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Not realisitc

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 20
Date: August 09, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I got one 360 just to play Forza 2, happens I got really disapointed with the game when I saw fake shadows and reflections on cars, for example, put the game to run some replay and keep the camera view in back of car, then pay attention to shadows and other details :(

Also, damages are very arcade, even em Simulation mode, the car never loose big quantity of components when involved in accident.
Disapointing was also the fact all cars seems to slizze on road, even with sport tyres and all wings to help grip, far from reality.

Overall, its fun for the body painting and prize/reward system as we progress but the game is far from other simulator titles as GTR2 (PC) or (GT5).

No Fun

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 36
Date: June 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I dont know about anyone else, but i dont have a racing wheel. i am going to buy one, but without one for this game, you cant drive!!!! i spent over 1/2 an hour trying to get around one turn without crashing, and/or skidding out, and spinning. i cant controll the cars with the little mobility of the left stick. they tell you to brake around corners, but when i brake, my car spins in cirlces, and then i have to rive back to get myself started. its not good, i might change my oppinion when i get a racing wheel, otherwise. DONT BUY THIS GAME IF YOU DONT HAVE A RACING WHEEL!

Good racer, but AI is retarded

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: June 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is fun for the first few levels, but then becomes a very tedious grind once you get past level 20. Tracks are too few, and not very interesting. Really need more variety and alot less super twisty tracks. Turn 10 needed more speedways, and less King Cobra type road courses.

Also don't help that the AI are horrible drivers. Racing is a game of giving and taking. I just wish the Forza 2 AI learned when to give ground when they are outbraked into the corner, or just much slower than you are. The AI also is way too overaggressive to the point they will drive through you at any given time. This happens alot if you ramp up the difficulty that forces you to break much sooner to stop from locking up your brakes. The AI also is quite slow in their cornering. It gets quite irriating wiping out as the AI for some dumb reason brakes on the exit of the corner instead of hitting the gas.

The damage seems a bit unrealistic. Even on the highest settings it seems more arcade style damage than anything else. A car shouldn't be competitive enough to go for the win after smoking the wall at 100 mph like the Forza 2 cars do with full damage on. I don't see the point of having damage if your going to use it more towards a gimmick move to promote sales. If your going to have racing damage do it right or don't do it at all. Forza 2 seems to go about half way and stop.

Its nice that they let you do cool stuff to your paint job. Wish they would have a spray brush option to do some fine tuning instead of doing everything with decals on top of decals.

Overall a good racer if all you have is the Xbox 360. I'd honestly suggest the GT series over the Forza series. Not as a fanboy, but from the fact the GT games are more better rounded on all fronts. The Forza series seems to go half way really good then seems to rush through the other half for some reason.

Good - but this is not going to bowl over PGR-3 players

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 20 / 29
Date: July 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I'm reviewing this from the perspective of an experienced PGR-3 player who is looking for another racing game to buy. Honestly this was a bit of a disappointment. Forza-2 is a good game, but it didn't live up to the hype for me.

There is a lot to like about Forza-2:

* Instant race restart - no more waiting for ages just because you blew the start.
* Good feel on a force feedback wheel (takes a bit of getting used to, but the improvement when straightening out while exiting a corner is worth it)
* Well designed and customizable HUD.
* Tuning the cars is a lot of fun - you can drive a replica of your own car, tricked up to blow away the competition.
* Telemetry details are extensive and interesting
* Gear ratios and acceleration times are spot on when I compare my own car to the game.
* "penalties" so you can't do track jumping tricks that just wreck the PGR-3 "fastest lap time" lists.

But... Way over-hyped "realism".

* The weather and time of day is always the same.
* I don't care if the physics engine models tire temperature to within 0.1 F every 0.001s, when you can crash a car at 150 mph into a wall and can still drive it (and win).
* No clutch.
* All gear shifts are sequential. You can't even start off in 2nd.
* Car modifications are hit-or-miss in representation. Sure a spoiler will appear on your tail if you add one, but select the weight reduction package - and all the seats stay in the car, and no roll bars appear.
* Since when did Jaguar "give you" an E-type when you can barely drive round the track. The manufacturer simulation is simply not "believable".
* Engine noise simulation for cars I've driven is way off. For example, the S4 V-8 sounds *nothing like* my real one.

