Cheapest Forza Motorsport 3

As an avid racing game enthusiast (and racing enthusiast, car guy, mechanic etc) I love games like Forza. It hits everything I need it to. Or at least it should.

There are two major problems with Forza 3 and one minor one. The first being of course at least for me, is the Invalidation of your times around a race track. I never thought I would say this but I miss the overly harsh and nonsensical penalties of Forza and Forza 2. (Your lap time is already borked, if you get in a situation where you got a penalty anyway, or at least wouldn't be as fast of a lap, so penalties are stupid anyway)

This time around? Oh no. They went and one upped the shenanigans now, if you get a little bit off track (and I mean just part of one tire in many cases), your lap time is completely invalidated and won't show up AT ALL on Leaderboards. Oh and the same applies for your race time too. That alone would cause a major issue to me. But it doesn't stop there. No sir. Of course if you hit someone (or they hit you for no reason) you get an invalidated time. Okay fine. It continues though, if you DRAFT SOMEONE yes, Drafting you know that thing that is pretty much ESSENTIAL to winning races, and often posting a hot lap in real life racing it invalidates your time. Colossal screw up Turn 10. Epic failure. Oh but it gets better! How you might ask? If someone Drafts you, your time is invalidated. If you use the new rewind feature to fix an other wise good lap? Invalidated. That one I can at least stomach. and that's the only one.

This alone detracted a full star for me and 2 points on my gamer scale. Especially since something quintessential to racing (lap times) are now screwed out.

"But that appeals to the hardcore!" Actually it doesn't, especially since there are some tracks where it is practically impossible to keep within the boundaries of a track while racing without incurring an invalidation either from wrecking someone or going off track. Also, it makes your Granny Lap often your best lap of the race because it only registers your "screw up free" lap. They better fix this in a patch, but it should have never been a problem in the first place.

The next major screw up of this game is what they did to the Multiplayer. This is atrocious. Utterly atrocious and there is no excuse for this at all ever. Matchmaking in my opinion is one of the dumbest things to ever hit gaming, the only time it is "passable" is in Shooters but guess what? It's not passable there because of the tendency of it to give you the same maps every time you go to a new match. In a racing game? This is even worse. You only get to race in whatever class happens to be available online at the time. Effectively meaning, those really cool cars you have? Yeah, you might not get to race with them at all. No instead you might get the shaft and get stuck racing your **** of ****** Chevrolet Aveo. Yeah, imagine that happening all night. When in your garage is sitting your Realistically flame jobbed Corvette ZO6. And you don't get to pick the tracks you race on... so you remember my mentioning of a few horrible tracks that you virtually can't pass on, and stay within the Valid lap area? Imagine getting stuck on that all night too. You've got a You are In Gamer Hell scenario just exploding all over you there.

Forza 1, with it's online component turned things on it's head and did it perfectly. You got to pick your car, pick your track and have a blast racing against other people and their cool cars. Forza 2 carried on with this because frankly it was right, and it wasn't perfect but it was damn close. Forza 3? Took this feature (which is easily the Forza series best feature) shot it in the face and peed on the corpse, and left it with a parody of multiplayer.

And now we come to the not as major screw up in the game. Car Accuracy. For alot of cars and I do mean alot of cars. They hit it spot on. For others? (namely three that I have found so far, and I've owned all in real life, and know the technical data of them by heart down to the spark plug gaps) they dropped the ball. The 1990 Iroc Camaro, 2002 Camaro, and Trans Am. The first one they screwed up the Weight. By about 200 pounds. The Camaro 2002 SS weighs in at 3200lbs and some pocket change. What does Forza 3 think? 3500. Same with the Birdy, of that same year. But they one upped it with the Bird. The Bird is the WS6 version, meaning it should be packing 345 horse power, and weighs the same as the Camaro SS. It also has slightly better brakes. Forza 3 short it 25 horse power, and the better brakes along with the weight. Now the Iroc. The first screw up they did was again vehicle weight. Fully loaded with T-tops a Gen III camaro tips the scales at 3498 pounds. They say? 3600 and some change. A stripper car, like the one in the game tips in at 3234 or something like that. They also screwed up the torque curve. A Gen III with TPI injection, hits hardest at 2000 RPM on the torque, horse power following soon after and falls dead at anything past 5500. It's a rather unique looking powercurve which they messed up on.

Also, please Turn 10 do note, the Chevrolet Aveo and it's ilk are not cars people willingly race. Just like we don't want to do crap license tests we don't want to drive cars that would probably sooner fall apart than hit 100 mph.

That being all said. The Single Player is amazing. Pure amazing. The physics engine is easily the best in any racing game I've played, the opponent AI doesn't seem totally slaved to the racing line anymore. The new experience point system works better than the money system and the achievement progress is steady. The races are for the most part entertaining enough to keep you racing for a while. (Which is a very good thing given the multiplayer and lap time Shenanigans) The car painter is at least just as robust as it used to be, and they even added a feature. I don't know how it works yet but I will figure it out sooner or later. It's a new painter tool. Which will require more time to figure it out. Don't change this in a Forza 4.

Cars are NOT LOCKED based off of level anymore. Thank God. Instead of course they locked cars based on which version of the game you bought and if you have xbox live or not (insert roll eyes here). But at least the locked car total is alot lower than it used to be.

The Season system is genius and it actually feels pretty organic. I'd like to see it in a Forza 4.

The in car view while it needs more polish (set too low in some cars. namely some of the cars which have accuracy issues...... making me wonder if they actually did anything with those cars in the first place) is a very nice thing to have. I bounce between it and the hood cam. (the hood cam just looks better. making me wonder if the incar view was something from beta they didn't update in time)

There is one thing they did right in multiplayer and that's the Storefront feature and the Groups feature. Basically if you are a car painter or tuner you can sell set ups, and paint jobs through Live now and earn credits. Genius, and I like the feature.

As long as you are playing Single Player and perhaps split screen this game is amazingly good. Just stay away from the racing aspect of multiplayer.



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