FORZA 3 MOTORSPORT NEWS INFORMATION XBOX HINTS TIPS AND TRICKS

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Whether it’s an exotic sports car like the new Audi R8 V10, a classic American muscle car like the Ford GT or a hot Asian import like the Nissan 370Z, everyone has a dream car. Now you can drive that dream with Turn 10’s latest racing epic. Launching this October exclusively for Xbox 360, “Forza Motorsport 3″ unites the racing game genre, making it possible for everyone to experience the thrill of the world’s most exotic and exquisite cars. Live the most realistic racing experience ever as you take the wheel of more than 400 of the most-beloved cars on over 100 renowned real-world tracks and exotic road courses from around the globe. With breathtaking high-definition graphics and the most advanced vehicle performance modeling in a video game, “Forza Motorsport 3″ includes a host of driving assists and adjustable skill levels to make the game a gripping pick-up-and-play experience for audiences of all ages and skill levels.

Your escape into the world of car culture in “Forza Motorsport 3″ doesn’t stop at the track. Turn 10 is a proven leader in user-generated content creation in games. “Forza Motorsport 3″ further fuels the imaginations of its already thriving community of painters, tuners and photographers with improved customization tools and brand-new ways to share creations with the world via Xbox LIVE.* Xbox LIVE makes your journey into the “Forza Motorsport” community and the world of user-generated content easy and fun.

A love of cars lives in all of us. “Forza Motorsport 3″ is the automotive playground we’ve all been waiting for.

Features:

Top features include the following:

• Where dreams are driven: The cars and tracks. Featuring the latest and greatest production offerings as well as the world’s fastest and most exotic street cars, “Forza Motorsport 3″ offers more than 400 fully customizable and tunable cars from over 50 of the world’s leading manufacturers. Whether your passion is classic American muscle cars, European roadsters, purpose-built race cars or high-tech Asian imports, “Forza Motorsport 3″ puts you in the cockpit of the cars you love.
In addition to the return of world-famous tracks from previous “Forza Motorsport” games, including Suzuka, Nürburgring Nordschleife and the Sebring International Raceway, “Forza Motorsport 3″ invites you to conquer the corners on more than 100 tracks, including some of the most beautiful road courses in the world. New environments like the gorgeous mountainous Montserrat region in Spain, the rugged Amalfi Coast in Italy and the American Southwest are presented in such majestic detail that you might find yourself pulling over just to take it all in.

• The look and feel of a modern racing game: “Forza Motorsport 3″ is the definitive racing game. The appreciation of the automobile in “Forza Motorsport 3″ is due in large part to the team’s attention to detail. This is why automotive engineers from manufacturers like Audi and champion race teams like Peugeot as well as experienced computer graphics specialists from across Microsoft Corp. have all teamed up with Turn 10 to make “Forza Motorsport 3″ the most beautiful and realistic racing game ever made. All 400-plus cars in the game have been built with more than 10 times the amount of polygons as “Forza Motorsport 2.” This includes painstakingly researched cockpits and interiors for every vehicle. But realism isn’t just about pretty graphics. Turn 10 takes realism to new heights, leading the industry with the most advanced physics model, artificial intelligence and damage calculations. Whether it’s the differences in how each car handles through the corners, how the engines sound at top speed or how different tires and upgrades impact your car’s performance, you’ll find yourself leaning into your turns as if you were really behind the wheel of your favorite ride.

• It’s easy to go for a spin: “Forza Motorsport 3″ redefines the racing genre. Simulation games can be too hard for some players. “Forza Motorsport 3″ rises above the distinction between simulation and arcade games. Using a myriad of cutting-edge driving and gameplay assists such as auto-braking, gameplay rewind and auto-tuning, “Forza Motorsport 3″ delivers an experience where everyone can have fun behind the wheel, regardless of your skill and dexterity. Whether you’re a newcomer or a seasoned racing game pro, “Forza Motorsport 3″ caters to how you drive and evolves with you over time as your skills increase.

• Express your car passion: User-generated content and Xbox LIVE. Painters and tuners will once again be able to showcase creativity through the celebrated Livery Editor, Auction House and deep tuning garage in “Forza Motorsport 3.” The car is literally the artistic canvas as some of the world’s most creative car painters and designers find new layers of depth and freedom to create shocking visual masterpieces before sharing them with others over Xbox LIVE.* Each car in “Forza Motorsport 3″ is fully upgradable, allowing gear heads to take on the challenge of turning a Honda Civic into a supercar killer. New Xbox LIVE Leaderboards celebrate not only the greatest racers but also the most prolific car tuners and painters in the community.

