| Forza Motorsport 2 review |
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This Forza 2 review can be condensed into four words. Sadly, whilst your writer would prefer to throw disjointed words at you, allowing each individual reader to create their own sentences and paragraphs with said words as a basis, it’s just not the done thing here at NTSC-uk and so it’s with a heavy heart that your writer must spend valuable playing time trying to expand on the four words which he really wants to leave you with.
Right from the start, Forza 2 is a balancing act. The game’s graphics engine is the foremost example, with Turn 10 deciding on keeping the frame rate locked at 60fps at the slight expense of how the game looks. This isn’t to say that Forza2 looks poor, that would be far from the truth, but it doesn’t match some of the screenshots and game-play videos of its peers.
What the Forza 2 engine gives you is bright, colourful graphics with a draw distance to die for and absolutely zero close-in pop-up (when trackside details suddenly appear out of no-where when you get close to them). Effects such as dust being thrown backwards from your tyres when you drive into gravel, damage to your vehicle resulting in broken off parts littering the track and tyre marks showing where you or your opponents locked the brakes or took a corner too quickly all add to the visual ambiance. The downside is that some tracks just don’t look as good as other tracks, not in terms of tarmac but in trackside decoration. This doesn’t detract from the game overall, since the majority of the time you are concentrating on the road itself, on your racing line and any opponents you might be racing with but it is a point to be noted. To be blunt, some of the tracks would not look out of place on the original Forza on the Xbox.
The stars of the show are of course the cars themselves. We aren't going to bore you with polygon counts and the like, but will put this in simple layman terms: the cars look good, the cars look beyond good, the cars look so good that, at times, they look real. In their original form the cars are not too shiny; nor do they have a cartoonish tint to them, they are modelled perfectly with just the right amount of spit and polish to look as though they have just rolled onto the forecourt of their respective dealerships.
Notice the words ‘original form’ in the above paragraph? That’s because you can make your vehicles look as garish, as outlandish, as elegant or as fabulous as you desire with the in-game livery editor. This is the same livery editor as seen in Forza 1 but with the extra oomph of now-generation consoles. Gone is the 600 layer limit of the original game and in its place is the ability to place over 4000 individual layers on your vehicles, with the results, for those with the creative skills to master the editor, being extra-ordinary. From anime/manga characters, to movie related images, to famous car designs from other games, to logo’s for products ranging from Coca-cola all the way up to Zanussi washing machines – the editor is as robust or delicate as your imagination and creativity will require.
A driving game of this ilk lives or dies on its control. Not just on how the game handles (though that is an important factor) but the level of control that each person has on setting up the game to their preference. As with the original Forza there are many driving aids which can be turned on or off at will, resulting in a game that can be as arcade like or as simulation minded as the gamer wants. There is a good risk/reward aspect to this, play the game with all driving-aids off and you will earn a lot more credits per race than you would with driving aids on, making obtaining those more expensive vehicles a quicker process. However, even with all the driving aids off Forza 2 is not a full on simulator, even though it tries to masquerade as such at times. The physics engine, whilst replicating the moving parts of a motor vehicle as well as any console game possibly could, is not quite up to the level of comparable PC titles such as GTR2.
What the physics engine gives you is a good sense of how each individual car in the game feels, how adjusting or replacing parts of your car will alter that feeling, how the various surfaces your car will respond to your tyres - mainly tarmac but sometimes, especially when pushing for that fastest lap, grass, gravel and sand - how changing your tyres, suspension, down-force and even weight of your car will result in differing handling, how the temperature of your tyres will affect grip – go into a fast corner with cold tyres and there is a better chance of spinning out than going into the same corner with hot tyres. It’s not unusual for driving games to offer different handling models for different types of car (front, rear and four -wheel driven) but Forza 2 goes that step further in offering different handling models for every single part of every single car in the game. Change even the smallest thing and your car will handle differently.
The controller itself is a high point of the game. The vibration used in the game to replicate the different road surfaces, grip levels and engine power is perfect. The 360 pad was made for this game, it moulds into the hands, giving you excellent control and responsiveness via stick and triggers. Develop a car in-game to your driving satisfaction and you will never need to fear that the controller will let you down on that fastest lap with unresponsive action.
