Forza Motorsport

Written by Troy Matsumiya  on May 31, 2005

Review: Move over, Gran Turismo Ц there's a new king in town.

Tweet

Comments

Pimp Your Ride

Career Mode also lets you customize all of the cars you've purchased or unlocked. Customization is a big component of Career Mode; in fact, you can literally spend hours customizing just one car and enjoy every minute of it.

There are three types of customization: Cosmetic, Tuning and Upgrades. Cosmetic customization doesn't cost any credits and lets you paint your car from a large palette of colors, including several clear coat colors. If you wish, you can paint your hood, side mirrors and rear spoiler different colors. You can also add vinyl and decals to each of the six areas on your car: right and left side, top (roof and hood), front and rear bumper, and rear spoiler. You can build up to 100 layers of vinyl and decals on each area, and adjust the size, location and orientation over each layer. Those with the time and artistic skill can create some truly amazing works of automotive art.

Tuning customization allows you to adjust front and rear tire pressure, gearing, wheel alignment (including front and rear camber, toe and caster), anti-roll bar stiffness, spring and damping height and stiffness, aerodynamic downforce, brake balance and pressure, and differential lock behavior. Fortunately, for automotive newbies like me, the game explains what each does and the consequences of changing the settings. Fiddling with the tuning falls under the category, УIf you don't know what you're doing, don't touch itФ because a small adjustment can make a big difference Ц either good or bad Ц on your car's performance. You can run a benchmark test to see what effects your changes have made, and even take the car for a spin on a test track. Fortunately, you can reset everything back to the default if your attempts at automotive engineering go up in smoke.

Upgrade customization lets you buy upgrades from 150 real aftermarket manufacturers and fall into three categories: Engine and Power, where you can buy new tuning kits, intake and exhaust, fuel and ignition parts, turbo and superchargers, intercoolers, or swap the whole engine; Appearance and Aero, where you can buy new wheels, window tints, front and rear bumpers, side skirts, hoods, rear spoilers, roll cages, and rear lenses; and Chassis and Drivetrain, where you can buy new suspension, brakes, transmission, clutch and flywheel, weight reduction kits, tires and differentials. Whew! Each upgrade can benefit (or sometimes hinder, if you're not careful) the performance of your car, and can also boost your car's rarity. You also have to be careful not to boost your performance stats so much that you bump your car up into the next class rating. The key to upgrading is to ensure you have the best performing car in your class and not the weakest car in the next higher class. Fortunately, before you install any upgrade you are shown the effects on your class rating.

All of your customization hard work won't go unnoticed either, since you can take your tricked-out ride on Xbox Live for all to envy. You can even sell your car over Xbox Live Ц in fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see some artistic and enterprising players doing nothing but customizing and selling cars online. Too bad you can't earn real money for it, but hey, building a virtual car dealership still sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.

Multiplayer

Simply put, multiplayer rocks. Take all of the goodness described above and put it on Xbox Live with up to eight players, and you've got one heck of a good time. Unlike RSC2 Ц which for some bizarre reason only allowed fully rendered cars if you had four players or less, and would only let you talk to the person in front and behind you (which forced you to play some awkward telephone games; УHey Bob, ask Joe to ask Sue to tell BillЕФ) Ц all eight players have the same beautiful, fully rendered cars as single player and can communicate with everyone. As in single player, you can make the experience as realistic and challenging as you want; the host can adjust the damage level and turn on fuel and tire wear, while each individual player can adjust their driver's aids.

The majority of the cars and tracks are immediately unlocked and available in multiplayer, which means you can jump into the fun right out of the box without having to work your way through single player to unlock a decent selection of rides and roads.

If the host has enabled ranking, each time you play you earn points towards your ELO ranking. The ELO ranking system is based on the chess rating system developed by Arpad Elo and uses several factors in calculating your ranking, such as your race placement, the ranking of those finishing above and below you, and so on. The ELO system is used to place you in games with players ranked similar to you; this helps avoid the frustration of having to race against fresh newbies or inhumanly perfect players who live and breathe Forza 12 hours a day.

Since you can take your customized car online, you can create some bizarre matchups; for example, the other night I was in a stock Ferrari and was getting my doors blown off by a buddy driving his souped up Honda Civic. Enzo would not be pleased (though Soichiro would be tickled pink).

So What's The Downside?

Okay, you get the idea that I think this game is great Ц but it's not perfect. The engine and crash sound effects are realistic, but somehow don't have the acoustic authority or УoomphФ that I expected, even with the volume cranked up. The music soundtrack uses instrumental versions of classic rock songs by ZZ Top, Black Sabbath and others that are tolerable, but using the original songs would have been much better. Heck, Microsoft already spent a fortune on car and aftermarket manufacturer licensing, so what's a few bucks more for some real tunes? Fortunately, you can use your own custom soundtracks if you want. I also found the controls to be a bit twitchy, even with the driver's aids turned on, but this could be due to the realistic driving physics, which can be challenging at first. The Drivatar also seems more gimmicky than a truly useful tool; in fact, I rarely used it. Other than these nit-picky minor complaints, Forza delivers on all of its promises and hype big time.