Forza Motorsport III Review
Forza Motorsport 3
Racing Games are a dime a dozen. NASCAR, F1, Motorcycles, Pod-Racers, Carts full of Mario, the market is saturated. Ea’s Need for Speed series makes an annual appearance in at least one of its multiple franchises, along with multiple releases of Motorstorm, and Dirt. Honestly, I have no idea how many dirt-bike/ATV games hit the self in the run of a year. My point is simple; there are too many racing games. For every game with an original idea there are 6 others that stroll in and quickly make it a tired standard. So why would you ever give Forza 3 a chance. Even the fact that it’s the third in a series should be enough to warn you away from the repetitive racing formula. That’s what developers at Turn 10 figured out and that’s why this racing game isn’t about racing. That’s right a racing game that’s not about racing. Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of racing in it, but it’s not what Forza Motorsport 3 concerns itself with. Nope, the main focus of Forza Motorsport 3 is the cars.
This formula has been applied to gaming before. Some shooters place their sole focus of game on the weapons; other adventure titles revolve around their characters. Forza succeeds at both, making the cars the characters of the game as well as the tools, or weapons as you will. It’s easy to see that once this vision was placed first and foremost as the developer’s goal, the rest (gameplay, presentation, scope) all fell in place, giving an unyielding presentation of the cars, the hero’s of Forza 3.
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That’s where the Forza can alienate the core gamer. If taken solely as a race-car game, Forza 3 can seem tedious and repetitive. The game seems to recognize this predicament and labels itself as a simulator, more so then a racing game. But to play the game simply to make the car go in a circle is to ignore what truly makes it an outstanding game. More so then the photo-realistic graphics and the superb gameplay its the level of immense detail that make this game stand out not only as a video game but as an achievement in technology. Never before has a “game” taken into account how the in-game sunshine is going to affect the road and in return determine how your tires are going to be worn down due to a warmer surface. How you operate your vehicle is also going to affect your tires, as is the pressure you decide to put in them, in each one, all four, simultaneously. Every turn, every brake all adds up to degrade your tire, in real-time, as you drive your “racing game.” That’s just the tires! ONE element with all its variables is not only matched up with three other tires, but also with your exhaust distribution, your engines compression, how stiff your shocks are. All these factors are unique to every single vehicle in the game, no two cars are the same, over 400 different cars all running at 60 frames a second. Millions of calculations are being processed every single second and displayed as a game before your eyes, intricate mathematical equations wrapped up in a pretty graphic engine for your “gaming pleasure.” This ridiculous attention to detail has tricked you into thinking that your having fun playing a game, when, in all honesty, you’re driving a car. At least mathematically, and in as real as an Xbox can present to you.
In addition to the insane calculations that this software puts on to ensure each car handles and acts as realistic as its real world counterpart the team went around and recorded each vehicles audios. From tire squeals, to engine roar, to muffler chugs, it’s all there. As is the level of customization that you can invest in for the in game decal customization. People familiar with the series are well aware of the ridiculously intricate paint jobs that really defy explanation. To put it simply, if you can dream it, and you’ve got the time, you can do it. Please take a few moments and Bing or Google a few of them. Xhibit would be proud.
To try and sum up the amount of work and customization that Turn 10 has placed in this project would be to short sell the final product. It is so much more than the sum of its parts and is hands down the most complete, most intricate, and fully realized piece of automobile worship available on the market. Period!
Tags: Forza, Forza III, Forza Motorsport 3, photo-realistic, racing game, racing sim, Turn 10, Xbox, xbox 360, xbox exclusive, Xhibit