Forza Motorsport 2

"Certainly a racing game not to be ignored this year on the Xbox 360."

Forza Motorsport 2 manages to squeeze in hundreds of vehicles, a good variety of tracks, an advanced car modification system and much more. This game is your world of motorsport on Xbox 360. Forza Motorsport 2 suits hardcore car veterans and those who don't know so much about cars.

You can jump right into the racing using either the "Arcade," "Career" or online modes. The arcade mode offers you between free run, time trials and races. The free run lets you take your chosen vehicle on a track of your choice. In the time trials, you are put in a specific car for a specific track. The races in the arcade mode also put you under specific tracks. You can achieve a bronze, silver or gold medal in these modes. Earning these progresses you completion percentage and rewards you with achievements.

On the other hand, you may just want to jump into the career so you can earn yourself credits and more achievements. The career can be more rewarding to you if you step the difficulty up. For example, you can make racing more challenging by putting the AI up to "Hard" or by disabling TCS and ABS. Disabling one or more of these variables I wouldn't recommend for first time drivers. Without these, you'll need to adjust to the way you race as it makes a great impact. When the race is over you'll earn credits - even if you didn't achieve first place. Your credits can vary dependant on your positon, difficultly and statistics of your car. During any race, you can hire a driver to complete it for you. There are many drivers available but it is important to choose the one you think can win the race. It tells you where they are from and their skill level. Making sure you have the right car also can ensure they win. When hiring drivers they can take a percentage of your credits from the race.

What makes Forza Motorsport 2 so great is after each race you can see why you earned so little or so many credits. It shows you if you had credits deducted because of damage done to the car parts (if set to Simulation), credits earned depending on your car levels and such. Usually, longer tracks and more laps pull in more credits too. The more credits you earn then the higher your level is. Not all races are open for entry until you achieve a certain level in the game. The levels required range up to 50. Getting to 50 will take a very long time to get to if you have made the difficulty easy and turned off some variables. Once you reach past certain milestone levels (such as 10, 20, 30...) you unlock achievements.

Not only can you play by yourself but you can play your career online. This works in a similar way except you choose what tracks you want to race on, what cars you want and rules. The more difficult you make it then the more you are going to be rewarded. So by creating or going in a lobby with a long track and many laps will sure to get you more credits. The more people present means the credits sum is also increased. Again, many things can be tweaked to try and earn more credits. Just like the single player career, you can still progress this way.

Other online modes includes to ability to enter tournaments or enter non-career races. If there are any free spaces during a race and a friend decides to join, then they can either wait in lobby (whilst you are racing) or start spectating. So, there is no need to wait until everyone finishes racing.

If you have any spare cars that you want to sell, you can either sell them back automatically (although not a lot of credits is given) or auction them off at the Auction House. The Auction House is another popular online mode where users can show off their creations. People can bid or buyout your cars depending on the options you have set. Putting up a car for auction deducts a small sum of credits but if you have been creative, you could end up making a profit. With the ability to decorate your cars thanks to the decals and paint options, you can auction these off. Decorating your car costs you no credits. There have been some very beautiful creations over at the Auction House - some that can sell for millions of credits. To stop others from stealing your designs or from modifying them you can lock that design which is quite handy. The Auction House works well and is a great addition to finding the cars you want in your garage. The garage is your home of cars. You can have your favourite cars starred too so you don't have to scroll though them all the time.

A times you'll be addicted to looking through the Auction House. You can often get in bidding wars because you can not set yourself a maximum bid limit.

Multiplayer can also be played locally by split-screen or a network. Playing on a network requires more copies of the game and other consoles. You can also set up a multi-screen view but this way can prove expensive for many. The concept of this is a good idea, still.

Whenever you race on a particular track, your times are recorded to a scoreboard. If connected to Xbox Live, then these scores are transmitted to a server. Those who make it into the top 100 scores get their replays saved. So, you can watch how others managed to get through a track so fast. The time trials mode under "Arcade," let's your race against others' ghosts. It's good to see how your friends managed in a race. It shows you what car they used and of course their times. The scoreboards can be filtered to show nearby players to your score, overall and local.

Now, as mentioned earlier, Forza Motorsport 2 can suit both hardcore veterans of motorsport and others who are not necessarily into the technical side. Its interface thankfully can help you out when coming to upgrade your car. This mode contains a great variety of options that can help you out in races. Some races have specific rules applied to them. This may include only to use "S" class cars or to have no upgrades whatsoever.

