When Forza 2 hit store shelves back in early 2007, it was a surprise success.  No one had ever taken on Gran Tursimo before and held their own, but the developers at Turn 10 had clearly pulled it off.  Combining great simulation gameplay with a selection of more than 300 cars and some insanely detailed custom design options, Forza 2 was the talk of the season.  It was even enough to push Microsoft's other racing franchise, PGR, out of the limelight later that year.

But I was a PGR fan through and through.  The endless hours of tweaks and customization and unforgiving controls of games like Forza had never really appealed to me.  That's why I was so surprised -- and delighted -- to discover Forza Motorsport 3 has taken a decidedly casual turn.

Now before you go getting your Chevy boxers in a bunch, let me just assure you that everything gearheads and racing fanatics loved about Forza 2 is back with a vengence.  They didn't take anything out in an effort to appeal to the arcade racing fan -- instead they put things in.  Traction control, ABS, selectable AI difficulty, a rewind feature, a racing path -- it's all available to racers who want them, and all switch-offable for racers that don't.  Tweaking each of the settings really does make a world of difference.

And yes -- everything you loved about Forza 2 is back with a vengence.  We're talking 400+ cars, 100+ tracks, and an insane level of customization.  If you loved designing your own vinyls before, you're about to lose your damned mind.  Forza 3 introduces "The Storefront," a new virtual marketplace where you can sell the vinyls you've created for in-game credits that can be used on other items in the storefront.  It's still not quite the world our beloved VelocityGirl had promised so many years ago, but it's pretty damned close and we're delighted.

We could spend pages talking about everything that's great in Forza 3, but let's be frank: everything we liked about Forza 3 is everything we liked about Forza 2.  It's that simple.  And while there were a few changes worth mentioning (which we mentioned above) the game played a good deal like it's predecessor.  Still, that's not to say Forza 3 wasn't without it's complaints.

One of the things I'd always loved about the well-intentioned but oft-forgotten car combat game Full Auto was it's use of a rewind feature.  Brought to the public imagination by Prince of Persia, rewind in a car game just makes sense.  If you have that perfect race that's marred by one bad turn or you blinked at just the wrong second and now you're in a rollover, all your hard work will be for naught.  Hitting that rewind button can fix up a sticky situation real quick.  It's brilliant, it makes sense, and it makes everything better.  Or at least, it should.

The rewind feature in Forza 3 is both its greatest improvement and its greatest downfall.  With no penalty tied to using it, it became far too easy to hit that button whenever anything went wrong.  It still takes skill to win a race, but taking out that "oopsy" factor that gets the adrenaline running takes so much out of the game.  I never understood why Full Auto was the only racing game to adopt the rewind feature.  Now that they've added it to a decent racer, I see why.

We were also pretty bummed about the second disc feature.  You'd like to think that, in this day and age, they can get all of the game content on one disc.  Instead you'll need to use the "install disc" if you want access to all of the games cars and tracks.  Once installed, you're looking at losing 2GB of space from your hard drive.  It might not sound like much to a recent 360 owner, but for those of us early adopters still sporting a mostly full 20GB (or worse yet, a driveless Arcade unit) this is a real thorn in their side.  What's worse, nowhere on the case does it say you'll need 2GB of HDD space for an install -- yet it boasts about the 400+ cars and more than 100 tracks.  Maybe it's just me, but not mentioning the install disc is a little too deceptive for my taste.

Our only other real complaint (and really, at the end of the day it was our biggest) was with the way collisions were handled.  Everything felt a bit too much like bumper cars.  Hitting another vehicle rarely ever had an adverse effect on your driving, and getting hit didn't do much to slow things down either.  After awhile it almost became second nature to simply slam into my opponents on tight corners instead of maneuvering well.  It never took them out of the race and it helped me get that little edge to sneak ahead of them since I wasn't slowing down.  For a decidedly realistic racing simulation, there were some incredibly unrealistic collision physics going on.  Keep in mind though, I was playing with the casual settings.  Maybe Forza was just a little too forgiving of my amateur nature.  Still -- even for me, that's just too forgiving.

While it's always easier to nitpick the complaints in a sequel than focus on what made both it and it's predecessor great (which, admittedly is kind of how this review reads), Forza Motorsport is a welcome addition to the Xbox 360 family and a worthy successor to Forza 2.  It may not take any drastic leaps forward, but opening up the roads to some first time drivers is a very satistfying change in the world of simulation racing.

YAY! - Everything you loved about Forza 2 is back.  New options open the game up to casual race fans.
NAY! - Collisions felt like bumper cars.  Rewind made it too easy to fix your mistakes.  Use of rumble surprisingly lax.  Needs 2GB of install space.

For those of you who really hate reading, or only learned to read numbers: - 8/10

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