• Play your way: New game modes. “Forza Motorsport 3″ is an epic racing game featuring more content and more ways to play than any racing title today. An innovative single-player season mode puts you through a completely personalized racing calendar that includes more than 200 different events, including Circuit, Oval, Drag, Drift and Timed Events. No two calendars are the same; they react to the cars you love and the races you enjoy most. In addition, the online multiplayer mode* gains an all-new game rules editor. This gives players a never-ending variety of ways to play with friends. Whether you’re a speedster, dragster, drifter, painter, tuner or just a lover of cars, “Forza Motorsport 3″ is the definitive racing game for you.

 

 

WORD OF WARNING: if you are trying to find a way to upload your pictures on Forza 3 on the internet, forget about it! It is all ART. Dedication, skill and a hell of a lot of free time! Have a look at the video above and you will understand what it means to get a great design on your car.

Forza 3 has officially launched in North America, and just as in 2007, the Internet has exploded with custom paint jobs. There’s livery for every taste, from sports to anime to, of course, gaming, and many of Forza 2’s most popular community artists have returned for the sequel.

New for Forza 3 is the storefront feature, which allows artists to sell their designs for in-game credits. Some designs may go for free, others may go for 10,000 credits, but it’s an interesting way for community artists to get even more recognition than before.

To give you an idea of what’s out there, we rounded up some of the best designs from around the Internet, with themes ranging from Zone of the Enders to Transformers. Check them out below, and if you like them, it’s not hard to download them. Before you know, you too will be driving a stylish Okami-mobile.

 

 

First off, if you’re looking for dirt, you won’t find much here. Both upcoming racers Forza Motorsport 3 (Xbox 360) and Gran Turismo 5 (PS3) are sure to be great racing games. That said,  I think there’s a clear winner here between the two high-profile racers shown on the floor of Tokyo Game Show this year. As you read on, keep in mind that we’re not comparing the games themselves as much as we are the demos shown on the TGS floor.

Both were in pretty nifty setups. Gran Turismo 5 had real-world racing seats built into metal frames. Inside, players sat in front of a high-end Sony display while controlling the game with the GT steering wheel set. Forza 3 was played on a three-screen setup. They too had racing chairs and a steering wheel controller. Putting all of that aside, though, which was the better game?

Visuals:
Winner: Forza Motorsport 3
While both games look great on the track, Forza’s demo featured a polish that Gran Turismo 5’s lacked. The rocky hillsides and lush greenery easily showed up the bland, almost clinical-looking cityscape of Gran Turismo. Driving slow in Gran Turismo is like inviting disappointment. I guess they were hoping you’d always be moving fast enough to not notice the perfectly flat tree and pole textures. Plants and trees on the side of the road look like paper cutouts, and the tree trunks are laughably bad.  As far as the vehicle visuals go, neither game disappoints. Both supply unhealthy doses of car porn. The tighter racing action of Forza 3 made it easier to appreciate the models of the cars I raced against, but both pull off amazing feats as far as visuals go. Forza’s framerate was liquid smooth, making it a bit easier on the eyes than GT5.

Control:
Winner: Forza Motorsport 3
Solely judging from the two on-floor demos,  both of which used adjustable racing seats and steering wheel rigs, Forza 3’s control won the race. There was something about the balance of control that made it seem especially intuitive. I’d go as far as to say that it felt damned near flawless with the steering wheel rig they had set up at each demo station. Gran Turismo controlled great as well, with the tilt leaning farther away from arcade action and more towards realism. Nothing was notably wrong with Gran Turismo’s control. It’s just that the seamless feeling that we felt with the controls in Forza wasn’t there in GT5.

Game play:
Winner:  Forza Motorsport 3
Both games were played on a rather easy track, and both featured racing line guidelines. Other than that, these two games play differently. Forza 3 had me racing against other AI characters that were way too easy to pass, even with the option to set the difficulty. My choice of a medium difficulty looked more like an easy to my eyes. I didn’t try the “hard” setting, but I hope it’s considerably more difficult than medium was. That said, some of the credit goes, again, to the seemingly flawless control of the game.

As for Gran Turismo, I watched plenty of others wipe out and give up before I played. It looked like people that had never played the series games before sat down and expected arcade racing. As always, Gran Turismo 5 had that realistic acceleration and turning that greatly contrasts to the loose, forgiving controls of other racers (Forza 3 not included, of course). I enjoy the challenge and learning curve, and prefer the rewarding stick-to-your-ribs racing that it provides. Even with that, though, Forza’s gameplay was more enjoyable and approachable. It may be a bit more simple than that of GT5, but it still provides ample challenge for white knuckle racing.

