While recent release Need For Speed Shift made headways to curb its arcade like style racing towards a more sim oriented player.  Forza Motorsports is doing the exact opposite taking a near perfect sim racer and thowing some training wheels on it for the casual gamer.  While its still the same Forza sim fans know and love, the game will reach a much broader audience with this approach to the game.  Stuffed with extras, cars, game modes, and other content Forza 3 just might be the best racing game ever made.

Open your copy of Forza 3, and you’ll notice a second disc.  Don’t be alarmed its just a butt load of extra content.  You will be prompted to install this butt load as soon as you load up the game and warned that you won’t be able to access the cars and other features on the disk.  I thought long and hard about this after listening to my own personal Mr. Belvedere guide me through the opening sequences of the game.  What if I didn’t have the extra space, would I be willing to sacrifice the little space I had left on my 20gb?  Well good thing I have a 120gb, so didn’t affect me but it could affect some.  If this starts to become the norm, people are gonna need to start buying hard drives, Ka-ching overpriced Hard Drives, MS has got em and you need em, but thats neither here nor there in the matter of Forza 3.  Maybe a topic for later on.  So, the answer to my original question would be Oh Hell Yes.  From the moment you turn on Forza you are blinded by crisp graphics, and a stylish interface that begs for you to come explore.  First things First, your English butler has your car ready and wants you to get acclimated to driving in Forza 3.  After determining how familiar you are with racing games, the A8 is at your disposal to give you a sneak peak at whats to come in your racing  future.  After your first race, you are prompted to buy your first car.  Which as no suprise is a tiny hatchback in a few similiar variations.  This introductory portion of Forza 3 will show you some of the new features in the game, as well as remind you of the loads of other content that Forza delivers.

With so much to do without ever driving a vehicle in Forza 3 you can get stuck for hours on end, customizing vehicles, creating paint jobs for cars, visiting the auction house, and uploading videos of yourself.  This addiction is not helped at all by the very sleek layout of the features in ForzaAll of these features are so deep and complete its just so easy to forget about actually driving that car you just won Ebay style, and  you also might not want to scratch up the art you just spent hours creating.  If you do manage to get away from the extras for awhile and actually race, you come to find that Forza 3 is equisite. From the breathtakingly realistic venues you will be racing at, or the photorealistic vehicles you are driving, graphically Forza 3 is a gem.  Equally impressive are the controls for the game.  Turn 10 opened the doors to casual gamers in Forza 3 by adding a great deal of customizable helpers in the driving department. T he ability to turn on racing lines, and break assists really help new players to the game, so with the ability to work your way up from a rookie setting that assists you with everything but pressing the gas button, to full out driving simulation game modes there is something for every level of player here.

The actual gameplay delivery and controls in Forza 3 works very similar to its predecessors.  Depending on which difficulty level you will be playing on, the AI is pretty intuitive.  They are still able to spin you out with slight nudges if you start getting a little rub happy.  All of camera angles deliver a fresh new take on the course you are driving.  While in-car drive views are spectacular in Forza 3, NFS:Shift does manage to one up them in the cockpit view.  I didn’t really become to bothered by this as the graphics where so pretty I found myself switching out of cockpit view to get a full screen view of the beautiful sceneries in this game.  Cars handle as you think they would, and coupled with distinct engine noise for each car make a genuinely realistic experience.

You will have quite a few options in how you want to play Forza 3.  Season play, which is a weekly schedule of events, starts you out in the depths of the Forza race world driving smaller hatchbacks and compact cars.  Completing races will of course earn you credits which can be used to buy or upgrade vehicles.  It is very similar to Forza 2 in many ways.  Yet, in the new version you are now guided a little more as to what races are available to you.  These races are then put on a calendar and can be complete acordingly.  If you want to exit the Season mode and attack any and all other challenges you can do so at any time. Everything is at your discretion of how you would like to complete this game, baring that you have the right car class, and credentials.  Forza 3, would be a great game standing alone on its single player merits but with a robust multiplayer component also the game will literally have you spending hundreds of hours in all its features.  Multiplayer has a ton of customizable options to really provide countless variations of your standard race.  Some preset variations include : Drift, Timed Race, Point to Point, Drag, Tag, Cat and Mouse, Elimination. Without playing in the career mode or multiplayer you are also given a free play feature where you can test cars, set hot lap times, and play split screen locally.

All in all, Forza 3 delivers the best driving game to date in my opinion. With a ton of extras, game modes, and customization options, Forza Motorsport 3 provides a great value to all fans of the racing genre. The game hits on all cylinders by slapping a layer of gloss on a framework that has proven to be a successful formula, and while making it accessable to all types of players Forza Motorsport looks like it is going to be giving GT:5 a run for its money, and leaves all competition on this platform in its dust.