Games & Sims: Forza Motorsport 2

[FloydLippencotteIV]

Last week the much anticipated Forza 2 was released for the Xbox 360. I was a huge fan of the first game and I must say the sequel improves upon it in nearly every way.

Just like in the first game you can paint up your cars, but now they've given you more options like being able to write text and select groups layers to form a stamp you can place on other cars in your garage. Check out my Mazdaspeed roadster I painted up in Skip Barber livery. The game even lets you take screenshots in photo mode and upload them to your personal space on the Forza website.


(click for fullsize)


If anybody picks this up add me to your friends list and I'll give you a Skippy MX5 roadster. My Gamertag is FloydLippencott

The Tracks are a lot of fun to drive. Any Skippy Western driver should recognize Laguna from my pics. The version in this game is the most up to date I've seen yet. The configuration is from a little over a year ago when the curbs were still red, and before the walls were pushed back on turns 1 and 6.

New to the game are Sebring, Suzuka, and Mugello. I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've seen Sebring released in a retail game before. I've read some reviewers complain about the blandness to the graphics and some low detail textures on some of the dirt patches, but whenever I read comlpaints like that I just think that they need to be driving faster. The FPS stays pretty high which is what is really the most important.

And before anybody mentions it, yes I know there are far more realistic sims out there available on the PC. They are all excellent products and usefull tools for honing your racecraft. Unfortunatly for the most part they dont allow much in the way of 'game' elements like completing sets of challenges to unlock cars, or buying upgrades to personalize your racecar.

If you liked the first Forza I promise you will love #2. It's a game I've been waiting for since I first picked up my 360 and I am not disapointed. Theres lots of nice little touched where they fixed annoying things in the first game. Now you can fully tune your cars right before you start the race, you dont need to go all the way back to the garage, also garage tuning screens are really well done with lots of information to help describe how your adjustments should effect the car.

[cdh]

very very cool

[rhpearson]

That is neat, one of the neat things of sim racing on a PC is being able to make custom car skins; never seen it possible with consoles before. Very cool indeed.

R