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[Devedander]

A final note:  I can’t stress enough how much you NEED to drive with no driving assists and in manual.  Driving assist dampens the feel of every car to an almost unrecognizable point and almost totally kills the point of this game and automatic is just horrible in hard turns and won’t let you really feel the power of your car.  Yes you will go flying off the track a lot and it’s going to involve some painfully slow cornering but you will really appreciate this game 100% more if you play it like it was meant to be played.

Take a few free laps with the SL turned on and no driving assists, drive the first lap REALLY slowly to the point of stupidity, you should be going so slow you have no problem staying on the track the whole way around.  Then next lap pick it up a little, and keep doing that until you get to full speed laps.  This is FAR more effective that speeding through the track too fast and trying to figure out how much earlier you should bake next time, trust me on this I have watched and helped lots of people learn how to play driving sims correctly and this is by far the best way to go about it.

If you decide you like this game more than a passing fad (which if you are into racing I don’t see how you won’t) do yourself a BIG favor and go grab one of those MadCatz MC2 wheels from Target or Walmart or something (get the red one, the yellow one seems to have a really week spring in it) and give it a solid hour of play (this is an hour after you are good with the controller, not just your first hour).  Don’t give up on driving with a wheel when you go careening all over the track.  I guarantee that if you put a solid hour of trying and you were a decent driver before you will never look back.  Nothing is quite like leaning on the break pedal, blipping the throttle and aggressively downshifting through a turn while trying to hold the wheel just right the whole way.
And if you don’t like it, take it back.  But at $50 for a wheel that is VERY comfortable to use and covers Xbox, PS2, and GC all in one I think it’s as solid an investment as Forza.

[chilin_dude]

Absolutely BRILLIANT review, you wrote exactly what I thought for the most part - controlls, sound etc! I loved the detail you went into for all of the sections, definately one of the best reviews I've ever read   .
I also have to agree with you about assists: I went for one race with all assists on and found the game too easy, so I then turned off all of the assists except for shifting (I have no idea how to shift, I can't drive...) and it makes the game so much more challenging!


One of the best points of that you didn't go into much detail about is damage though. First corner I smashed into the wall, and from that point on when I was going down a straight my car was veering left, so I had to keep turning slightly right to go down the middle of the road! That for me topped off the experience and I'm sure I'll be trying to 100% it.

[chilin_dude]

QUOTE(Devedander @ May 6 2005, 07:46 PM)

That's funny, I have said that exact thing so many times when talking about this game I guess when it got to writing up the review I forgot I hadn't said it!!  Is there a way to edit posts?

[MrBones]

I have only found one problem with the game, and it's with the multiplayer.  I tried out the system link with a friend, and there's no voice!  Not in the races, not even in the lobby.  It takes so much out of the experience.

Other than that, I can't find anything but very minor faults in the game.

[XBL_SUCKS]

I found the same thing wrong there is a lack of offline multiplayer I wish it was linked to 4 platers not just 2

[deathx88]

damn nice review, i own the game but never tried it out but now i think i'll play the game after reading your review

 

[djdoconthebox]

I found a huge bug with the Split Screen mode racing in Silverstone, Basically even though I kept crossing the line and beating my mate all the time for some reason I kept losing!!! The stupid lap counter said I was on 0 laps and so counted me as not finishing the race! I kept repeating this and the same thing kept happening he kept winning even though I beat him on track position!

Weird?

DJ

[Daggerx]

agreed in all sections
great review.

[josey]

In addition to this great review (I too think this game rox my sox in terms of real world simulation experience), I believe the decal and vinyl creation process is goringly detailed. I can create a car with whatever I please to put on it and certainly gaurantee that no one else on the planet can have a car that looks like mine. The customizability factor increases when adding this AND custom track setups. You can create 100% unique looking cars and take it on XBOX-Live for everyone to wow at (to an extent of course).

josey

What an A+ game.

[darth_turtur]

QUOTE(josey @ Jul 18 2005, 01:24 PM)

In addition to this great review (I too think this game rox my sox in terms of real world simulation experience), I believe the decal and vinyl creation process is goringly detailed. I can create a car with whatever I please to put on it and certainly gaurantee that no one else on the planet can have a car that looks like mine. The customizability factor increases when adding this AND custom track setups. You can create 100% unique looking cars and take it on XBOX-Live for everyone to wow at (to an extent of course).

[Soullar]

Here's my review :

* Crap game

Because :

- poor graphics.
- noting new in comparison to other race games, same old, same old.
- game AI cheats. If you lose, it's always in the last round, regardless of driving skills or times in previous rounds. This is an artificial way of keeping 'replay' value.

No need to 'review' any further. Simply don't buy.

[incognegro]

[zolik]

[ThaCrip]

devedander said... "A final note: I can’t stress enough how much you NEED to drive with no driving assists and in manual. Driving assist dampens the feel of every car to an almost unrecognizable point and almost totally kills the point of this game and automatic is just horrible in hard turns and won’t let you really feel the power of your car. Yes you will go flying off the track a lot and it’s going to involve some painfully slow cornering but you will really appreciate this game 100% more if you play it like it was meant to be played."

