Forza Motorsport 3 Review

Nothing to hate on the gameplay here, everything on the track is ultra realistic. And you will easily tell how the developers used their experience with the series to create a fantastic driving environment. Each car drives uniquely, and how different each car drives is something you will feel and enjoy. The little slow cars you start off with are solid and compact offering you a chance to get used to the game and its tricks. Once you start hitting the super cars and their upgrades, you will be flying by each checkpoint like there is no tomorrow. At the end of the day, driving any car in this game is enjoyable regardless of its brand and speed.

Forza 2 brought out the creative side in many of us a few years ago. We are not talking about the gameplay but rather the EBay like interface in the online bidding. Forza 3 comes with a more detailed version of the market for you to buy everything from cars to car designs and setups. The feature is a ton of fun considering how much time some “gifted” gamers decided to put into creating fantastic paint jobs and designs. Some of the designs we bought to check out include a Brutal Legend and South Park themed cars.

Playing online in Forza 3 is far from dull or boring. You can pick the regular online modes for a quick race. Or you and your friends can get very creative by creating your own online races. Simply pick every rule and winning condition in a race before starting it. This will surely attract more gamers to the online offerings in this game. The lag was limited when playing against gamers from the region, but thankfully the game even managed to impress while playing against other gamers from around the world.

Forza 3 easily passes as a graphical beauty. People might try to bring it down by saying it’s not a huge improvement over Forza 2 or that GT4 screens look better, but let us set the record straight. Comparing both Forza 2 and 3 head to head, the third installment in the series looks better in a set of different ways. The overall graphics is better; the level of detail on the tracks and most importantly on the cars is just clearly superior. Every time you look at the car you will feel just how much effort was put into getting this 100% accurate. The game also runs smoothly with rarely any slowdown occurring.

The in-game sound effects are really good. How the sound changes based on what you are driving on is an old aspect, but Forza 3 nearly perfected it. The music in the menus goes well with the clean looks of the menu. I would personally play my own music while competing in those long endurance races just to pass time and not get bored.

Forza 3 is as good as it gets playing a console racer. It manages to be as realistic as possible while offering every gamer out there a chance to enjoy the ride. We honestly do not remember the last time we played so many good racing games in such a short period of time. NFS: Shift and Dirt 2 already set a very high standard and those ultra realistic GT4 screens we get every now and then surely didn’t make the job any easier for Forza 3. But Forza 3 still managed to stand on its own and it’s certainly worth giving a shot during this busy month of gaming.