If you have to have damage modeling, you want Forza 3. It’s just not there in Gran Turismo. While I don’t believe that it’s a necessity to have damage modeling in a racing game, it is an added bonus. If you play in first-person view like I do, it’s fun to see how messed up your vehicle is after a race. Gran Turismo doesn’t do that. In fact, side of the road items like cones and tires don’t even seem to be affected properly by impact. When I ran into a stack of tires, they seemed to float strangely in front of my car for a second before flying off to the right. I don’t need true-to-life physics on these types of collisions, but this looked closer to the movement of a UFO than a stack of rubber tires.

Overall:
I’m a big Gran Turismo fan, so it was a bit of a surprise to me that the Forza Motorsport 3 demo did more for me. Things like damage modeling and background art aside, it was the superb control and high level of accessibility that won me over. Forza 3 was just more fun. More impressive. Of course, this is not to say that Gran Turismo 5 isn’t a good game. It will be great, I’m sure, but Forza 3 show floor demo has me wanting to race again. I need to get me one of these three-screen setups too.

Unlockable: Cars
The following cars can be unlocked by performing the actions below:

Driver Level 01 – 2010 FIAT Abarth 500 esseesse
Driver Level 02 – 2009 Alfa Romeo Brera Italia Independent
Driver Level 03 – 2009 Volkswagen Scirocco GTI
Driver Level 04 – 2003 Renault Sport Clio V6l
Driver Level 05 – 2009 Ford Forcus RS
Driver Level 06 – 2004 Vauxhall VX220 Turbo
Driver Level 07 – 2007 Ford Shelby GT500
Driver Level 08 – 2008 Maserati GranTurismo
Driver Level 09 – 2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS
Driver Level 10 – 2006 Lotus Exige Cup 240
Driver Level 11 – 2009 BMW Motorsport M5 E60
Driver Level 12 – 2009 Lexus IS F
Driver Level 13 – 2007 SEAT Leon Supercup
Driver Level 14 – 2005 Honda NSX-R GT
Driver Level 15 – 2009 Ferrari California
Driver Level 16 – 2009 Jaguar XKR-S
Driver Level 17 – 2002 BMW Motorsport M3-GTR
Driver Level 18 – 2007 Peugeot Super 2000
Driver Level 19 – 2007 Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione
Driver Level 20 – 2010 Audi R8 5.2 FSI quattro
Driver Level 21 – 2005 Ford Ford GT
Driver Level 22 – 2009 Mercedes SL 65 AMG Black Series
Driver Level 23 – 2005 TVR Sagaris
Driver Level 24 – 2008 Porsche 911 GT2 (997)
Driver Level 25 – 2008 Lamborghini Reventon
Driver Level 26 – 2002 Nissan MINE’S R34 Skyline GT-R
Driver Level 27 – 2006 Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano
Driver Level 28 – 2006 Lamborghini Miura Concept
Driver Level 29 – 2008 Dodge Viper SRT10 ACR
Driver Level 30 – 2009 Bugatti Veyron 16.4
Driver Level 31 – 2009 Holdon #2 Commodore VG
Driver Level 32 – 2006 Ferrari #62 Risi Competizone F430GT
Driver Level 33 – 2008 Porsche #45 Flying Lizard 911 GT3-RSR
Driver Level 34 – 2009 BMW Motorsport #92 Rahal Letterman Racing M3 GT2
Driver Level 35 – 2005 Ferrari FXX
Driver Level 36 – 2007 Chevrolet #4 Corvette C6.R
Driver Level 37 – 2008 Nissan #23 XANAVI NISMO GT-R
Driver Level 38 – 2006 Aston Martin #007 Aston Martin Racing DBR9
Driver Level 39 – 2008 Lexus #6 Eneos SC430
Driver Level 40 – 2008 Konigsegg CCGT
Driver Level 41 – 1997 McLaren #43 F1 GTR
Driver Level 42 – 2005 Maserati #15 JMB Racing MC12
Driver Level 43 – 1998 Porsche #26 AG 911 GT1-98
Driver Level 44 – 2003 Saleen #2 Konrad Motorsports S7R
Driver Level 45 – 2008 Porsche #7 Penske Racing RS Spyder Evo
Driver Level 46 – 2009 Mazda #16 Dyson Racing B09/86
Driver Level 47 – 2006 Audi #2 Audi Sport North America R8
Driver Level 48 – 2009 Acura #66 de Ferran Motorsports ARX-02a
Driver Level 49 – 2006 Audi #8 Audi Sport Team Joest Audi R10 TDi

Driver Level 50 – 2009 Peugeot #9 Peugeot Sport Total 908

Along with improved physics, better graphics, more cars and tracks, Forza also sports a brand new Career Mode. In the following we will dig deeper into tuning, multiplayer, the new leaderboard system and more.

