Last updated on December 19th, 2020 at 03:18 pm
Forza Motorsport 3 is an essential purchase for any online racer with an Xbox 360, and is possibly the best reason for choosing Microsoft’s console over the Playstation 3. And yet, it doesn’t get 5/5 because of some serious flaws.
The Forza series was built with online race in mind, coming after the launch of the Project Gotham Racing series, and building on the lessons learned from that team. It has always had more of a focus on serious competition and real-world racing physics, and is seen as the Xbox answer to Gran Turismo – despite the fact that all 3 Forza games have been released since the last major Gran Tourismo game surfaced!
Forza Motorsport 3 Review
And on paper, the specifications look good. More cars (over 400 from 50 manufacturers), more tracks (over 100 tracks and road courses), improved graphics and new game modes.
But before you jump online and compete, you’ll probably want to earn some cash and grab some cars in the single player game. And this is one of the biggest flaws in Forza Motosport 3. In an attempt to make the single-player career more accessible, Turn 10 have made two major changes. The first is adding a ‘rewind’ button which can be used during single player modes. This scrolls back the race at any points, which means you can undo any mistakes.
Single player bad:
Now I’m not against rewind in principle – if you’ve ever wiped out a car in the last few laps of an endurance race, you’ll understand why. But is it really needed for races under 10 laps? It’s almost impossible to ignore, and takes away some of the dramatic tension of battling with a damaged car to hold onto your lead, seperating the game further from reality than I’d have liked.
The other flaw is the new structure for single-player career mode. It’s now structured in seasons, with one main championship each season, and the chance to choose a smaller championship in between each main race.
Which wouldn’t be so bad, but it goes on for ever (6 seasons in fact, for the career achievement points). And by the 6th season, you’re competiting in a 13 race main championship, with a further 10 minor championships of 3-6 races in each. So around 40-odd races minimum.
Not only that, but you can end up racing in F or E class depending on your choices earlier in the game, going from the fastest cars in the game to the slowest. And if you’ve spent much time racing online, or competed in any one-off events for fun, the odds are you could have unlocked all the cars and reached the maximum driver level some point in seaosn 4 or 5, meaning that it’s simply a grind to get to the end.
This makes a single player game which isn’t challenging, but does go on far too long. Add in long loading times, and it becomes even more frustrating.
Combine all of the efforts made to make the game easier and more accessible to new players and it has one major effect. In previous Forza games you had to work your way up through classes, starting with a low-powered car and eaking out improvements to tune and speed up your motor.
In Forza 3, you start with a low-powered car and within minutes you’re having new cars thrown at you – and many of them can be used in races against far lower spec competition, meaning you can put a race tuned R1 class car up against F class untuned saloons for some reason.
So you don’t build up the affinity with the start cars that you gained in FM1 and FM2, and you don’t feel much of an achievement unlocking the powerful cars. There’s no car that is a badge of honour when you wheel it out online as a result.
On the bright side, when it comes to the cars, there’s the biggest selection yet. It feels as if the big muscle cars have been tamed slightly in FM3, meaning that there’s a slightly wider variety of possible race winners. Meanwhile the lighter and front-wheel cars seem to be slightly less advantageous.
All the upgrade and paint options have also been tweaked. You can now upgrade cars even further beyond their base specs, including All Wheel Drive conversions, and swapping powerplants in a huge range of cars. And you can take road cars into the Racing categories for the first time.
Online racing better:
The bright side is that online racing in Forza is still pretty good. There’s a range of options to select the format you want to race, whether that’s circuit or road racing, drift or drag racing, or tighter specification racing. You can also still select private races, although the lack of public options means that you can’t set up a lobby and ban those cars which always end up as dominant.
This also means that there’s less of a community – far less players are chatting in the online lobbies, and it means there’s no way to stop people picking any particularly dominant car in general racing. Hence the VW Golf Mk 2 overwhelming everything in the lower classes.
You’re unable to invite friends into a public lobby, tune your car without leaving, and the new ‘kick’ function was meant to remove bad racers (Something which the host could do in Forza Motorsport 2 anyway), but is being used to remove anyone who is leading a room on points already.
Although plagued with the same eternal loading times as single player, online runs pretty smoothly, and looks just as impressive as ever.
Conclusion:
Forza Motorsport 3 is still the best racing game available on the Xbox 360, and pretty much any console, despite some new challengers since the last installment. Even with the major flaws to single player and online racing, it’s still possible to get a fantastic evening of racing.
The problem seems to be that Turn 10 are shying away from the hardcore racers and fans who were such a big part of the first two games in the series – because they fear alienating a potentially much larger general audience. The problem is that they end up diluting all the elements that made hardcore racers fanatical fans, and end up with a general audience who buy the game, play it for a bit, and then move onto Halo, Call of Duty, or whatever else they fancy. And while that’s fine for initial sales of FM3, it’s bound to have an effect on downloadable content purchases – and particularly on the next game in the series.
So get FM3 as the series reaches the highest level of graphical polish and variety, and enjoy the fact the handling is still realistic enough to give a great deal of enjoyment. Soldier on through the single player mode, and persevere with multi-player (Or just find a good car club or group of friends), and bask in what could be the last of the ‘real’ Forza racers while you still can.
Buy the standard or limited edition Forza Motorsport 3 via Amazon below:
Forza Motorsport 3 (Xbox 360)
Forza Motorsport 3 – Limited Edition (Xbox 360)
A well thought out review – I havent ploughed enough hours into this yet but I know I will.
Gaming is relaxing by focussing my mind on one thing not many and whilst Modern Warfare 2 is great social fun driving games > FPS for a zen state of mind for me.
GTDon – chalk me up as a hot lapper who likes to battle.
