Forza Motorsport 2 Review

Forza Motorsport 2 Review
Written by Kevin Wild

It’s official, I can honestly say this is the nerdiest, most statistical and most detailed racer, or for that matter, game I have ever played. This game is built to a “T.” That’s not to say it doesn’t work; it does, and that’s just what we have come to except from Forza, one of the best racing simulators around.

Let’s get to the game, Turn 10 has created a gaming masterpiece. This is the sequel every racing fan has been waiting for after the huge success of the original Forza Motorsport. It controls great, looks good, sounds good and overall gives the best racing experience yet on the Xbox 360; however, does that really say much?

Forza 2 Race Trailer

Since, this is where you’ll be spending a lot of your time in this game, we’ll start in the career mode. First of all, you start by picking a region; North America, Europe or Asia. The difference between all these continents is cars. Choosing one place or another will depict your starting cars, and cars from dealers in your region come at a 30% discount, which becomes useful down the road. You start out with only 9000 credits, enough for one car. So, right off the bat, you will be racing to collect credits so that you can collect more cars. Selling your cars is another option for generating cash, but make sure it is something you won’t need farther down the road. Credits you earn during races depend on four different things: Place, Difficulty, Damage, and Car Rarity.

Soon enough, collecting cars will become addicting. You will begin to want more and more. There are multiple ways to get your cars, such as buying them from a dealer (which tends to be expensive.), trading with another player, winning them, or buying them from the auction house (more on that later). You will always want 1000 more credits, in order to finally get that Porsche you’ve always dreamed of, that is until another car wets your appetite.

You will find your self trailing to the A.I at times like these.

After you get your car, there is more to do before you will hit the track. Car customization is the feature that will take the most time out of you. There are tons of options and things to do, from tuning cars, changing the tire pressure, changing gears, tightening springs, and even doing full engine swaps. There are always things to change on your car. That’s not even mentioning the cosmetic aspects to the cars. Forza has made this system perfect. With hundreds of colors and decals, you can change anything on you paint job, and everything can be added to a car. Your car can be switched in any way, cosmetic, body, or engine wise, which, if you a car fan, will be taking time out of your life for a long time.

For being a racing game, the gameplay is the biggest thing separating a masterpiece from a disaster. We can tell you it isn’t a disaster. It handles just how cars react in real life, hence the genre “racing sim”. It does just that, it creates a realistic, driving experience that we have yet to get from any other racing game. The AI is outstanding, always pushing for first place, even if it requires bumping you off the track. What I found interesting about the AI is the how they react changes depending on how you play. If you play aggressive, pushing cars off the track, they will react in the same way. Even though it would help to have a little driving experience before playing this game, Turn 10 has done a great job on the difficulty settings. If you’re an inexperienced player or a season racer, there is always a difficulty setting for you. So don’t expect this game will be too hard for you.

Maybe the worst part about the game is the presentation. It’s not that it is horrible, it’s just the fact that we have nothing else to gripe about. The graphics are lacking, with many jaggles and odd shaped parts on the car. If you are playing on a standard-def TV, you will be disappointed with the graphics. They aren’t very good and show much room for improvement. Same can be said for the sound. For a racing game, the sound is pretty key to determining where your fellow racers are. But, even with a 5.1 Surround Sound system, the audio is not good. The sounds aren’t realistic, and some improvements could have been done to create better racing experience.

The environments look very nice, at times making you not pay attention to the road.

If you have anytime left with this game after the single-player experience, a multiplayer one is awaiting for you. It features 8-person races, with many tracks to choose from. You will get money from these races you can put towards your career as well. As a side note, you can also race your career races on Xbox Live for higher rewards. Turn 10 has put a lot into this game to create a fantastic community, with weekly tournaments, competitive races, and also allowing for the buying and selling of other player’s masterpieces. That brings me to the auction house, one of my favourite features about this game. This feature enables you to sell your user-created cars on the Auction block to make some extra cash. You can also buy some of the other player’s cars, and shop around with your credits, getting cars with great paint jobs or cars with a really great set-up. There are deals to be had, and with so many cars being auctioned off each day, keep your eye out and you might be picking up a sweet ride.

No one is going to be complaining about the games final scale and replay value. This game is HUGE. There is so much to do here, and you’ll always have something to do, and something more to create. You will be playing this game for a long time, collecting cars, creating your own, buying other players created cars, this game will be sucking hours out of your life for a while.

In the end, this game is great. There is little to complain about and does a great job as a sequel to Forza 1. The only complaints boil down to presentation. Even though it isn’t terrible, it isn’t exceptional either. With so many cars, and things to do, this game has a huge replay value and has me hooked. I’m going to go and race my new Porsche right now…..