Once you’ve finished the first season in your career, you might be thinking it’s time to go a bit deeper with Turn 10’s sim. Where Forza 2 was a hardcore sim only, this time around Turn 10 has split the audience. They’ve created two ways to play Forza. The casual crowd can ignore tuning altogether if they like or follow up on some friendly tuning options. At any time, you can select a car from your garage, select the level you want it upgraded to, and let the AI do the hard work. Have a C-class car you want in the A class? Choose it and the AI will automatically spend your cash, buy the parts and tune your car accordingly. You can check what was added in case you want to learn how to upgrade a car, but you don’t have to ever get grease on your hands.

This may be a wise option for many, because the alternative is a tuning set so hardcore it may frighten some casual gamers. Tuning has been made about as deep as possible. Where Forza 2 never really punished you for poorly tuning your car, that’s not the case in Forza 3. You can, in fact, tune your car incorrectly for the track you’re racing. The more you fiddle, the deeper you go into the tuning, the more you’re going to need to know about cars. There are plenty of helpful hints along the way, but in order to allow master tuners the joy of rigging out a car to its optimal settings, consequences had to be added.

This doesn’t mean that the average gamer can’t tune their car. Just be aware that with up to 175 upgrades (about 50% more than Forza 2) and more tuning options than anyone’s ever seen in a racing game before, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. The good news is that at the start of any race, you can auto-tune your car for the current track. This offers a general calibration to ensure that any harmful work you might have done for a different track isn’t going to slow you down.

The depth and the risk/reward nature of tuning in Forza 3 ties directly into one of Turn 10’s major objectives. They wanted to create a new type of skill and put tuners on par with the bad-ass painters that grew out of Forza 2. Just as master painters became famous in the community, so too will virtuoso tuners. And helping that along is the all new system supporting user-generated content.

User-generated content is separated across six different scoreboards. Among those are picture and video scoreboards which anyone can easily dominate. Only true experts can hope to get atop the tuner and livery scoreboards. These scoreboards are leaderboards for certain skill types and are linked directly to files uploaded through Forza 3. Since only the best tuners will get high ratings (and downloads), it’s going to be easy to know who to trust. You can even mark users as favorites and follow them to see when they post new items. This works for those who themselves are great tuners as they can track their rivals.

The scoreboards are tied into the brand new Storefront. The Auction House from Forza 2 still exists, but it’s for selling single versions of cars. The Storefront is more like Amazon.com. You set the price for your file and you determine how many to sell. Re-created the Mona Lisa on a car? Maybe you only want one person in the entire world to own it. So only sell one. You can try to sell it for a million credits if you like and if no one buys it, you can always lower the price. Or maybe you just want to help people tune their Audi R8 for the Nurburgring? Sell 1000 for 50 credits. It’s up to you. This is a free market economy, baby!

It should be noted that all sales on the Storefront are for in-game credits. No one will get rich in real life, but they can amass in-game wealth if they’re talented.

Turn 10 admits that they really aren’t sure what’s going to happen when Forza 3 is first released. It’s going to take a bit of time for the great tuners to be sorted out on the scoreboard. Unfortunately, you can’t test a tuning file before buying it, which is going to make the first week on the Storefront a bit like the Wild West. After that, expect things to settle down and for the great tuners and artists to rise to the top. The fakers will get bad ratings and quickly disappear from the scoreboards.

If you’re currently devising a master plan to sell your Penis-Mobile for 100,000 credits a pop, think again. All user-generated content is policed by other users. Anyone can file a complaint and a moderator looks into each potential issue. Users who make valid complaints get what you might call a Police Ranking. As they become more trusted, their opinion takes greater merit among the moderators and their Police Ranking increases. If you go around complaining about all of your friends’ files just to be a jerk, you’ll soon find that your opinion gets ignored.

Now that you have paid some credits for the perfectly tuned car and a Mario and Princess Peach wedding mural livery, you’re ready to plow through the full Career Mode.

As we told you yesterday, your season calendar fills in dynamically, but there are a series of weekend races that don’t change. There are six “standard seasons” in Forza 3, meaning that there are six full seasons with these specific weekend championships. Each season gets longer and harder as, hopefully, you also get better. By the end of the six season, you’ll have completed 55 events (some with more than 10 races!), reached level 50, earned all of your gift cars and spent about 60 hours racing. But it’s not over. There are still more than 150 unique events to race. And though the weekend championships won’t be any different, there’s hundreds of hours left if you want to truly complete Forza 3.

Remember that the AI, which looks at the cars you owned, the cars you drive and the tracks you race, determines the majority of events in your first six seasons. If you ignore Drag Racing events, eventually they go away. After all, why offer something you don’t want to race? If you stuck with American cars the entire time, there are going to be a number of European and Japanese racing challenges ahead of you once you finish your sixth season. Though you might have mastered all the championships, by the end of season six, you’re only a third of the way through Forza 3.

