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Forza 2
By Sparky | June 13, 2007
Last night was driver-racing-tastic! Mike picked me up a copy of Forza 2 and the Microsoft Wireless Racing Wheel for the Xbox 360 and boy is it fun! Forza 2 is not a racing game, but rather a racing simulator. Rather than focusing on being a fun game to play and tossing physics out the window it focuses on accurate physics simulation, and really creates a highly immersive and realistic racing experience. Forza 2 makes every effort to correctly calculate all the forces taking effect on your engine, car, and tires and calculates their interaction with various road surfaces and the laws of inertia to make your in game car handle identically to a real world car with the same conditions and engine tuning. The difference makes it much more difficult to control your car and takes the fun out of the game for people who just want to go fast and crash hard - but bumps up the fun factor for geeks like me!
The Wireless racing wheel only helps in this endeavor: the force feedback and ‘intuitive’ interface make for a drastic improvement in game play. I’ve never really gotten into racing simulations before - a few ‘racing’ games like Burnout Revenge caught my attention for moments here and there, but the true sims were rather boring without a steering wheel, paddle shifters, and gas/brake pedals. Being able to feel understeer and oversteer make all the difference in understanding the laws of physics and their effect on my car, and gives the driver a much stronger connection with their virtual car.
The icing on the cake? They have over 300 cars to choose from including the 2003 RS6, which is close enough to my real-life car to give me the chills. Obviously a single night into my Forza career I haven’t earned nearly enough in-game currency (credits) to buy the RS6 but the mere thought of buying, tweaking, tuning, and painting the car of my dreams keeps me coming back for more! Until I manage to come up with the 100,000 odd Forza dollars I’ll have to be happy with my starter car: a 1995 Volkswagon Corrado VR6 - a decent track car, and one that brings back fond memories of when my friend Eric used to have (and tinker with) a Corrado.
Topics: Gaming, Technology |