The Forza franchise has been dominating the racing genre since the first Forza on Xbox. No other game provides the realism that Forza provides, including Gran Turismo. Gran Turismo has pretty environments and tons of cars, all of which look fantastic, but it doesn't provide realistic physics, including damage modeling on the cars.
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<br />This game has one of the most in-depth systems for designing graphics for all of your cars. These designs can be saved as whole car designs or just as a vinyl group that can be placed on any car. Like its predecssor, there is also an Auction House for buying and selling cars, vinyl designs, and tuning setups online. You can also race online with completely customizable restrictions on the tracks, cars, and car classes available for each race.
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<br />Forza 3 provides excellent graphics, an extremely wide selection of cars, and the realistic physics for which the series is known. If you get a couple tires off in the grass, rather than just slowing you down a bit, it actually "grabs" the car and tries to pull it off the road, because the tires in the grass will be moving slower than the tires still on the pavement. You can actually feel the wheels spinning in both front-wheel and rear-wheel drive cars when you give it a little too much gas. Cockpit view is actually usable without feeling like too much of your view is obstructed, and all of the cars' interiors are modeled perfectly. Add in even more tracks than in Forza 2 and you have a near perfect racing simulator. My one complaint is that in cockpit view, the driver never takes his hands off the steering wheel to shift, but this is a minor detail. All in all, Forza 3 is the best racing game yet on any console. If you like realistic racing games, you will love Forza 3.
erod550 (member since 2008)
reviewed on 11/11/09