Most races can take less than ten minutes to complete. Again, this is all dependent on your car, what upgrades you have applied and what difficulty you may have it at. At the end of the "Career" section, you have "Endurance Races." These can last for quite a while. Some can take well over forty minutes. Although these can be quite long for some, you are rewarded with a much larger sum of credits. Completing certain parts of the career mode unlocks you new cars, discounts and achievements.

Purchasing cars is essential for being able to enter some races. You can buy cars from within the career or pop into the Auction House to see if you can find some better deals maybe. The cars can be decorated using new paint (you can choose from a variety of colours, have only the manufacturer colours visible, choose from special colours and more). There are many decals that you can put on. Depending on how much time and how much creativity you put into it - you can make some rather nice looking cars. The decals consist of many shapes, patterns, letters and such. These can all have their sizes, colours, position and rotation changed. Each side of the car can hold up to a 1000 decals (the front, sides, back). Two or more decals can also be linked together so you can move them both at the same time. Linking decals together may be ideal for when you are creating a particular object.

To save time you can also copy contents from the left side of the car and put them over to the right. The same applies also from right to left. Furthermore, there are a few more options available including the ability to tint windows. Within this mode, you can move the car around to see how your work looks. It can be a bit awkward to see your car at times since the bottom menu can overlap it. When it comes to saving your design, you can have it applied to the car and/or saved to the designs catalog. So, in the future you can recycle your design onto a new car without having to start again.

Forza Motorsport 2 isn't all that easy. Playing it for the first time can be different from your typical non-simulation style racing games. So, it is essential to get a good feel of the controls and the cars. Each car feels different and you can really feel that a car is heavy or light. Having driving aids can help. You can put in a braking line that guides you when to brake. It will take quite some time to get through the "Arcade" modes and much longer on "Career." After you've raced so many times on a track you'll often start to think there should of been more tracks.

There are many more small but cool things included in Forza Motorsport 2. During a race or replay you can take photos. These photos can have various effects applied to them. Once you are happy you can save them to your storage device and view them from within the game later. You can also upload your photos to the official website. This lets you download them as JPEGs and use them as you wish. The photo mode works similar to that of Project Gotham Racing 3. Unfortunately, you can't share your photos with your friends direct from the Xbox 360. That would of been quite a neat addition also. Gifting your cars is also an option. You can gift your cars to friends to maybe help them out or just a sign of being nice.

Graphically, many of the cars look very nice. The reflections, colours and such make it stand out. It's a shame that some of the tracks don't look quite so nice. If there was one improvement that could be made, it would be to improve the visual appearance of the tracks. There is no weather conditions either or day/night. As this is motorsport, this is probably acceptable to understand. By default, you'll have a third-person view of your car during racing. You can change this to first-person if you like. There is no cockpit view though like some other racing games. You can look left, right, up and down using the right thumbstick. Holding Y will automatically look behind for you. You can often use this to try and stop a car from sneaking past you.

When you crash, your car's appearance can change. You will see scratches, broken windows, fallen off bumpers etc. The damage model to this game is incredible. Crashing into your opponents and going off the course gives you time penalties. This can affect your placement in the scroreboards. You can keep track of the damage by tapping the LB button during racing. Also, during racing, you can press up on the d-pad. This presents you with some very advanced statistics. Although, not too important, it is appealing to motorsport enthusiasts.

The game sounds great. Different cars have different engines, thus providing us with a variety of engine sounds. If you ever happen to crash, then the sound created by this is great. Aside from the sound effects, you have the soundtrack. It goes well with the racing genre. The soundtrack is present during the menus of the game. During racing you have no background music although you are free to use your own custom soundtracks thanks to the Xbox 360. Would of been nice to maybe have an option to play some of the music from within the game still.

Forza Motorsport 2 provides you with many hours of racing. This is simply not a game to get done and dusted overnight. With the added online modes this should also increase your chances of continuing to play. Although not perfect, it can be great fun with your friends. Most things come out great in Forza Motorsport 2 - the sounds, graphics, artificial intelligence and the advanced statistics all make this game a very well-created project. Certainly, this year's not to be missed racing game.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/23/07