Graphically, it's just not that impressive.

* PGR-3's track models are in a different league. I'm sorry, but if you have played PGR3 and stopped in front of a Burger King, you can read the price of a cheeseburger. I've lived in London and New York, visited Tokyo and Vegas, and the details are spot on - you can go into photo mode and produce snapshots that look uncannily like ones you took for real. In Forza most of the tracks are fictitious, and the small New York circuit is unconvincing.
* Video replay is horrible, you can't watch it rewind then hit play. It blacks out the screen and makes you wait.
* No interior car view. PGR3 had this down pat with incredible details down to air vents and simulated instruments.

And my main disappointment - Plain fun of the gameplay.

* 12 tracks, all circuits. Simply not enough variation. No point-to-point.
* You can drive all the cars immediately. Once you've driven the Audi R8, and yes, it's fast and handles great, you lose the incentive to plow through the levels to unlock it in career mode. I can't be the only one who had a blast unlocking the supercar concept in PGR3 and going back to the track to get major kudos.
* Upgrades are way too easy to get a low end sedan up to "A class".

For me it's only going to serve as a diversion while I wait for PGR-4. It's simply not blown me away.

No interior View.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: June 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

After playing the awesome PGR 3 on my xbox 360, I was fully hyped to play FM2, especially since it touted itself as a driving "simulator". I even got it the day it came out.

When I got it home and plugged in the driving wheel, I was hugely dissapointed. There's no interior view of the car. Instantly, half the driving experience is lost. For example, so much of the Mclaren F1 experience is due to the single front seat with the steering wheel in the middle of the dash. The cool rpm lights on the Enzo Ferrari also play a part huge part of the in game experience of that car. It doesn't hit you on a technical level, and it wont add bumps to your force feedback driving wheel, but it does hit you on an emotional level.

Car designers think long and hard about the look and feel of a cockpit and how the outside world is framed through their windows. This game totaly disregards all of that, instead portraying the cars as purely technical. Even the fact you've stripped out your interior and are looking through a roll cage says something about the car's driving experience.

Yes you can tweak pretty much everything about the motor, wheels, tires and paint job, and yes Forza is that much better on the Microsft Driving Wheel than PGR 3 (and definitely NFS Carbon!) but all that is lost without the full driver experience of actually *sitting* in the car instead of floating above it.

Also the weather never changes. Why is it always sunny? How about some tough driving conditions? wet weather? fog, icy roads? Look at the weather that occurs at Le Mans! 24 hours rain or shine. Normally I wouldn't mind, but to me these are all vital parts of how you experience the car. It's not just about the motor.

I played this for two days, but finally reverted back to PGR 3. If you are a gear head this product is for you.. actually even then I'm not sure it is. This game does not offer the full driving experience.

Forza not Funza

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 8
Date: August 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Me = very experienced, objective gamer. played many a racer. this just isn't the one folks. It has the standard fare. Flashy cars, customize and upgrade them. Paint them.

Criticisms:
- it's not fun period.
- if you dare run off the track into a little spot of dirt, you might as well be driving a turtle in a tar pit. you drop from 100mph to 0 in .1 seconds. no i'm not exaggerating.
- if you happen to hit a side wall with the side of your car, instead of just bouncing back into the track with some kind of realistic action-reaction physics, you almost always have your back end spin out into the track infuriatingly. Totally unrealistic.
- textures are really mediocre (backgrounds, tracks, etc).
- tracks are boring. There are only a few that are inner city, downtown, with flashy lights and interesting things to enjoy. The rest are just pedestrian.
- graphics in general, are just okay. This is a next-gen title, it needs immersive ultra-realism.
- it gives you the illusion of track variety, but there are barely more than 10 or so...they're simply reused in different races.

