20 June, 2007 |

Nothing to do with Nelly Furtardo

Tying in with my tumblelog (see the sidebar), I've been playing a lot of Forza Motorsport 2 recently. Having bought the game on friday I think I'm now three million hours into it and still no sign of getting bored. Here then, for posterity, is my own review of the game.

In case you've not been paying attention to console games for a while, Forza Motorsport was one of the bigger games on the Xbox. Though it's creator claims that it wasn't trying to steal Gran Turismo's crown as the ultimate petrolhead's game, you only had to play it for five minutes to tell that it's trying to do just that. Hundreds of cars, tons of upgrade options, an extensive tuning system and (the main thing it had over GT) the ability to customise your car's exterior with new paint jobs and decals.

Last Friday, Forza Motorsport 2 was released, and it blows GT out of the water completely. This time there's over 300 cars, each with an even more extensive choice of upgrades than the previous game. The ability to tune your car is, once again, even more detailed than before, and if you know what adjusting the front and rear differentials will do to your cars performance, you'll be in heaven. The paint shop is also back and this time you can have an utterly ridiculous number of layers, meaning you can create far more detailed/ugly/offensive designs than ever before.

The gameplay is much the same as the first. There's an arcade mode where you can race in set car classes on set tracks, as well as in time trials to get the best lap time. Then there's the bit most people will play more; career mode. In career mode you start off with a car from a choice of about 8, then compete in races to earn cash to either upgrade your car or buy new ones. As you earn more and more cash you increase your driver level, which in turn opens up new races and new cars for you to buy.

The initial races are pretty simple, with few restrictions over what sort of cars you can bring to them. As the difficulty ramps up though, the entry criteria becomes more and more stringent. No longer is it OK to bring that 700 horsepower monster Corvette to a race featuring mainly Minis and Beetles; no, you'll have to bring something that means you don't just win by pressing the accelerate trigger and hoping for the best.

This is the reason to play Forza though - it gives you an incredible sense of ownership. You'll likely keep your first car forever and return to it over and over. Constantly tweaking, never 100% happy with it, but you know it'll win you those races that your new souped up Ferrari just isn't quite doing the business on. It's the same trick that GT has always played on you - it's YOUR car. They've even added an online auction site, so you can basically stick your cars up on eBay and see if anyone wants them. It's a great way to earn a bit of extra money, but you'll only earn top whack for your cars if you make them memorable, and that's where the paint shop comes in...

Now I'm an enormous geek, as you can tell from this blog. So the first thing I did upon getting a Porche 911 in game was think to myself:

"Can I make this look like Jazz out of transformers?"

The answer, of course, is:

 "No, you're a clumsy idiot who no-one would trust with anything more complicated than putting stickers in a sticker album, stay the hell away from that classic car with your stickers."
And that's fair, but nevertheless I had a crack at it and the result, as you can see, is not too bad at all. I even got the Autobot logo sorted out eventually, but it's not perfect so I'm not posting it. Oh, and in terms of those screenshots? Forza lets you take photos in game and upload them to the ready and waiting community website, so you can photograph your creations and share them with the world, should you wish.

 Graphically, as you can probably make out, it's lovely (just as you'd expect from a 360 game). I've read reviews complaining it doesn't look as good as Project Gotham 3... well I'd say it's too close to call really. There's certainly a lot more going on than in PGR3 (with a physics engine updating 360 times every second) but I don't think it's any worse looking. The only criticism I would have of it in that regard is that the graphics really need an HDTV to be appreciated and my old Panasonic merely looks great instead of fantastic.

All in all then, it's a bit of a corker, and I'm sure I'll waste many, many hours on it right up until my kid arrives on the scene and demands my attention. On the other hand, I'm sure I can get him trained up enough to use the controller within a few months. Just as long as he doesn't eat the bloody thing...

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