Review
Your car rolls into its slot on the grid, sweeping into position with silent majesty. There's a hushed silence before finally, engines roar into life around you as the lights count down. As each light goes out your breathing gets heavier: you can feel your pulse through your hands as you grip the wheel so tight your knuckles turn white. The final light slips away, you flick it into first and catch the clutch on the bite, wrestling for control of the wheels as you pull away towards the line.
It's that feeling of excitement, of anticipation that really grabs you about Forza Motorsport 3. More than the gorgeous, silky smooth visuals, the hundreds of cars and customisation options, or even the beautifully clean and efficient menu, when you get down to the racing, it grabs you by the short and curlies and doesn't let go until it's done with you. It's bewildering, it's intense and it leaves you feeling funny, not to mention sore if you've got all the safeties turned off.
Racing sims are labelled car porn for one very simple reason: their appeal lies in the obscene levels of detail and accuracy to the source material that can leave newcomers and amateurs tearful with confusion and rejection. Gran Turismo has for years been King of the Simulations, bridging the gap to the mainstream with its unparalleled range of vehicles, lurid hardcore sensibilities and technical mastery of its PlayStation homes.
There was always something lacking from Gran Turismo, though. It's been more than a decade since Gran Turismo 2 built on the original's success, and in that time hardcore racing sims have uniformly failed to offer anything but patronising platitudes to casual gamers. As Need for Speed: SHIFT proved recently, casual gamers are crying out to play racers with a more realistic twist.
Like its predecessor, Forza 3 features an incredibly customisable difficulty and control system. There are five different basic setups, but you can edit each of them as you see fit to go with a custom scheme. Adjusting options will either give or take away a bonus percentage to your results: give yourself an easier time and you'll earn a bit less, make it tougher and you'll earn more scratch. The onus is on the player to experiment until they can find the perfect balance: you're never pushed to increase the difficult or mocked into taking an easy ride.