The closest release time-wise for comparison is DiRT, which is a more graphically pleasing, more fun game to play with a better presentation in general. Much more variety in DiRT. PGR3 is showing it's age but seems to have more variety as well and PGR4 is on the way with more promising dynamic weather effects...

None of these "sim" type games are as fun as the non-sim racers, like Burnout. Flatout is returning with a new offering and Burnout Paradise is coming soon with a more open-world game play (like Test Drive Unlimited). These games are just simply more fun to play. Test Drive Unlimited incorporates some Sims-esk (I mean the game "The Sims") functions where you buy property, buy cars, put `em in the garages, test drive `em, race `em around, etc...Games like this simply have tons more to do giving you more longevity to the title. You can drive around the Test Drive island for hours and hours...And you don't sacrifice graphical quality in these titles, quite the opposite.

The bad side...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: May 19, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is a very fun and difficult game. The bad side is, that tis for xbox360 only and taht console burn itself.

The ultimate car simulator?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: July 17, 2008
Author: Amazon User

A good simulator is a beautiful thing. I remember way back when the first Gran Turismo had come out in Japan and a friend of mine showed it to me (like 6 months before it came out in America) and I first glanced at the hidden high-resolution mode. I remember thinking that it didn't look like a playstation game and didn't play like one either. It played like something from the future, like something brought back in a time-machine. Every since Gran Turismo people have been trying to steal its thunder with their own driving simulator for the masses. The first one that made a dent was Forza for the Xbox. And naturally when the long-awaited 360 version came out people were excited (and especially since Gran Turismo 5 has been ages in development the full-priced tech demo called Prologue is a disappointment to some as it lacks full-version...depth). It ain't perfect. But it really is quite a beast.

If you're looking for the perfect driving simulator you can look somewhere else (Gran Prix Legends maybe...now why don't they make a console version of that?). While there are good tracks, there's no Monza, no Longbeach, ect.,ect. (crazy to say it, but the best track selection is still in Ferrari F355 Challenge for Dreamcast and Grand Prix Legends for the PC). The controls are great, but they can frustrate as well. The graphics are beautiful, but not definitive from my viewpoint (even in high-definition). And then there's the irritation of the letterboxing in standard aspect ratio which FORCES you to run the darn thing in widescreen ratio if you don't want a huge chunk of your screen empty (and makes me have to keep switching the aspect ratio back and forth... Urgh!). And if you don't want to fly off the road into the dirt over and over and over.... you're going to have to concentrate on your driving and tweak your setups like never before (when oh WHEN are they going to start putting in some kind of auto-tuning wizard?). But the upside...ah the upside.

I've been playing racing games since Rad Racer on the NES. I've played every kind of racer you could imagine over the years, and very near and dear to my heart are good racing simulators (provided they don't get to PC levels of complexity that drive men insane). This game may not be Gran Turismo, but it definitely is its Nemesis. The soundtrack turns itself off during an actual race, but if it bugs you during menus you can turn it off. The controls are precise and smooth. The level of car data available is almost too much to fathom. The graphics on a high-definition display are incredibly crisp and clear. And the car A.I., all so often the weak point of a racer, is pretty darn awesome. So many times I was racing, and one of the other cars tapped me just right to spin me out and send me into the wall. Call it what you like, but I swear it was on purpose.

The meat of the game, strangely enough, is not the racing. It's the car collecting and (RPG/racing fans rejoice!) Leveling Up. That's right. You Level Up your cars in this game through winning races with them, simultaneously leveling up yourself. As your car gains levels you get discounts. As you gain levels races are unlocked. You also get to add a custom paint job and decals to your car, turning it into your own work of art. And that's where all the depth hits you.