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i tottally agree with you 100PERCENT on this!!! the game aint nearly as fun/challenging when using assists and automatic transmission ... it's way better/takes much more skill to play the game with ALL assists OFF and using a manual transmission. my guess is main reason i like this game so much is it's about as close as u can get to the real thing and im a person who likes going fast on a motorcycle/cars in real life ... nice adrenaline rush! ... my guess is the only people who can really appreciate games like Forza and GT series are people who like do that stuff in real life! ... i mainly like motorcycles more than cars generally speaking when it comes to addrenaline rushes but i have never rode in a fast car yet (but cars games i definately like better than motorcycle games) ... but i do have a likeing towards the "Shelby Mustang GT500KR" and "Shelby Cobra" (and most muscle cars in general) and a few other cars quite a bit in real life and in the game! ... screwn imports! lol (alot of people will probably get upset at that comment but o well)

also what makes the game so much better when ALL assists are OFF! (and manual transmission) is the fact that after u "soup up" your cars Horsepower u can really "feel" the power and it forces u to feather the gas when going into turns etc! this makes it so fun and realistic u cant just leave the gas pedal (right trigger) fully pressed all the damn time like you can in so many other games... cause if u do leave it fully pressed (or something close to it) on a high horsepower car (for example the "FORD GT" when souped up to the max ) u will lose controll of the car if u dont use the gas pedal (right trigger) properly... trust me! ... i think this car is one of the more challenging cars to drive in the game once it's souped up to the max and All assists are off.

your review is a "quality" review to u point out details and aint biased neither which is a major help in a quality/fair review and u definately know what your talking about!

you obviously share the seem "feeling" as me that i get when playing forza and you know what your talking about ... i agree with a high percentage of stuff that u said about forza and gt4. although i have never played gt4 i have played gt3 and im assuming gt3 and gt4 are basically the same in terms of gameplay, right? ... well if thats the case one of the main things that stands out to me about making forza better than GT series is "brakeing and acceleration" u got so much better controll on the xbox's controller as it's "triggers" are basically perfect for this .. basically much more realistic/better feel to it than the ps2's is on GT series.

forza is a game i will be playing for years, (or atleast until forza 2 comes out lol) it's basically a classic as far as im conserned lol ... it's a damn shame they did not release forza for xbox360 cause the project gotham racing series pretty much sucks when compared to forza.... i hope they make a forza type game on xbox360 ... i dont have a xbox360 yet cause there to expensive and you can mod them

my main complaints about forza though are it has a lack of "time trail" stuff which after u beat the game i tend to like time trail type stuff to see if i can beat my times with certain cars etc.... cause the time trails it does have basically force you to use certain cars which if u like the cars it makes u use gernally it aint a problem but if u dont them it sorta sucks... so i basically made my own time trial stuff like using a Shelby Mustang GT500KR on certain areas of the game and i only use that car to attempt to beat my previous records, even though i could easily beat them with a different car i dont cause i reserved certain parts of the game for certain cars i like in order to make my own time trial type stuff... i think u get the idea of what im saying.

also about 2 player... the game pretty much sucks when it comes to playing splitscreen but if u hook up 2 xbox's and play using system link it's SO FUN!

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devendander also said... "I am going to come right out and say it on this one Forza is hands down the best racing simulator I have played on a console ever."

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i agree with that 100percent to.

[ThaCrip]

QUOTE(Maertz @ Feb 14 2006, 09:49 AM)

i agree its a good game with decent graphics, but i like project gotham racing better for some reason. forza tried to be like gran turismo, but i dont think it did as good it didnt even have rally cars.

just a good game? ... to me it's the king of racing games when it comes to sims ... gran turismo is good to, but forza does the realistic feel better if u ask me. as for graphics, i would say forza's are solid although nothing special but the bottom line with forza is "gameplay" and thats where it shines if u ask me cause the engine behind the game is more complex (basically more detailed in terms of handleing etc) than it is with gran turismo .... as for the rally cars those aint even the main attraction of gran turimo/forza if u ask me ... to me, it's just something they threw in there... i think the primary part of the game is basically all the other cars/races besides the rally ones.... besides project gotham racing aint really a sim... it's sorta realistic in a way but where it fails to be sim like is turning etc ... basically xbox wise, my favorite race game is forza followed by "need for speed most wanted" ... obviously need for speed most wanted aint realistic by any means but it's "fun" to play and i like the sound of the cars which amps up the overall feel of the game... plus mot to mention it's great feeling (at times) running from the cops

but about forza and gt again... gran turismo has more cars but the bottom line is most of the cars (past a certain point) are rather pointless as no one really uses them, so bascically once u got all the main cars people like, then thats all that really matters for the most part ... plus i like forza's car selection better overall myself ... mainly cause it's got a better muscle car ralated selection than GT's does (i think, since i never played GT4, but i have played GT3 and based on that i like forza's car selection quite a bit better)

i guess everyone has there own race games they like, but i find it hard to believe that someone who really likes "simulation" race games could not like forza as one of there top games, if not the best ... cause basically theres pretty much only 2 sim games that are top grade and it's Forza or GT (as these two are the main ones people talk about when it comes to sims)