This page was last modified 2009-09-03 23:05:40 by Puchu.Net user Choco. (Show history)

Forza Motorsport 2 is a driving simulation game with nice features to help bring new players into the genre.

Go to: [ Game Mechanics and Controls | Good | Bad | Notes ]

Developer	Turn 10 Studios
Web site	http://forzamotorsport.net/
Platform	Xbox 360
Cost	$59.99
ESRB Rating	EVERYONE

Spent countless hours playing this game with my son, who is an opinionated two-year-old that wants to change cars all the time. Not a problem for me, and there are many things to do so that a player like myself who is not really interested in simulating everything can find bits and pieces fun.

Having played the game periodically over the last two years, I think the game presents a great entertainment value. This games definitely make you earn everything, the cars, money, and achievements. But there is also something satisfying about looking at a virtual garage full of cars I can never afford or drive.

Game Mechanics and Controls

• Play Forza 2 as a driver or hire other drivers to race for you.
• Customize cars with upgrades, change configurations and options.
• Buy/Sell cars in-game or online via auction system.

Excellent Ideas

• Racing line for beginner is very nice. In addition to showing the optimal path, it also integrates acceleration and breaking timing information. Green means to accelerate; yellow and red to indicating zones for breaking.
• Creating decorations by coloring, combining, resizing and stretching various shapes together. These layers can then be applied to different parts of the car. Or they can be grouped together and saved for later use. This by itself is already a lot of fun for me.
• Car receives damage if they collide with other objects, and the damage reflects point of impact. Damage caused during the race can also reduce the winning at end of race. This adds not only an element of realism into the game, it also encourages players to be careful and smart when they are out racing.
• It has the McLaren F1 GT, as all respectable racing games should have.
• Many cars, upgrade parts to buy. The auction feature is nifty. Every time a new bid is entered, the auction lives for at minimum another 2 minutes. Now this is nice because it is always possible to get the car you want, if you have enough patience and money. But it also backfires as there is no way to bump up your bid to quickly defeat other bidders.
• Hire a driver to do the driving for you. The driver will take a cut of the winnings, depending on their skills, so one can play this game just to customize cars. There is also an option to spectate on races that are in progress over Live network. Perfect when baby son wants to play car driving games.
• Telemetry display to show real-time statistics about your car as it is running. Even a simulated benchmark function to see preliminary results of tune-ups. Display the graphical wheel temperature view, drive high-powered car and lose grip, watch pretty colors change in real-time as your car spins around the track.
• Photo mode is very well done, allowing a lot of effects to be added to pictures. Some elements (billboard textures?) are rendered funny, such as sparks when used with aperture settings to create depth of field effects.

Annoyance

• Switching between regions is expensive. This seems unnecessary as it doesn't add to the game play and forces people not to have access to certain cars. There is also no warning about the exponential increase in cost for switching, it is almost as if the developers are flipping off loyal players for wanting to collect or try cars from different region.
• Pictures taken during playing is accessible from http://forzamotorsport.net/, but there is no option to batch download. I am lazy.
• Initial car selection is restricted to the manufacturers in your own region in career mode. You also need to play through exhibition and time trial modes to unlock some of the cars. It seems to be a standard in many games, but I wish there are fewer things to unlock in games.
• It'd be much nicer to be able to group shapes when painting livery. Plus an optional work plane so that I could commit the addition only if it makes sense; an option to create check-point.
• An interesting option for exchanging designs: allowing the base color of the vehicle to be changed, but not the livery.
• Tuning cars is more difficult than it should, because it's a real pain having to apply all settings all the time before switching out to main menu for benchmarks. I think this can be done fairly easily on-demand without having to leave the setup windows.
• Vehicle statistics is not immediately accessible when selecting qualifying cars; it's better to be able to see top speed, acceleration as actual value instead of an interpreted score?
• While it does make sense to simulate damage and its effect to the car, sometimes in online races people can permanently take you out of a race.
• Being last place in this game means no earnings at all, including online races. I think the game should reward time invested.

Other Notes

• Tuning/Upgrade FAQ by dyaballikl.
• I have been playing using only the control pad... urgh.
• Pictures, maybe I'll get my acts together and upload more.