You see, you can't just buy the most expensive upgrades for any car and go to town with it. Some races have weight requirements, some races have horsepower restrictions. You'll find yourself undoing upgrades so you can enter the race. And then you'll find that certain upgrades will make your sweet ride totally unusable simply because the car-type isn't suitable for that oh-so-pretty turbo tune you saved up for. I found that out the hard way. But on the upside, when you finally figure out how to maximize your car (I took a Porsche 911 Turbo into Unlimited Class through a powertrain swap, every engine upgrade, and every handling upgrade possible), you'll really love driving. The key in my case was discovering the tire and rim upgrades combined with the downforce upgrades. Trust me, the difference in handling with wide, super-slick tires with extra-large, extra-light rims and three downforce upgrades (spoiler, front and rear flaps to decrease lift) is HUGE when you've got an S or U class monster.

While there aren't ALL that many races to compete in and you'll find yourself doing some over and over and over on the same glorified oval tracks, the tracks are fairly well designed (not Gran Turismo 1 or 4 well-designed but passable for fun driving), and can be very very pretty on a good display. Personally I find more gratification in finally getting that tuning setup on a car just right (or getting just the right upgrades), painting a car with a neat custom pain job, and seeing my skills as a driver increase as my car increases it's drivability through upgrades and tuning tweaks. That's where the real fun in this game is, that's where the gameplay is at. I've restarted races countless times because I got tapped and hit the wall, getting more frustrated each time, only to find that those two or three upgrades or tweaks made my car unstoppable.

Thankfully, you can also make a LOT of adjustments to the difficulty of the game (including the now-famous driving lines to guide you), so if you keep spinning out and cars keep racing ahead of you, you can turn the difficulty down a notch at the expense of extra credits you would earn for a difficulty bonus. The actual damage simulation is pretty neat on a cosmetic level, with mirrors and bumpers ripping off, pain jobs getting scratched to steel-wool proportions, and windshields shattering. It's still not perfect of course (only Grand Prix Legends lets you blow out your transmission on the starting line by red-lining in neutral as far as I know), but the effect of hitting walls with simulation damage on can make your car undrivable if you hit a wall head-on at 200MPH. The replays at kind of neat (worth watching but still not Gran Turismo level), and the car views are great

For the inevitable Forza 3 I have the following recommendations: More real-world, world-class tracks such as Monza, Silverspring, Monaco, and Long Beach. They would add tremendous depth. Also, race series in which you must complete every race in order, larger numbers of cars to race against, an auto-tune wizard, and maybe some dynamic weather and time-of-day changes to make the tracks less boring. I say if you're going to go for realism, go all the way. Make those changes and a few more (I loved how Gran Prix Legends had the car's handling change based on how much fuel was in the tank and how your car would break apart differently every time when you had a crash).

If you dig the whole car collecting aspect of racing games and really dig simulators this game will be right up your alley. If you just want to race and feel the racing atmosphere you might want to look elsewhere (I thinking GRID). I don't enjoy this game more than any other simulator (the most fun one I've played yet is Gran Turismo 4), but it IS a very different kind of game and an enjoyable experience all-around. I just have a LOOOOONG way to go before I unlock everything (just like every other simulator I own). See you on the track race fans!

Forza for the Next Generation...just as you'd expect!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I will keep this short because it will say pretty much what the rest do...great graphics, deep gameplay, and wonderful number of cars (although I could personally do with a few less of the "reward" cars you earn). If you played Forza on the original X Box, this game will seem VERY familiar. In fact, most of the tracks are the same. There are quite a few more cars this time around, and the variety DOES ensure there's one or two in there for everyone. Overall...if you are a car nut, DEFINITELY pick this game up. If you are just looking for a racer...I'd still say the Need for Speed series is your best bet (I received "Most Wanted" free when I bought my 360, and I'd honestly say it's still more fun to play) With that said...there are MANY more things to love than to hate in Forza...you can't go wrong!

Best Driving game available.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game rocks it is the best driving game available right now. The graphics are second to none. The tune ability of the cars and paint options are fun and an important addition to the game. The game does take a bit to get used to as far as driving the cars and cornering in the cars. The online playability is excellent and competition is fierce. The only thing I really did miss is the weather there is none its always blue skies and sunny. What about rain or fog or even night driving. Overall lots of fun though

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