First race was, uh, interesting? I guess you can ride the brakes hard from entry to mid-corner in a 2010 R8 and not get a hint of oversteer? You know, I don't consider myself insane like Frederf and there's plenty of actual hardcore sim opitons out there for his tastes... but, come on. All I'm seeing here is Turn 10 devolving into the Project Gotham Racing model and not sticking true to their roots. That's my main complaint.

Oh well, when Turn 10 was contacted to comment this is all they had to say:

The ongoing commentary continues

The season play/calendar is actually pretty fun. I like it. But, you can still go to an Event List if you don't want to go through it that way, I believe.

Besides that, LIKE I SAID BEFORE, the game is still pretty fun even after all of its dumbed downess. After a few more races it just seems like they made the tires even grippier than Forza 2.

i think you missed the point. that post was purely sarcastic/humorous. i really enjoy forza 2, NFS shift is fun, and the PGR series is pretty fun too. all pretty different games, but all fun.

You mean there were posts in this thread by you which weren't blatant trolling?

PGR is fun, NFS Shift is fun and hell I like a bunch of the NFS games. I've never played the ones beyond Most Wanted though except for Shift. And, hell yeah, I've been loving Gran Turismo 1 to 4 and Forza 1 to 2 and my whole bitchfest isn't frederf style "zooommmg no realistc tyre deformation due to application of excessive lateral G in the corners!" but more along the lines of "Wow, is this game going to dress me, feed me, and wipe my ass too or are they saving that for Forza 4?" dumbed down. I mean, come on, Forza 3 has a ANNOUNCER/INSTRUCTOR for the menus. Of a racing game.

The races have been pretty fun so far, the season play I'm liking more and more, and the auto-upgrade function is neat feature although I personally like picking the upgrades individually myself. The interiors really are shit, though. The World Championship races are pretty interesting with a race every 2 weeks.

actually, i did very little trolling. i just tend to make my arguments on the internet with a lot of hyperbole and sarcasm.

So I finally got around to playing the demo, just doing each of the five cars once. My initial impression: wow.

The good:
-Interiors look great. Gauges are hugely readable, you feel like you're in the driving seat.
-The AI is way, way smarter. I was pulling off legit passing moves on them and it felt like racing and I got only a few minor bumps...and that was being pretty aggressive at times! LIGHT YEARS ahead of the frustration that was Forza 2's AI.
-Engine sounds are 100% legit. NFS:Shift doesn't make me too sure all the time.
-Track graphics are pretty. Much nicer looking than Shift.
-The physics are excellent. When you think the car would oversteer, it oversteers, and you feel it rumbling through the controller appropriately. Same for understeer. It's all very very natural-feeling, and it just begs you to use analog gas and brake inputs...I used to always play Forza 2 with gas and brake on the buttons because it didn't seem to be very helpful to put them on the triggers. Forza 3 feels so much nicer with full analog control of gas and brake. Also, braking and acceleration take longer to accomplish in Forza 3 than in Forza 2, making the cars feel less instantly responsive and ultimately rewarding a truly smooth driving style, which the game makes possible by virtue of its physics and steering (discussed below).
-It's just plain FUN. But that really just combines all the stuff I just wrote into one bullet point.

The bad:
-The traction envelope is quite forgiving, even without driving aids on, but I consider it quite minor because, as mentioned above, the physics within that envelope feels true to life.
-The steering can feel more sluggish than it should, though after a couple of laps I got used to it and it really helped me be smooth with my controls and do some blistering laps. I might actually consider it more of a plus than a minus, heh.
-The annoying countdown sequence as the camera zooms around your car at the start line is unnecessary. However, unlike Forza 2, Forza 3 remembers your last camera position so you can just wait it out and then you end up in the camera position you want, so I can see becoming totally used to that and dealing with it. Still, would be better without it.

I can't really think of anything else. I guess in the demo, the Audi's interior and gauges look a little better than the Evo's but it's minor. Graphics-wise, I can't see the complaints, at this point the graphics appear to be limited by the picture on our 34" CRT HDTV (set to 720p) and not by the game itself...hard to complain at that point! Overall I find the high points in this game to be REALLY good and the low points to be pretty minor.

Initial impression score = A-. I understand that the demo could be very hand-picked to show the best the Forza 3 has to offer, but the quality of the demo really impressed me.

hmm, sounds good. although ill wait to hear what frederfaderf has to say, as he is the true authority in the family.

The interior is a technical matter and not a matter of driver position.

Having gone through sevearl other cars in career mode the textures are blurry as fuck and the resolution very low in many interiors.

And legible gauges? Yeah, sure, maybe in the Audi R10 in the demo but several other cars are beady and blurred.

And this is on a LCD monitor at 1680x1050.

2nd disk is 1.9GB, pretty solid game so far

I like that you can change the size of front wheels and tires independently, adds to the modification tuning aspect. Also the layout/ordering of the mod menu i like.