At any time, you can ignore the season calendar and bring up a master grid of all 220 events. This grid is very similar to the career mode in Forza 2. It lists every open race and, at any time, you can race those. These also feed into the dynamic calendar, because, after all, they are races you’re choosing. Never worry that you’re going to miss something in Forza 3. There is always an option to break free of the dynamic calendar and race any event for which you’re qualified.

Finishing every event isn’t the only goal in Forza. This is still a game about collecting cars. Sure, you get 50 gift cars, but there are more than 400 total in the game. Most you will have to buy. Here’s the crazy part — all 400+ are unlocked from the beginning. If you have the credits, you can buy any car in the game at any time. Of course, you start off fairly broke and must work your way along, but none of the cars are locked based on your experience level.

Unlike Forza 2, which had an unrealistic pricing model for high-end cars, Forza 3 is fairly accurate. You want a Lamborghini? It’s going to cost you. However, you could probably buy a Corvette early on and still get decent performance. It’s a trade off. If you want, you can save cash to get a high-end luxury car earlier than you might normally acquire one. And owning that would change the events that appear in your calendar. A Ferrari GT vs. Lamborghini GT event sounds good to us.

This is where the Storefront can make a real difference. You could be in your first season of Career Mode and be rich thanks to your awesome livery artwork. Or you can try and earn money faster with your driving skill. Post-race, your finishing place, difficulty settings and damage determine your earnings. Turn off all assists and you can earn double the cash. Just be warned: turning off all assists can be mercilessly difficult.

In Forza 3, you’re always earning money no matter where you race. That includes multiplayer. While Turn 10 isn’t fully ready to blow the lid off multiplayer, we have some first details that should make the three-month wait just a little more unbearable.

Forza 3 multiplayer can be summed up quite simply: you make the rules so go do whatever the hell you want.

There are about 60 rules you can set for a multiplayer match that allow you to create just about any game type you could want. Instead of having a gentleman’s agreement at the start of the race to play Cat & Mouse, you can now make someone the mouse. You want capture the flag? You can make it happen. With so many options, the only limit is your own ingenuity.

You can force teams of any size (all against one, three-on-three, whatever you want), give one person the “heavy” car and the others faster vehicles. You can force specific camera modes if you want everyone to play from the dashboard view and even require the use of manual transmission with the clutch (Left Bumper).

No more guessing at scores of games you had to make up in your head. Now you can create rules that are tracked by the game with relevant points. These sets can be saved, of course. For those who hate setting all these options, Turn 10 will create its own set of game modes for parties to hop into. Thanks to the magic of Xbox Live, Turn 10 can keep track of which options are used most, what game types are the favorite and then adjust the official hoppers to suit the community.

The NFS and Forza franchises have respectively avoided each others turf for quite a few years.  NFS heading down a story driven path of arcade style racing with little respect paid to the simulation element of racing as a sport.  While on the other hand, Forza has been the purists holy grail of simulation racing for some time, on the xbox and xbox360. 

For reasons that I am assuming are marketshare driven, NFS gravitated more towards the simulation side of things this time around with the recently released Need For Speed: Shift.  Revitalizing the series with a much needed face lift in the graphics department and some strong deviations from what you would normally expect from a NFS game in the gameplay department,EA  defintitely put themselves back on my racing map with their latest efforts in Shift.  

While unreleased for another week, Forza 3 is already capturing the praise of many reviewers and racing fans alike.  With a racing formula and attention to detail rivaled by few, MGS and Turn10 have produced the crown jewel of the Forza series in Forza Motorsport 3.  In the past it would be hard to compare the two games as their styles are completely different but with both development teams efforts to cater to the other crowd.  Trying to find a winner in this battle is fun for one person….The gamer, because equally well done NFS: Shift and Forza 3 are both high performance machines.  Yet in this head to head there can only be one winner…

Graphics & Presentation
From the moment you first turn on your copy of Forza 3, you realize you are playing something special.  The very vivid menus, the English  narrator, the smooth and ease of transitioning from WTF am I supposed to do now, to transitioning right into your career mode.  All make that initial boot-up an easy process, that you just keep looking forward to going back to. 

The transitions from offline and online game modes, tracking progress in your career, and the guidance that is given as to what challenges you should be playing are all nice touches that are lacking from Need For Speed: Shift.  NFS has some of these features but they don’t come off the same way that they do in Forza.  Presented in a neat and logical manner Forza’s objectives in the single player are helped by the way the content is presented to the player. 

The graphics in Forza 3  and NFS: Shift are both excellent.  Car Models in both games are photo copies of their real life counterparts. Forza impresses on the little things lighting, shading, sceneries, are all picture perfect in Forza 3 and despite NFS’s efforts in adding details to its game, at times can come off a bit cluttered.  Forza 3 seems to be a little crisper but while NFS is no graphical slouch it just does not measure up to Forza 3.

