Easily one of the top two racing sims of all time. Just not perfect.
Okay, i'll get to what most people ask, which is how this game compares to Gran Turismo. Gran Turismo is the only real competitor for the Forza series. However, Forza 3 itself has no real competition. It came out when there was no Gran Turismo on the PS3, and Gran Turismo 5 didn't come out until a few months ago, so it should be compared with the upcoming Forza 4, not Forza 3.
Forza has a few things nto in any other true racing sim. First, it has a nicely detailed level of customization to each vehicle, including the ability to swap out the actual engines of certain vehicles. You can paint your car, add vinyls, etc. There isn't a Need for Speed level of body modifications, but you don't really expect that with a racing sim as opposed to a more arcade racer like NFS. Second, there is a very nice selection of cars. Adding a real-life drivability to the Italian car line-up is easily one of the greatest draws of the game. The Ferrari's, the Lambos, the Porches... virtually every person who has ever driven a car has wanted to sit in one of these. Then the cherry on top comes with the Le Mans prototype cars; really sweet.
There are a lot of nice tracks. GT4 had Nurburgring and Le Mans too, but Forza is the first place i've seen to include such great tracks like Road America and Sedona.
Here's the rub I have... the economuy of the game is a little unbalanced. It takes a lot of money to finance a robust garage. With the level system attached to the cars, it is as if they encourage you to buy new cars once you max the level of one. The problem is that you barely get any money from winning races, so doing this is a quick way to find yoruself out of money when you need/want to buy a new car for a new race. Part of this is obviously personal matter of how you play the game, but overall it doesn't seem there are races that you can do to get a whole lot of money. Gran Turismo, especially as you got late in the game, had races that you could get a whole lot of money from. Doing a handful of races could get you millions of dollars. It's not quite that easy in Forza, which is both good and bad. It adds some challenge and forces you to play the game, but it really is a nuisance to not have a more convenient way to make money late in the game when you'll be spending millions on cars, or when really interesting cars like the are priced at over $10 million.
The recreation of the driving characteristics of most cars is very good. They don't seem spot on, but they have an acceptable level of accuracty to them. The same can be said about the various tracks. But the internal rendering of dashboards in a lot of the race cars and high-level cars is laughable, with some generic blue digital layout.
The mapping of the vinyls and paint can sometimes be a little off. I had a '95 Eclipse with an aftermarket front bumper, and then went and painted it. On the left side there is a big area of white just in front of the front wheel. Just a little quality check item that got overlooked, but seems to happen
routinely.
Finally, if you want all of the best features and best cars, you better be ready to shell out extra cash for dlc and for Xbox Live Gold. The Storefront in the game lets you buy and sell tuning setups, designs, and vinyl groups. The Auction house lets you buy and sell cars to other players. Neither can be used without the Gold membership. An in-game mode disabled for Gold seems wrong.
A Fun game, but it's not quite as good as GT, IMO.Read full review