Add to this that Microsoft have released a full force feedback steering wheel and you have one of the best controlling track based driving games available today. The steering wheel and Forza 2 is a marriage made in heaven, even though the wheel might not be up to the quality of the G25 or Driving Force Pro from Logitech it is still a sturdy well built piece of kit that responds perfectly with every tweak or turn you might make. It’s hard to convey just how good this wheel is with Forza 2 without totally decimating the word count (which is well over the four words that your writer wished to leave you with) especially when it’s an accessory that adds a further £80 to the price of the game so to cut this short take the final score at the bottom of the page and add 4 to it if playing with the wheel.
Any franchise spanning two generations of hardware should evolve in the looks department, the extra oomph that the new console offers the developer alongside the revolution of the high definition television era means that everything should look that little bit better, run that little bit faster, shine that little bit shinier. Yet that should go without saying, so it’s in the little things, the ‘blink and you will miss them’ touches which Forza 2 has improved upon, that makes the word ‘evolved’ so enticing for the four word reviewer.
From its initial conception, Forza 2 has embraced an online community to its imaginary ample bosom. At the very beginning of development, a website was set up by the developers where updates on how the game was progressing, screenshots and videos of the game in action and interviews with the development staff were posted to regularly whet the appetites of anyone even remotely interested in the game. As the release date drew closer, this website was expanded with more and more information about the game being highlighted in the Forza 2 development diaries and even letting gamers create accounts (which were tied to their gamertag) in readiness of the big day.
When the game was released the reason for this was clear, take a picture using the in-game feature and you are asked if you would like to upload it to the internet. Choose yes and within minutes it will appear on the Forza 2 site under your account. This isn’t a new feature, Project Gotham Racing 3 offered it first to the gamer, yet showing off your car designs to as large an audience as possible is one of the many joys Forza 2 offers the gamer, and the practicality and ease of use of this feature evolves it from an added after-thought in PGR3 to an integral component of Forza 2 (and hopefully all future driving games).
In the past there have been a number of driving games which allow gamers to swap vehicles; though this normally requires the gamer to travel to the person's house with memory card in hand. Forza 2 lets you gift any car in your garage to any person on your friends list as easily as sending them a message via Xbox Live. Sharing decal designs, driving setups and those harder to obtain, and more expensive vehicles takes a few button presses, nothing more. If you don’t feel like gifting your cars gratis you can always put them up for sale in the Auction House. Costing a small fee (of driving credits) to list your car for sale it is then open to bids from anyone, anywhere. Once again, it’s a small touch but Forza 2’s Darwinian approach improves the genre immensely, for example you can host a pseudo tournament in which every person drives the exact same car (as this site has successfully managed to do) and it’s a touch that would benefit any driving game in the future.
Forza 2 is not the perfect driving game; there are too many omissions of features seen in the prequel and other driving games to say that it is. The removal of car clubs and a few of the tracks from the original Forza Motorsport are a letdown. Extra tracks could have definitely aided the career mode's end game, when it becomes a case of grinding the same tracks over and over to reap the points needed to advance the last few levels and collect the last few cars. Add to this the complete lack of a day/night cycle (especially in the longer endurance races), variable weather conditions and no user created online tournaments and perfection is far from being attained. However, spend time playing the game and the ‘what might have been’ slips from your mind as the brilliance that Turn 10 have coaxed from the Xbox 360 shines through.
The brilliance of the handling model for each and every car in the game, the brilliance of the customisation offered to the gamer, from how the game plays, to how the cars look, to how the cars ‘feel’, the brilliance of the marketplace, the buying of that exclusive design to make you the envy of your peers, the selling of your personal design to a complete stranger on the other side of the planet – it all adds up to a game which is, for want of a better word, brilliant.
There is no doubt that a more perfect driving game will be released in the future, but we don’t live nor do we play there; we do both of those in the now and there isn’t a better driving game now than Forza 2.
For those of you who read the opening paragraph then jumped to the bottom to view the score, I will leave you with my four word review. Balanced control, evolved brilliance. |
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System: Microsoft Xbox 360
Genre: Racing
Developer: Turn 10
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Players: 1-8
Version: European
Reviewed: Aug 2007
Writer: John Beaulieu
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Pros:
- The cars
- The handling and physics model
- The online features
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Cons:
- Not enough tracks
- No weather
- No day/night racing
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Forza Motorsport 2 Video: 13.6MB
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