Gameplay & Controls

There is still a clear line dividing these two games regardless of playing online, offline, in a race, or in career mode.  NFS Shift does capture the feeling of true speed and power in its racing, but the game remains true to its franchise roots as an arcade racer. Regardless of what settings you choose to race on, Need For Speed Shift will not be testing your driving skills the way that Forza 3 does.

The main thing you notice in playing both is difference of feeling that you get when driving, In Forza 3 you are testing your car on the road and the major objective is mastering your car to take on the track, NFS Shift is more of a battle against the track.  That statement is a little hard to understand but I guess its the best way to put it without just saying ” Forza is more Realz.”  Both games give the player options to toggle in regards to driving assistance. Yet, even at its hardest difficulty you will not be reaching a realistic driving experience in NFS shift.  Though, where NFS Shift lacks in realism it picks up in fun. 

They really managed to capture G-Force in this racer, whether you are playing the unbelievably tasty in cock-pit view or any of the others you will notice the feeling when you are transitioning in gears, braking, or red lining the vehicle.  Its a new addition and they did it really really well.  NFS shift in car camera view could be a game in itself.  While there you seem to forget about most of the graphical differences between the game as the views in car are probably the best I’ve seen. 

Crash a car in NFS Shift and you’ll feel it , the great part about NFS is that they deliver an excellent feeling of speed and acceleration and an equally fullfilling feeling of coming to complete and utter stop, by temporarily impairing your driver.  Both good in these departments it’s hard to pick a clear winner as it comes down to a matter of preference.  Where you notice a major difference also is your objectives while racing.  In Forza 3 your objective is to finish the race in the highest position.  While in NFS shift, you are scored with more of a Project Gotham style points system.  Giving you points for driving cleanly, and points for driving a little more dangerously, NFS shift does add a little bit of variation into the mix.

Features & Online
Hands down Forza delivers the goods in the features  department.  With so many things to do besides racing, Forza 3 does a great job at delivering an experience, and not just a game to mash through.  With online Auction House,  the vehicle equipment settings, and the level of detail that you can design custom skins for your car at, you really can forget you are playing a racing game at times.    Although Need For Speed Shift, does have customization options as well.  They seem to be more of an afterthought than anything. 

Deeper and more fun Forza 3 wins big in the features department.  They also deliver more content in the way of tracks, variations, and cars.  Where many vehicles aren’t included in NFS:Shift  Forza has nearly everything.  Namely Ferrari.   Online Forza 3 also delivers a rich and engaging experience where NFS shift stays pretty standard and actually run of the mill.  Forza 3, does include some non traditional racing modes which keep the action fresh as opposed to the standard racing matches you will find in NFS:shift and with the features mentioned above like auction house, I would also include that as a plus to the  online portion of the game.

Singleplayer
Both games deliver a fun singleplayer experience.  Both games include a narrator which guides you through the game and your objectives.  Neither uses story telling to propel any story line other than moving up driving classes to race the biggest and baddest vehicles.  Where the major differences occur between the two games is in how you want to attack your challenges. Both games basically progress by winning races, but where NFS is so open that at times you can kind of get sidetracked, Forza 3 streamlines the process by adding races to a schedule and displaying the races that you own eligible vehicles for.

 In Forza your main objective is winning races, by adjusting difficulty settings you will earn more or less points for each race.  NFS is a little different, some races contain objectives which you earn points by completing.  Running clean laps, Earning a set number of style points, there are numerous variations that will arise in your career.  I found this to add a level of depth to the each race making each one a little more fun.  At times the monotony of just racing for checkered flags can get a little old and a few objectives cure that.

EDGE : Singleplayer : Toss Up
To be fair to Need For Speed : Shift the developers produced an excellent title in its latest offering.  In a Forza-less world, NFS: Shift we be at the top of mountain looking down on all the competition.  At best though NFS: Shift is equal to but not better than Forza 3 in almost all categories.  If the attention to detail that was paid to the games in-car views would have been applied to the rest of the game NFS: Shift vs. Forza 3 just might have been a closer race.  With two discs full of content, cars, tracks, and features Forza 3 gives more bang for your racing dollar. 

If I could just pick one it would be Forza 3.

Sony’s Gran Turismo may still sit in the pole position among racing sims for many, but Microsoft is making a hard charge with Forza Motorsport 3. Developer Turn 10 has adopted a new philosophy for Forza 3: Make it accessible. The result is a hardcore simulation racing title that can also be enjoyed by the most casual of fans. The career mode is easy to get into but offers an immense challenge; you can auto-tune every car or dive into a rich set of tuning options; and driving can be toggled between a simple point-and-go system and the most physics-driven sim every created.

