Don’t get me wrong – Forza 3 is fun … but comparing the driving model between Forza and Shift (keeping in mind I’m talking about ‘feel’ here, and not ‘realism’, since the latter is so subjective), in flight sim terms Forza is Falcon 4.0 and Shift is Lock On, i.e. Forza feels like you’re driving on rails (very very grippy and braking is really strong, making it almost impossible to brake too late) while Shift feels much more fluid, with the car slipping and sliding around the track.

Last night I went back to Shift and suddenly, after a few weeks of half-fun, half-frustration with the game, I just got it. Suddenly, I was driving more aggressively and also somehow keeping it more under control. And, of course, the nice crisp sharpness of the graphics was gorgeous.

I’ll keep going with Forza 3, of course, but its letdowns have given me a whole new appreciation for the things that Shift gets right.

felipe
Basically Montaya says: “ok this isn’t a sim like real sims, but common let’s give them a big applause and buy this game. Ju ju just do don don’t ask me why! Yeh I know it’s not a sim but still ju just buy it and end of story!”

No that’s not what I´m saying. I pointed out that it is no traditional sim but still fun for people who like this type of game. If driving games in general are a turnoff for you, you shouldn’t be buying it.

I bought a Xbox specifically for Forza and I enjoy it very much as it’s a nice diversion to more serious simualtions.

What I am agree with is mostly good colors. I am so sick already with all that “nextgen” coloring. Abandoned the last Fallout because of its annoying totally green, blue or brown look. It’s nice to see a game that do try to render not “cinematic” but rather realistic view.

There also seems to be a bias with respect to the performance of a certain countries cars with the viper 08 dominating the leader boards at most circuits in a number of classes, and muscle cars in general can be overloaded with bhp and torque and just thrown around corners, beating the likes of Bugati, Ferrari, Audi, et al .

Basically Montaya says: “ok this isn’t a sim like real sims, but common let’s give them a big applause and buy this game. Ju ju just do don don’t ask me why! Yeh I know it’s not a sim but still ju just buy it and end of story!”

This is definately getting weird! BTW Montoya Gran Turismo 5 prologue i.e. a demo has much better graphics than Forza 2.1! p.s. I hate GT5p!

mikem: Oh yeah- there’s no smoke coming off the tires.Makes me wonder whoever did the review actually… well never mind.

DeadStar: I hate the Xbox 360 or any console but I was forced to buy a 2nd hand Xbox 360 just for Forza 3

Who held a gun to your head and forced you to buy an Xbox 360?

Anyway, enough about graphics. While I enjoy a lot of the different aspects of the game, the racing part is the one I’m mainly interested in. The maximum of 8 cars in a race makes a lot of the races on the bigger GP tracks a bit boring, I enjoy races on the smaller club courses more. I would gladly have sacrificed the 60fps framerate to accommodate bigger fields of cars. The pit stops are also very basic and there are no flag rules.

The cockpit view is not very immersive compared to most PC racing games, it feels very calm in the cockpit. Not much shaking and stuff going on (might be because there ain’t a lot of bumps and stuff modelled in the tracks perhaps?). The way the driver holds the steering wheel also looks a bit odd. You can change the FOV in the cockpit, by enabling multi screen (you don’t need more screens for this).

I feel they haven’t really added much to the racing part of the game other than the cockpit view and clutch support. The new storefront is great though if you enjoy making liveries and stuff and like to share with others.

Oh well, now it might seem like I hate the game. I don’t, I just hope they would add some more features to the racing because some of the longer races makes me sleepy.

Photo mode applies some kind of post-processing that makes those screens look that good, I agree that it can be misleading but most people know that photo mode produces enhanced pics.

It was much more extreme with Gran Turismo 4 on the Playstation 2 where the photo mode shots had almost nothing to do with the in-game graphics. If I remember correctly, they even had higher-resolution models just for the photo mode.

It isn’t that extreme with Forza as the photo mode shots aren’t completely different to what you get in-game, still they are enhanced indeed.

All good points, and I agree. I guess what bugs me the most – something I’ve just never been able to get over with consoles – is the complete lack of sharpness. I’ve just gotten so used to seeing razor-sharp, antialiased PC graphics that going back to the significantly lower standard of consoles always feel so extreme.

I think part of why this bothers me so much is that, for example, the screenshots posted above, are lightyears ahead of what you’ll actually see in the game … it is just quite simply not possible to have anything approaching that level of sharpness in-game. Feels like false advertising to me.

I don’t think the graphics compare to GTR2 at all. If you look at the lighting, shadows and everything, that’s way ahead of what gMotor 2 (GTR2′s graphics engine) offers.

The comparison to Shift is interesting, personally I just don’t like the effect-loaded look they have been going for. It can be fixed on the PC but console users are stuck with the standard stuff, including the overload of fictional objects.

All in all, I just like Forza’s graphics better…but that may very well be personal preference

Forza 3 is definitely million miles ahead of Gran Turismo 4 which I always thought was an overated car collection game with bumper car physics but it looks like Gran Turismo 5 will be great and I think I will need to buy a 2nd hand PS3 when Gran Turismo 5 gets released.

I wish PC had an answer to these Console only Sims in terms of game shipping content.