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'Forza Motorsport 3' is a racing beauty

The racing genre finally takes advantage of the 360's benefits.

Published Oct. 30, 2009

Racing games don't have to do a lot from year to year to stay on the cutting edge. Gameplay has stayed more or less the same since the racing genre was invented.

Considering this, it's the little things that make a racing game great, and it's the little things that developer Turn 10 has packed into its labor of love, "Forza Motorsport 3," to make this game amazing.

Four years into the Xbox 360's life, developers are finally tapping into all the console can do and this is clear with the most stunning feature of “Forza 3” — the graphics. Drawn distances on some of the newly introduced mountain drifting tracks are amazing and the cars look positively realistic.

All of these upgrades are done without a hitch in frame rate. All 400 or so cars look absolutely stunning, from the sleek bodylines to the details on the sidewalls of the tires. Cars handle like their actual weight and can now tip over if you try to take a 90-degree turn at 152 mph. There is a rewind function, and it is unlimited, but true racing fans will find they won't use it much.

The other major overhaul is the way the menus look and the way the game goes about letting you race. A calendar format is introduced and really makes people feel like they are professional drivers and races take place over weeks or months at a time, not one after each other, as in "Forza 2."

This time around, Forza has put a big emphasis on community after seeing people blossom with car designs in the previous game. "Forza 3" now offers a storefront where players can create designs and sell them to other players for credits earned in the game, but it doesn't stop there. People can also tune their cars for different racing types, such as the newly added drag and drift racing, and sell their tuning setups in the same storefront. You can browse people's pictures and videos all in the same place, and it adds a bit of personality to the game.

You really need to nitpick to find things wrong with this game. When you come out of pause during the race the game has a weird way of getting you back up to speed that can be disorienting for drivers. And the race at the beginning of the game to "get drivers used to Forza racing" is mandatory, like it or not.

But the drawbacks are too small to count. Turn 10 has done an amazing job with this game and really pushed the Xbox to its limits in getting the graphics they wanted. This game definitely gives longstanding racing king "Gran Turismo" a run for it's money and is the racing game to have if you own a 360.