Simply put, Forza 3 is one of the best racers ever made.

 

It starts with the cars, of course. Forza 3 has more than 400 vehicles you can take for a spin and the crazy part is, they’re all unlocked from the outset. That’s right, with the exception of a few cars available only to those who pre-order Forza 3, every car on the disc can be driven from the get-go. Sure, you’ll need to earn some credits to make your purchases, but if you can drum up a million creds, you can take the Bugatti Veyron for a spin. If you’ve played racing games your entire life, this fact alone may just blow your stack. It goes against everything we’ve ever thought about racing games. You’re supposed to start with crappy cars, suffer through a few hours of slow-paced driving, then graduate to a sleeker class of vehicle. Well, Forza 3 is throwing racing conventions out the window. Hallelujah.

Even if you were stuck with the lower-end cars for the first few hours, that wouldn’t be as much of an issue with Forza 3. This game is fun from the outset. Though I’ve played dozens of hours with Forza 3, I still go back to the E and D class cars for some races, because there are so many good cars. This is largely due to the enhanced physics of Forza 3, which add a level of nuance not experienced in most racing games.

The tire physics are so greatly improved (and include real-time deformation), that you get a true understanding of how your car is reacting at every turn. With all of the driving assists turned off, you can feel the difference from one car to the next. And though you’ll race the same tracks quite often, the experience changes from one car to the next.
I’ve always felt that you couldn’t properly drive a car in a racing game with the assists off if you didn’t have a racing wheel. While Forza 3 controls brilliantly with a wheel, I can assure you that you can play a hundred hours with just a controller and have no issues. Turn 10 has finally mastered the subtleties of the controller, allowing for better responsiveness.

If you’re a novice or just like to take things easy, Forza 3 can satisfy your racing needs as well. Turn the different assists (such as traction control) on and you can still have a good time. The cars won’t feel as unique, other than the speed, but you’ll have no troubles being competitive. You can even go so far as to turn on auto-braking, which allows you to hold down the gas the entire race and let the AI brake for you whenever necessary. You can’t throw green turtle shells at the other drivers, but it’s pretty much Mario Kart at that point.
The great thing about Forza 3 is that it encourages even the novice to take off the training wheels and drive freely with the assists off. A rewind function allows you to instantly skip backwards in five-second intervals during a race. Misjudge your speed on a tight corner? Rewind. Get tapped from behind and spin out? Rewind. Your cat jumps on your face causing you to crash into a wall? Rewind. There’s no penalty for using the rewind and no limit. Some might call this a “win” button, but I think the rewind is a crucial addition to Forza 3. It can become a crutch at times, but it also frees you to kick the difficulty up to a higher level and get a true appreciation for your car.

Nothing bolsters that appreciation more than the visuals. Forza 3 runs laps around its predecessor. The car models have an incredible level of detail, including unique interiors for each car. I will admit that the interiors could look a little better, but overall the car models are spectacular. There’s also full damage modeling on every car. You’ll see dings and dents, fender benders — you’ll even see cars flip in the air. Those with a sharp eye will catch damage decals flipping on as the car makes contact with something. When you’re in the cockpit view and you tap someone with the left corner of your bumper and, like magic, paint scrape decals appear across the entire hood, it can be a little disconcerting.
Each car in Forza 3 has its own sounds, so that sitting behind the wheel of a Porsche 911 is a much different auditory experience than being in a Mustang Boss. And you’ll give thanks for the roar of an engine when it drowns out the mediocre music selection.

I felt Forza 2 was lifeless and without spirit. That is not an issue with Forza 3. This is a game that showcases speed and beauty. The cars are sexy, the tracks look great, and the game runs at a smooth 60 frames per second. The lighting isn’t always perfect — you can often see shadows dancing around the car in some odd ways — and a few times textures didn’t load on the track. Despite these issues, Forza 3 is one hot looking game.

Adding some extra personality is the advanced livery editor. As a novice designer, I can’t quite see what is new about the livery editor from Forza 2, but those who are experts should find it easier to make high-end art. The good news for the many of us without artistic talent is that the Monets of the Forza community can post their designs on the new online Storefront.

In the Storefront, you can purchase designs for specific cars or decals usable on any vehicle you own. Prices are set by the designers, as are the number of copies for sale. If someone wants to make a unique piece of art and sell it for 30 million credits, they can. And if someone wants to sell a limitless supply of Autobot decals on the cheap, that is also their choice. A ratings system helps create a leaderboard for designers, which you can search to find the biggest stars in the community. You can flag anyone as a favorite so you can easily browse their store for the latest designs.

