If you're even slightly familiar with Gresh you know that he is a gear head...BIG TIME. That makes him vomit at the sight at Burnout and instantaneously ejaculate at the mere thought of Gran Turismo. Myself, I'm exactly the opposite. The most realistic race game I'll play is PGR. Now that you have those wonderful images in your head we're going to each go through some impressions of the Forza 2 demo so that you can get the best (?) of both worlds.

Forza 2 Demo Normal Impressions (Kevin)

Man, you actually have to use the break in this game. I hate using the brakes in a racing game. You can't go faster when you have to slow down.

Also, you shouldn't go trying to bump to other cars off the track...it just doesn't work.

After I got those thoughts to sink in I was able to settle down and teach myself how to play this game correctly, which unsurprisingly does not involve making your finger sore from keeping the trigger squeezed as tightly as possible. I found that the game needs a very tender touch, much like when you caress one these "woman" persons I hear about all the time. You can pound the gas, but your car might fish tail and spin not just shoot off like a rocket. You need to ease into these things, just like a *GASP* real car. It's a much different school of thought than I'm used to applying to my racing games. Keep that in mind if you're like me and you want to try the demo out, you might find that you actually enjoy it.

I remember playing the demo for the first Forza game and HATING it. It fealt very unrealistic for what was supposed to be a driving sim. In this one the way the cars feel is much better. During my numerous laps in the demo I stuck to mainly the first class of cars since my skill just wasn't ready for the super sick ones. I couldn't keep those cars on the track, I got them to go fast very easily but turning? Fuhgettaboutit.

On my lowly SDTV the game looks great, slightly better than PGR 3, but only slightly. I've heard the guys on the 1UP Yours podcast say that there is a MAJOR difference between the SD and HD graphics, more so that usual, so I'm looking forward to checking it out over at Dan's or someone else with more money and space than me.

Overall I was surprised at how much I liked playing the game, but only after I got used to the feel of it. If you check out the demo give yourself some time to adjust to the learning curve. There's a lot of cool features that are going to be in the full version so this one just might be getting picked up by me.

Forza 2 Demo Geek Impressions (Gresh)

Now that you’ve read Kevin’s “arcade racer” point of view, I’m ready to bombard you with things I like and dislike about the demo. I’m going to start with saying what a better job they’ve done with this game. I thought the first game sucked control wise. It never felt like I could take things I knew about driving and apply them to the game with success. Judging the demo for Forza 2, the driving feels much more realistic. It helps that they have an army of experts. You know, like actual racecar drivers, engineers, physicists… you know, experts. It pays off too. I really enjoy playing it.

Other things I really like are the way the developers tried to bridge the gap between gamers like Kevin, and gamers like me. When you pick your cars, it gives you what I call “dummy stats” so you have an idea of how the car will drive (acceleration: 4.5 etc.). If you tap the “Y” button it gives you useful information like horsepower/torque, weight, weight distribution; things that actually come into play. I also really like the telemetry function. Most of it is junk, but under the Tires Misc. tab you get the really useful stuff. It lets you know your camber, tire temps, tire pressure and tire wear, all in real time. The function is more than annoying while you’re driving, but if you watch your replay, they give you tons of information that you can use to go back into the options and set your car up to better suite the track. It’s about time something like this came along. I think my favourite thing about it thought is that if you rock a stock car, the alignment isn’t perfect. Car’s that come from the factory never have anywhere near a good alignment, and even that got put into the game. Well done Forza guys.

The above does bring out my only concern about the game: how will I be making adjustments to the car? For most people, it’s not a big deal. A simple slider that has “soft” on one end and “hard” on the other will do. For me, I need ridiculously detailed adjustments (think more involved than Gran Turismo). I know you can adjust tire pressure (that’s a great feature) so I have high hopes that I can adjust spring and damper rates on a nerdy level and that I should be able to make basic alignment (come on camber adjustments!) changes. But if I get that kind of detail, what do non car dorks get? It would be great if they could just hit the “Y” button and get a much simpler adjustment window.

On the whole, the game seems to be an improvement over the first game. I actually want to play it for starters. It’s still loaded with shitty music, cars that look good, but not realistic (all Xbox racing games look like the cars are either made of glass or someone spent a lifetime waxing them) and it feels like I’m playing a shitty import car show on SpeedTV. Thank the Gods that this time the game at least drives well.

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