Review: Forza Motorsport

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Name: Forza motorsport
Genre: Racing
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Developers: Microsoft Game Studios
Price: $99.95 AUD
Url: Forzamotorsport.com.au/Forzamotorsport.com

Review:
Forza motorsport is a brand new racing simulator released by Microsoft Game Studios. It features a solid collection of cars and tracks that are made to push the graphical limits of the Xbox. Forza is also a must have for racing fans who enjoy cars that have near life preformance.

What can be said about Forza Motorsport? Plenty of things: to start off Microsoft has done a great job with the graphics.
Forza Motorsport supports real reflections, shadows, lighting and highly detailed cars and tracks. The game has unique road textures, surface irregularities, persistant skidmarks and wall scrapes to create pure eye candy.

However Forza is not only eye candy; it has great gameplay which includes a well balanced sense of speed and near realistic handling for all cars, including damage support. During multiplay you have the choice of setting the damage to "Cosmetic", "Limited" or "Simulation." However, in career mode this depends on the selected level of difficulty, if set on easy the damage will be set on "Cosmetic," if its set on hard it will be on "Simulation," thus allowing you to damage everything from your
bumpers to your transmission. How much your car is damaged depends on how hard you crash the car; the more it is crashed the harder it is to drive, so if you smash your car head-on, your motor will be having trouble, resulting in a slower car. If your car is damaged at the wheels usually it will pull to one side, making steering difficult.

At this point you may be asking, "Ok thats good, but what about the Artificial Inteligence?" Well this is another great thing about Forza: the A.I has been very well done and has somewhat surprised me. Never before in a game have I seen the A.I brake, or swerve to avoid making contact with you or the other A.I. But it doesn't stop here-if there is a major crash or a pile up, they will not just try and push themselves through, they will reverse or move as fit so they can continue the race. Along with A.I being smart they can also be very challenging-depending on your settings.

As you progress through the game you go up in levels, and at what level you are at is determined by the amount of credits you get after you win a race. Another good feature of this is at the end of every race the damage to your car has been calculated which is then taken away from your race points to repair the car.

Forza does however have a downside, and that's the in-game music. While the cars sound awesome, the soundtrack simply does not. To further explain this; I have found the music in most cases distracting and not fitting to the feel of the game, but do not let that stop you from buying Forza as you can either turn off the music or insert your own.

To sum it up, Forza Motorsport is a great game and a worthy adversary to the popular Gran Tourismo Series. The fact that Microsoft Game Studios have gone to the trouble of defining the meaning of 'simulation' in the intro means they are very serious about it.