Tuning is just like art design in Forza 3. Can I get a “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout Willis?” Seriously, tuning has been transformed into an artform and has similar functionality to liveries. Great tuners can create tuning sets and sell them on the Storefront. For those used to doing their own tuning, a word of warning. It is possible (even easy) to manually upgrade and tune your car in a way that actually worsens its performance. Basic tuning is easy to do, but delve deeper and you better know a lot about cars. That also means great tuners can help you maximize your car’s performance better than you could ever manage.

 

And if all of that is too intimidating, you always have the option to auto-upgrade before a race. These upgrades will tune and upgrade your car to fit the track and race parameters. A great tuner can do even better by manually adjusting everything, but most gamers will find the auto-tune option good enough. The point of all of this is that the hardcore have a ton of ways to bury themselves in Forza 3 and the rest of us can click a few buttons and race. After all, isn’t that why you bought a racing game?

The focal point of racing is the career mode. Forza’s career mode is a series of seasons, each one longer than the last. The core career lasts six seasons, though you can continue on long after that. Each season has a bi-weekly championship race. These races are set for each season and are waiting for you every other Sunday. The rest of your career is completely dynamic.

For the two weeks between each championship race, you’ll choose one event. Each event is broken up into a series of races. Some as few as three, others can be around a half-dozen races long. You are always given three event choices, but these change based on a number of factors: The cars you own, the car you’re currently driving, and the race types you play the most. No two careers are alike. Having played deep into two different careers, I’ve seen firsthand how much seasons can change. Through six seasons, you’ll race 55 events. There are more than 200 events in total. After powering through about 50 hours of gameplay to “beat” the career mode, you still have well over 150 more events to beat if you want to master Forza 3. It’s insane. Because there are so many events (and a great variety at that), it’s very easy to have two seasons turn out quite differently.

Completing races earns your driver experience points. For each level you’re gifted a car. Free. No strings attached. The idea is to reward you for playing and encourage you to try new cars. Unlike the seasonal calendar, the car gifting is not dynamic. That means everyone who plays Forza 3 gets the same cars. You’re free to buy any other cars you want (remember, nothing is locked), but certainly you will get behind the wheel of many of your gifted vehicles.

Each season gets exponentially longer. Season 2 is about twice the length of the first season and season 3 is the length of the first two put together. By the time you get to season 6, you’ll be spending hours upon hours to beat each event. For me, this began to become a bit of a drag. As much as I enjoy Forza 3, I found the final season to be a real struggle to complete. What was joyous and new in the earlier seasons felt tedious by the end. Granted, many will never play long enough to reach this point and some will be thrilled at the endurance races that await, but for me, it wasn’t as rewarding as the earlier seasons.

Of course, you won’t be driving alone. Up to seven AI drivers will challenge you on the tracks. Forza 3 uses Turn 10’s Drivatar system, which basically teaches the AI based on a player’s driving style. It creates a dynamic AI that learns from you. That was in Forza 2. What is new is the AI pressure system. Get behind an AI car and, depending on the driver, they might make mistakes. You may see the AI spin-out on a turn, take a bad line, or make other noticeable errors. There are times when I play Forza 3 and forget that the AI is controlled by a computer. Often it feels like I am racing against real people, which I appreciate immensely.

The AI elements aren’t perfect, however. One of Forza’s biggest drawbacks is in its AI settings. There are numerous assists to alter how your car performs, but there are just three AI difficulty options: Easy, medium, and hard. Even for average drivers, medium will quickly prove too easy. But, for me, hard can be really hard at times. It leads to too many races that are either far too easy to win or seem almost impossible to compete in. If Forza 3 had one more setting between medium and hard, it would be perfect. But it doesn’t and, for me, it hurts the balance over the course of the career mode.
If, while playing through a season, you long for the company of other gamers, you can give the multiplayer a shot. Turn 10 went out of its way to offer a staggering level of customization. Multiplayer may be Forza 3’s crowning achievement. This is the most robust multiplayer offering ever for a sim racing game. You can customize every aspect of a race, allowing you to easily create your own game types.

You can determine if cars get a head start, which car classes can be used for a certain team, and the qualifications for winning a race. This makes it very easy to set up a great game of cat and mouse, where the mice are trying to get to the finish line and the cats are out to take them down.

You can check out my recent look at Forza 3 multiplayer if you want more details on the customization options.

Closing Comments
Forza Motorsport 3 is an exemplary racing game. It’s beautiful, the controls are spot-on, the career mode is satisfying, and the multiplayer component is awesome. But there’s still room to grow. The visuals could be even better, the career mode sags at times, and there needs to be at least one more option for AI difficulty. Even with those concerns, Forza 3 is a big step forward for sim racing games. Turn 10 has thrown down the gauntlet and it will be a real challenge for Polyphony Digital to deliver a superior racer with Gran Turismo 5. After all, this is the best racing game of this generation. Good luck topping it.