like a vinyl more than anything else, although front and rear bumpers can fly off.

Do those small things matter? Not particularly. Appealing directly to hardcore racers may no longer be the absolute focus, but deep down it has all the stuff you want. It’s the best racing game by far, and if you know you cars, or like the genre, then this is an absolute must own.

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