Forza 3 preview

Posted by Kevin in Featured, Previews | 4 comments

In what seems like eons ago, little-known developers Turn 10 released a game for Microsoft on the relatively nubile Xbox platform called Forza to counteract Playstation’s dominance of the simulation racers genre with Gran Turismo. In 2009, Turn 10 will turn their years of craftsmanship into their latest opus, a huge 400-car load of automobile pornography.

Lush environments reflect well on the cars!

Today I was at Microsoft’s Irish offices to have a go of this Christmas’ big motoring hope for Microsoft in the face of a possible (if not likely) release from Sony & Polyphony Digital with GT5.

The set up to the game is well known. Microsoft announced the title at E3 this year with a stunning video featuring cars doing tricks to the sound of Los Campensinos. The trailer showed a lot of beautiful looking cars (in-game, we were told) doing tricks and stunts that set any motorsport fans’ hearts alight. We were then told to wait for an imminent October release. Well, we’re mere weeks away.

E3 trailer:

First I’ll preface everything I say here on-in with the note that this game was played on an official Microsoft Xbox steering wheel kit. A kit that, before today, I had never seen in person, let alone played with. My experience with steering-wheel/pedal kits in the past are limited to cheap Mad Katz and Logitech units around the time TOCA Touring Cars 2 was released on Playstation 1. With a bit of hands-on time with the official kit from MS, I’ve been converted.

Seeing other people playing first was a bit of a put-off, as they skidded around and belted cars into various barriers, making full use of the rewind-system akin to Prince of Persia games that lets you rewind a bit of action a few seconds if you get out of shape, a feature novices to the genre will appreciate while, undoubtedly, veterans will bemoan because of the “noob factor”.

So, I sat down on the comfortable pleather chair in the plush Microsoft offices and gripped the steering wheel while placing my feet within the confines of the plastic pedal unit under the small table that had the steering rack bolted to it. Initial use of the system was nice, as the menu system appears to have been completely overhauled from the ground-up. Very welcome, as the original menu system was confusing and had too much going on at any given time to make it useful. The new system is a very post-modern Apple iPod example of design, with white backgrounds and simple, centered text and contextual menu items highlighted orange around the standard verdana-esque black font.

Interiors are re-created to the T

We were given a plethora of high-end cars to choose from. The favourite in the room seemed to be the Audi R8, so I went for that. In red. Other cars I played on the day was a Ferrari and a Subaru Impreza, which turned out, predictably, to be a lot more fun then the higher-powered efforts. A choice of three tracks were offered, all very plush and detailed with vibrant colours provided by the surrounding grandstands and vegetation. The system tells you the direction of the track and a few general points which come in quite useful and will no doubt help when you’re online when the games arrives in October.

So we jump into a race where a nice camera-flip moment occurs showing off the car I’m driving and lets me rev the engine up a bit, and then, we’re off. Racing is fast paced stuff, and it’s hard to get simulation style racing right because everyone has an opinion on driving, whether or not they race. Or drive, for that matter. What Turn 10 have done in this game is create a simulation engine based on the tyres, and what happens when rubber hits tarmac, including how tyres deform in corners, how heat affects performance, etc. This game really feels like the car is nailed to the floor, and any slight track deformations (hills, humps or corners) affect how you have to react. And with the steering wheel system, you have to react fast, and with the right amount of force. Lumping the wheel around will not work. Gentle strokes like a real car are how it needs to work, as well as good throttle work.

What seemed to happen a lot with the steering wheel set-up is that people would plonk their foot to the floor with the accelerator and turn the wheel accordingly, without once lifting off or using the brakes. This meant a lot of crashing, especially in the over-powered Audi R8 which caused a lot of wheelspin and skidding… which then lends itself quite handily to the rewind feature.

Other cars on track are modeled beautifully (with 10 times the polygons as Forza 2), and generously make mistakes on-track just like anyone else would. Gone are the days of racing games having a long precession of different colour cars droning around the circuit. Some cars drive aggressive (one Porche tried to hustle me off a circuit in my Ferrari several times in the same race) while others drive smooth and react slowly to your aggression. This means you get a varied race each time.

The three tracks we played were beautifully varied. From small and wide to open but narrow tracks, with bumps and humps in places to keep you on your toes. All of which are completely fabricated by Turn 10 themselves to allow for new driving types and vehicle types in the full game. These fabricated tracks are based on real-world locations like southern Spain, etc. and are just as much about what you can put around the track as what goes on in a race itself. Que beautiful vistas with water, rockeries and plant-life.

Each of the 400 cars in the game have incredible attention to detail paid to them. As I said before, 10 times more polygons are dumped into each model over the last Forza iteration. An astounding achievement given the turn-around time from one game to another. Particularly when compared to the timespan of Gran Turismo 4 to 5. Every car has full crash damage, which often fails to ignite excitement as it can just look like a brushed-steel effect was placed on the bonnet with a bit of degradation, though the particle physics is impressive when a big crash happens. Each car also has their interiors lovingly re-created. You can look around the cockpit to see your cars plush interior, or to look in the rear-view mirrors. It’s an impressive insight to the little details when your car is shifting through gears, seeing the rev limiter and speedometer going crazy. Of course, even more spectacular is when you flip your car upside-down in a ridiculous crash scene reserved for only the best Bruce Willis moments. Even more impressive is how accurate the movement on-screen is to the movement I made with my force-feedback enabled steering wheel controller.

Not only that, but one of my main gripes with Forza 2 was the bloom effects added to the surface of the cars, which washed out any potential graphic loveliness. This has been revamped and now each car’s attention to detail is on show for all to see, with no obstructions. Unless, of course, you crash and ruin your lovely ride.

All-in-all this was a seriously impressive game. I recommended it over recent car-game releases this summer without playing it, and now that I’ve had a taste, I want more. With no definitive date on GT5, there’s no reason to not desire this game. It fixes any quirks in Forza 2 with it’s built-from-the-ground-up engine and adds more flair and fun to a genre that can sometimes feel like a parade lap precession behind a safety car.

Forza Motorsport 3 is due out in October, 2009. Look out for a full review then. A demo will be available on Xbox Live on September 25th.