On the single player I think i stalled out around end of season 4 just as the grind you refer to started to make this less fun more chore.
I did however (as I have since GT1) where possible stick with the lowest possible class and car to qualify, as always preferring a neat lap in the corners to uber power for the straights and beating the bigger cars doing it.
So I consciously didnt have the soulless R1 class lapping C class issues you point out will happen if you just stick to default.
That’s probably my biggest riposte to your review, I think the guts of the single player are still there and more powerful than ever but you need to deviate off the Press A to continue path and search out your own route. Loading times mean this is more of a chore than it needs to be which is a disincentive, but it is possible to hard tune your plucky little C class up to embarrass standard fast A class on hard AI (anything other difficulty is far too easy to beat) and do so to liven up the inter-championship fillers.
You wont get all gold in the championship as the track mix will always include some straights where too much is lost to the top end cars, but there are enough mid and short tracks that consistent top three will progress you with the satisfying “i fought for that with a wheel hanging off in the last race” championship win. Except bloody ovals – i hate blummin ovals.
So i would argue penalising the review based on this part you should mark this up for single player. (and i found rewind was easy to ignore, played with it a bit then raced as i would have. Not saying i didnt restart the odd race but i really didnt find it to intrude once i disabled the notification)
You omitted but I found particularly frustrating was the “not quite sure what i did wrong this time” lap disqualified logo. I dont think I managed many clean laps, even without touching a kerb or competitor and what defines fast vs. disqualified fast has eluded me as there seems to be no rhyme or reason and the user manual is vague to say the least. Killed any beat my own time replay value in one quick hit. Another no-prize for pointless ‘improvement’
However the issues you raised about multiplayer for me were pretty serious and significantly reduced the enjoyability for me to the point where i can be more social more easily in Modern Warfare 2.
Custom public games made for some mad fun and helped amateur organisers and clans create ad hoc leagues and like minded lobbies:
If you wanted no holds barred you told people as much and had a fun little demolition derby.
If you wanted rubbing is racing but anything more is cheating you could.
You could even have precious “i would have gone faster but you block passed me every lap” hotlappers all in one room with no collisions (although i find that more distracting – being passed through my car – than if i get an anticipated nudge on the back corner when you are wheel to wheel into turn one)
If you wanted to dominate in your little pet project you could lock down tight to fairly specific versions, battle the best of the MkII Golfs or CRXs or simply wanted to lock to car and let people choose auto or cockpit view only.
I think the argument is that these various game types intimidated the mass majority of n00b wallets but the same is true of any game whose online following outlasts the initial gold rush hype machine half-life you describe. I remember being completely lost playing Halo as CTF and objective games were not in my gaming lexicon. But i learnt, in public lobbies and passed on this knowledge to others and gained friends and regular adversaries.
I know this exists in private lobbies but unless you pre arrange a full room in a forum or are in a clan you probably wont get enough players to have an 8 player race. Certainly not past the launch window or after MW2 came out. So you are left with randoms and fixed options on the public side. If custom games were public you could create a room invite two friends and gradually fill up with randoms, kicking people who didnt play fair just like FM2.
Online in FM3 public i spent my time getting good places racing clean but getting tboned, punted, sideswiped and tail tapped into a spin on the first corner and the next two laps catching up to the hot lapper who was in a tuned to the limits straight line class topper. And if i dared win a few times, especially in a lower class car that corners i would get booted and have to start in a new room and repeat the frustration with varying levels of idiocy
Even PGR 3 which is much less serious racer allowed this self demarcation and friend discovery – you could tell a deliberate ramming to “sorry lost it on the brakes after slipstreaming you”
Its not like this issue doesnt affect other games – Halo, CoD and MW2 all have a barrier to entry and certain gametypes for acquired tastes and game styles and they manage to balance peer-acceptable play and derision for n00b choices with social pressure. To offer a sample of the hardcore they mix it all up, offer a selected set of defined types from community proven favourites and private is only for NoShi 2 hour CTF marathons for those who like to play with one hand behind their back to keep in trim for tournament play or bragging rights.
The multiplayer faults are all small, subjective, financially defendable from a pragmatic point of view but nonetheless damaging to the point where by trying to force a safe community they have created bedlam for the mob and a private elite invite only sub culture. And sadly that sub culture is often the people that inspire the best innovations but it is best when things like Cat and Mouse or Mini’s only on the Nurburgring get developed by one group and pass around the network as the Venn diagram of Xbox friends brings new people up to speed.
Locking this down, punishing the fast and fair, removing the social to make it comfortable for immature and disloyal randoms is a critical error. Not one that will show in first year sales but i would say it is not just the DLC that would suffer from catering to the howling masses but the feedback that makes the ultimate difference to developing a superior sequel rather than a franchise yearly update. So many games have made this mistake stepping to the big time and it’s negative effect is subtle and long term so really easy to mistake for user boredom that demands the now ubiquitous reboot from a new developer. Sometimes it works, but Modern Warfare from CoD from Medal of Honor is an exception not a rule, more often than not the IP rights are gradually traded down until it is in the hands of a company best known for Flash games and iphone games. The name remains but the soul is lost.
Not fun and seriously, seriously damaging to my enjoyment. Fix it and I will play this and buy (decent) DLC for years until the next one. Don’t and i am afraid apart from the odd hot lap and guilty sunday session I will also be one of the many who rushes off to the next best thing when my friends migrate there on release.
I broadly agree with your points about single player and multi player experience, what they polished over from FM2 and balanced is marred by a matchmaking system that doesnt breed the next generation but locks away the old hands who could inspire them to excel and instead leaves a sandpit for the kiddies to play in until someone poops and runs home to mommy.
lol PadawanJedi , nice comments! But will T10 listen? lol