Ive heard nothing good about their attempts at modeling interiors.
they can only hope for this

The demo probably has the best interiors. If I was Turn 10 that's what I would have done. By the time they find out the 1992 Celica is a POS model/texture wise it's already too late.

Watching clarkma gush in person made my rubber spine bend just a little bit back to appreciating it. It does add a mushiness and a sense of momentum to the vehicles which is good in a racing game. It's too easy to make the cars behave really strangely in a virtual environment if everything is too nervous or precise programatically.

The stupid zoom-rev-rumble start dance still pisses me off. They really could have given you a second or two at your final driving view before the green light. 1.2 seconds is not too much to ask of the ADHD generation is it? I guess it's my fault for not shelling out for a specific Xbox360 wheel, but the controller steering is such a joke. I hold the stick fully to the side and I get maybe 20 deg of steering wheel input because it's kid gloving me. I can't command steering angle beyond the optimum for the current turn which prevents some advanced driving techniques. I found the R10 would SEVERELY understeer with even the most minor of trail braking and even worse if ABS was off and I locked up.

I find the hard AI to be decently fast in the straight but bottle up like grandmas at the nearest hint of a turn. There's no impact threshold for damaged rear taillights. I came up behind some AI car and with the faintest whisper of a brush all the real taillights shattered harking back to Cruizin' USA days.

If FM3 got these types of scores with it's lackluster interiors...GT5 will average a 10.5/10 with it's interiors.

My brother in Montreal has been begging me to get it so we can race.

Opinions here are so divided, I really don't know what to think.

the game is fine, Turn10 are just a bunch of lying cunts

My problem is that Mass effect 2 and COD MW2 are coming out soon, and those are sequels to games I love. Forza 2 really just felt like Forza 1 with fewer tracks and slightly better graphics. Forza 3 kinda sounds like more of the same.

I agree, it's not epic. It's fun, though.

If you don't already have it, buy Shift instead. Forza isn't bad, but I just found Shift to be far more entertaining.

hold out for modern warfare 2

Handling: Everything seems to handle a little better in this version. It's fair because of it, but also a bit different. It does make it feel more fun to drive. What may explain it is everything seems faster too, like you may not be going very quick but the game (especially the beginning micro-tracks) make it feel fast paced.

The interior isn't super detailed, but i'm glad they added it. Makes it feel much more like racing. When i put a cage in my NSX (unlike F2, putting a cage in ADDS weight and helps handling only [thank you logic]), you can see it in the car, and it even obstructs your view a little bit. Also i put racing cams in the NSX (as if it needed more peaky power) and I enjoy seeing the interior tack bury itself til there's no more numbers before I shift.

The sounds are a little better, if the stupid rev sequence before a race didn't occur i'd be able to tell if there is cam lope on my '09 Camaro.

The aesthetics are much nicer. Copying GT5:P, your current car is shown from varying prospectives when you're idle. Very nice. While you can't spin your cars around in your garage (I assume because the lag it made in F2, thanks for realizing this), this view is very faltering.

Parts, i believe, are more expensive. Across the board. I like it a lot, while youy do end up spending many time more than the cost of your car on mods pretty early, it also makes you think out your mods more carefully.

Wings, i don't know I noticed them doing this in the F2, but non-forza wings actually offer a compromise. If you don't want to lose a lot of top speed (or just hate the humongous Forza wing) other aftermarket companies' wings allow for better braking and not as big a hit on top speed - it's just not adjustable. Looks 10x's better though.

One thing though, WHERE'S MY BOOST GAUGE??

So a cage adds weight and improves handling (stiffness I assume) in F2 or F3? I'm confused.

I like more expensive upgrade parts, it always seemed so stupid that you'd always skip past the minor upgrades to get the crazy top of the line full race ones just because it was so cheap and there was no drawback. It'd be nice if the race tires and brakes would actually suck hard until you got them up to temperature but I don't think Forza monitors such things very religiously.

In Forza 2, the rollcage reduced weight and improved handling. In Forza 3, the rollcage ADDS weight and improves handling. I think that's the summary of what Mustang just said, and also in line with what I remember from Forza 2 (though I haven't played it in like 6 months).

Yea thats what I'm wrestling with too. I think I'll end up renting Forza 3 and seeing for myself. I doubt I'd buy it whether I liked it or not though. Maybe a Christmas present?

Thanks Clarkma, that is correct.

I mean the mods aren't horribly expensive, but based on the rate you earn money and the amount of cars you'll be modding (i have 2-4 going at a time for different series) you become poor quickly. I've gotten over 100-120k like 8 times so far and each time i bring it down to 20-30 when modding things. Not that i HAVE to in order to proceed, but they keep giving pretty nice cars real early as prizes (Lotus Elise, '09 Camaro, ISF, M5) so you end up modding them to run their respective manufacture/drive or engine orientation/saloon or coup races.

