Forza Motorsport 3 Hands-on Preview

Anyone who’s read our interview with Forza franchise director Dan Greenawalt will know he’s pure headline gold. During Microsoft’s E309 media briefing Dan talked up Forza 3, Microsoft’s answer to Sony’s Gran Turismo 5, quite a bit, but it wasn’t until a UK-exclusive presentation that evening that he sent us hacks frantically scribbling in our notepads and double-checking our tape recorders. Here are some of the best quotes:

“Go find a racing game that’s running in 60fps at the show. You’re not going to find it. That’s part of being a good racing game. If you can’t run at 60, you’re not a good racing game.”

“We have 400 cars, 50 manufacturers, 100 tracks. We’re the biggest racing game of this generation. Nothing else compares to us in size.”

“A lot of the features I’ve mentioned here, and this is just a few that I’ve gone through right now, are the types of features other games hang their hat on. Oh we’ve got a cockpit view and it’s really, really immersive. And we’re done. No, that’s not Forza. Forza, we take every single feature that other people crow about, we do it to the nines, and then we add another feature.”

“We’ve got the best physics. We’ve got the best graphics. We’ve got the most cars. We’ve got the most tracks. We’ve got an online community that is unparalleled not just in racing but in gaming in general. Nobody does things with user-generated content the way we do.”

“I’ll stand behind this and say there is no racing game that’ll look better on any console.”

“We can rollover cars. No other racing game is going to rollover 400 cars I can guarantee you that. There’s a reason that we do that. We’ve got great relationships with manufacturers.”

Wow. Dan’s nothing if not confident. Cocky, even. And unsurprisingly he’s got a lot of people’s attention, especially Gran Turismo fans’. But the time for talk is over. After the presentation we got a chance to get hands-on with the game and put Dan’s words to the test.

Sitting in a near life-size car shell, hands on a steering wheel, feet on metal pedals, eyes melted by three widescreen high-def televisions and ears bombarded by full surround sound, it’s hard to imagine a more realistic and immersive racing simulation will ever be created. Now, while we know the vast majority of gamers won’t play Forza 3 the way we were able to play it at E3, we also know that some of you will be rich enough to afford such a set-up. The game offers support for three video channels, but you’ll need three 360s and three copies of the game to make it work. And of course you’ll need three televisions (you can use a small monitor as a rear-view mirror if you fancy it), a steering wheel and the car shell. All in all, it’s a $3,000 set-up, a Turn 10 dev told us. Ouch.

For everyone other than Donald Trump a 360 controller will have to do, and playing the game with this more traditional set-up allowed us to get a better sense of what Forza 3 feels like to play. The answer? Well, very Forza. Yes the 60fps graphics are much improved and some astonishing physics-based features have been thrown into the mix, but anyone who’s played the original or Forza 2 will instantly feel at home. The game’s hard, even on the easy difficulty setting and with many of the assists turned on (although not as hard as Gran Turismo 5: Prologue). Following the racing line, accelerating when it’s green and breaking when it’s red, requires focused attention. Cars satisfy as their engines rumble, and the handling is as realistic and car specific as ever.

Three tracks (one regular, two mountainous) were available to play, all originals, set in the rocky green alpine Montserrat category (there will be a 60/40 real/original track split). The draw distances on all are hugely impressive, and the fidelity of not only the fully damage-modelled cars but the environments is astonishing. Making a judgement call on whether it’s the best-looking racing game EVAR will require further scrutiny. Initial impressions suggest Gran Turismo 5: Prologue might have the edge in the photorealism stakes, and Need for Speed: Shift might have the edge in the sheer stuff going on stakes, but Forza 3 has its own unique look based on high-class European car brochures that’s compelling in its own right.

A number of cars were available to take for a spin, but we stuck to two – the powerful 2010 Audi R8 V10 and the beautiful 2007 Lamborghini Murcielago LP640. Both felt very different, not just in terms of handling, but speed and noise. This is classic Forza. The series has always been more about the cars than the racing, appealing not only to racing game fans but car enthusiasts.

So, what are some of those astonishing physics-based features, then? Turn 10 worked with the UK-based McLaren Electronic Systems to improve Forza’s simulation, taking notes from the simulator Lewis Hamilton uses. Dan even swapped notes with the F1 champion. Forza 3 calculates in real-time how air behind a car gets dirty and how that affects other drivers. It also simulates tire reflex. As the car loads up on the front tires that tire will deform and roll under the rim itself. “No other racing game simulates this,” Dan says. Somewhat disappointingly, though, Forza 3 won’t have any weather effects at all.

Other changes to the racing portion of the game include a GRID-style rewind feature (press the Back button to go back five seconds, again for another five seconds), which helped soften the blow of our many frustrating crashes (we scored the first rollover of E3. Woo), and what Turn 10 calls “one button driving” – basically a super easy mode. The career mode has been rebranded and refined, and is now called season mode. There are 200 events stuffed in, but the way they’re presented has been tweaked to make it more accessible. The game will add three events to your calendar based on the cars you pick and the types of races you want to do. If you do well in a race, another one gets added to the calendar, and so on. Helping you ease through it all is British actor Peter Egan (from 1980’s sitcom Ever Decreasing Circles). “He sounds kind of like the voice of motorsport gods,” says Dan.

There is a feeling, however, that Forza 3’s innovation will come less from the tweaks to the driving portion of the game and more from the new community features. Forza 2’s auction house will be supplemented by a new scoreboard system, which will allow painters, tuners and players who like to take screenshots and make videos to promote their work. Turn 10 hopes people will “tune in” to Forza to check out the latest work from the most creative people in the community, much like people check out the latest videos on YouTube.

One of the highlights from Microsoft’s E309 media briefing was the spectacular user-generated Forza 3 video that showed a number of cars spinning around a track in dramatic fashion. The editor used to create it is described by Dan as “simple”, and lets you take any replay footage, from online or single-player, and turn it into a video that’s uploaded to Forzamotorsport.net. The power of the tool is irrelevant, Dan insists. It’s all about creativity.

Right now, the announced UGC features are a tad underwhelming, but Turn 10 promises many are yet to be announced. Forza 3 feels very Forza 2 when it comes to actually playing the game, which is no bad thing, since Forza 2 was great. Dan, though, has upped the ante quite considerably, given his “cocky” quotes. As Neon eloquently put it, “Forza 3 needs to be Jesus in a car”. Indeed.

Forza 3 is due out exclusively for the Xbox 360 this October.