Considering I am very critical of any driving game I could ever play since owning a copy of Gran Turismo, I have tried to keep an open mind when it comes to various other driving/racing games. Some of them are just truly terrible (such as Sega Rally on the Sega Saturn – the single worst driving game I’ve ever played), some are not so bad (any of the Colin McCrae series fall into this) and some are actually not too bad at all (the DiRT series). However, Forza is one of those games that falls into almost the same category as Gran Turismo. It has been hailed as one of the best racing simulators ever made…..yeah, moving swiftly along…..and back round onto this point actually.
To be considered a good racing simulator, a game must make you feel like you are directly in the driving seat, that every single little thing you do has a huge impact on the way the car feels and handles. Like most games, some of this comes from the player’s own imagination. But the more of this that a game can do, the more it can be considered a simulator. Now, to be given this crown the game must be considered to be better than Gran Turismo, and I’m going to make it very clear right now, I don’t think it is. I will agree that it is a very very good game, but it is NOT better than Gran Turismo. But more on that later.
Like many racing games, there’s not much you can really do with a racing game besides drive a car really fast around a track. However, the format in which you do it and the in-game reasons as to why you do this are what makes it good. With Forza 2, it’s slightly old-school in how the game plays out. Like the original Gran Turismo’s, you play through the game collecting money and cars whilst completing races. Like the Gran Turismo series, you take part in races that, not only get unlocked when you reach different levels, but get completed by winning a set number of races in a series. In winning these races, you acquire credits and experiences, leading to more races and cars being available.
When you begin the game, you pick one of 3 regions – Europe, Asia and North America – each of which has its own brands of car and whatnot. Of course, each of these brands has some kind of normal car through to various racing or classic cars. The cars themselves range from D-class up to A-class, through S-class and into one of the 4 kinds of Racing cars, R4 being the least powerful and whatnot, up to R1 being the kind of car you’d see at the Le Mans 24 hour endurance race. Big engines, masses of grip and great handling. Win. Literally.
The races themselves range from being very simple 2 lap races through to 50 lap endurance races, which can take anything up to 3 hours to complete. Some of them can be incredibly boring to do, so you can actually hire a driver to do the race for you. In doing this, you lose a large cut of your winnings (should your driver actually win) but you don’t have to spend all the time sat in front of your TV. Also a win. It’s a bit like Season B on Gran Turismo 5 actually….
The nitty gritty bits of this game are what really make it as good as it is though. The graphics aren’t the sharpest in the world, but they’re far from bad. They’re sharp enough to see every single curve of a car’s body but not so clear you can see individual grains of dirt kicked up when your tires go off-road. In hindsight, that’s probably a good thing. The driving itself is very well balanced between the cars. Older cars have very heavy steering, whilst racing cars have a very light feel meaning you can chuck them into corners and come out the other side straight and true.
The problem I have with this game is that I struggled to actually stop playing it. Once I’d started I really struggled to stop. I was determined to actually get 100% completion, meaning that I’d finished every race, but not acquired every car, and considering there are over 300 cars, I couldn’t be bothered to get them all. Relating this back to Gran Turismo though, Gran Turismo has a more overall real feel to it. The way the season plays out and the way the car feels to drive just make it feel like it’s a more refined game. Forza is good as a simulator, and it’s the closest thing we’re ever going to get on the X360, but it still doesn’t quite compare. Highly recommended though. Go buy it. Now.
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