I am very happy tonight because the copy of Forza 3 that I ordered off Fishpond on Thursday night arrived at my house this morning, when I was not expecting delivery until Tuesday because of the long weekend.

Forza 3 has been hyped as one of the best games of the year, so far in my first two hours of playing it has not lived up entirely to this hype.

My first moan is that for a simulator it has far too much of an arcade feel to it. I saw a comment on a forum that stated the cars feel like they are floating, and that is exactly the problem, it feels like you are driving a hovercraft simulator not a car simulator.

Second to this is the graphics, they again have a very arcade feel and look to them and do not compete with the likes of Dirt 2 or Race Pro as far as track detail goes.

The lack of a free race mode is disappointing oversight. In New Zealand the game is heavily marketed upon the inclusion of the Australian V8 Supercars. However being forced to wade your way through the career mode until you unlock them is an incredible pain. Update: I found free race mode, you just had to be able to start career mode, and then back out of it.

Tracks. Or lack of them. No Australian tracks. And too many fictional tracks. Fictional tracks suck because they try to make them ultra cool but in the end they are nothing like any real track would be and therefore just adds to the arcade feel of the game.

Next is the music, or lack of it. Forza 2 had a good soundtrack on menus and loading screens, however, while racing you had no music on the pure sound of a race car. However, Forza 3 reverses this and on the menus you had electronic background music, and any real music is played quietly in the background of races, it is slightly off putting and again adds to the arcade feel of the game.

Finally the annoying track intros. Why can’t the race just start with 3, 2, 1 rather than some silly view that rotates 3 different views of the car?

So what is good about the game?

AI. The computer drivers in the game are aggressive and hard to beat.

Damage. You cannot just ram up the backside of another driver and expect to get away with it. You will damage you vehicle and this affects your performance.

Going off the race line affects performance. Also dirt and grass dramatically slow you down. This is what a racing game should do.

My Difficulty Set up: Autobrake Off, Anti-lock brakes on, stability control off, traction control on, shifting automatic, suggested line braking only, AI hard.

Note: I have tried to race with Anti-lock brakes and traction control disabled but it just causes you to spin no matter what you do to prevent it.

Tags: Gaming, Microsoft, Xbox

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 24th, 2009 at 11:01 pm and is filed under Comment and Opinion, Computers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.