The calendar is one of the best ideas of the game. Where in games like F2 and GT3/4 you start with a crappy car, buy a pretty nice car and that you can mod to the hilt and win 80% of the races left in the game - this makes you do chamionship races every other Sunday. So while your event races you may be using B or A class cars already, on sunday you're doing a F or D or C class championship race (1 race that's usually 200% longer than event races) so this slows down the player from skipping classes and makes you put money/tuning time into cars you wouldn't have normally and the result is closer races that are pretty fun.
I've used the rewind function a dozen times already. My rule is it has to be during the second half of the race, but it's still useful enough for me not to nix it completely.

Haven't noticed any drifitng points/modes/venues or drag races yet.

I thought the rollcage in F2 was part of a larger weight saving package.

Yeah it is. But we all know the Forza 2 weight saving packages were...rather optimistic. Particularly the most extreme one which contained the roll cage.

I like the fact that you can hear i-vtec switch at 5 800 rpms in the civic si.

The NSX is the shit. F2 and the GT series had always made the NSX a pretty bad platform.
I have 2, a 97 Acura I bought and a NSX-R I won. Since the R is worth like 4x more than the acura i began modding that too.

They both are the most stable RWD cars I've driven in the game. I made the acura full light and cammed to like 10k shifts, the R positive displacement blower and it's already pretty light.

As an A class car the Acura beat the R8 5.2 and 997 GT2 in a clean Nuremburg race on hard. I tried it in my bored over 2.6L turbo E30 M3 A class and it wasn't even a contender on hard.

now ive never owned a console, or been a huge fan of this game, but this ad excites me lol

I caved to my brother's wishes and picked up a copy today.

AI is still kinda meh, if I out brake someone into a corner, they still drive across my line as if I weren't there. Maybe the AI gets better as you get higher up the ladder.

So far I'm enjoying it though.

Now I just need to go buy an eight metre network cable to enable me to hook the whole thing up to my router.

I also cashed in the XBL subscription that came with my HDD. my ID is eriksrud

I've found the AI very intentionally avoids or puts a hit out on you, if you read the tips it depends on the driver. Rossi will pit you off the track if you late brake and give him a shot at your rear 1/4 panel. The majority of other drivers, wait for a high speed corner and make it straighter by aiming for the bump strips and they'll let you by (this is facilitated by you having aero and suspension while they are on stock platforms).

If you want to have a lot of fun that's reminicent of rally driving, try the class based events that are in heats (3 1v1 battles, overall time winner). They do sections of Alfami coast, Rally di Posatano, and Nuremburg ect - they are some the most fun driving in a sim i've had. just make sure to bring an AWD car (or a elise maybe), i used a '09 STi for the C class heats and Lancer VI for the B's. Cobble stone/gravel/hairpins make sure you'll need a little bit of everything, a loose AWD car with enough power for the hill climb sections is awesome - gear ratios matter a lot here too.

I just played my first game online, the cars were jumping up and down and bouncing everywhere.

Was that lag?

Please tell me it isn't always that bad.

That happened in F2 when lag was bad

I like online racing except that the field was either really bad or way better than me. I mean I remember going into F2 racing and seeing everyone driving the exact same Excel-perfect musclecar at 599.999999 PI and cutting mad portions out of the track. There's no qualify session, the damage is turned off, no black flags, no blue flags, no yellow flags... so it's such a dog eat dog arrangement.

What would be awesome is virtual classes of drivers so you could end up playing your own skill level. The real fun is playing your friends but nowadays getting more than 1 friend to have the time at the exact same time you do and actually buy the game and own the console is impossible.

How do I play online, please?

And anyone wants to play with me ?

MY GT is Two Eighty One, BTW

What started out as a joke, has become serious. I have a C4xx Range Rover, and I just won the boosted challenge with it. There's something supremely satisfying about beating a Skyline GT-R, Supra, and Opel Speedster around the track with the Range.

Got the veyron at level 30. You can take around 600 pounds off of it and nudge the power up to 1250hp. I dont know how, but you can make the rear tires even WIDER too. Did a lap of the ring the first try, and you practically can't steer the car using half throttle.

Kind of funny how if you add the racing transmission, you lose 7th gear.

I havent made any cars insane yet, it's not that fun to me. When i got the R8 5.2 i made it twin turbo and still kept it in A-class, but later i tooks the turbos off, added a bolt on and did weight reduction and it's a better all around car for it. Havent lost an online race with it, that and my AWD GT3 N/A engine powered Cayman - i know how to tune AWD cars really well.

Mine is SuperFR4NK

But I don't own Forza 3
or a Gold account
and my wireless access point is patchy at best.

xbox live GT is the same as my user name. i havent started forza 3 yet, but add me if you feel like it, i also play halo 3 and borderlands

You two are useless. I need friends to play with, serious i've had two guys get butt hurt about the way im passing them. One guy just didn't like that I was on his 1/4 panel instead of right behind him even though i wasn't touching him. Another guy broke too early and i went inside cuz this car is light and downforce out the ass and he turned into my line putting me into the grass, which i didn't complain about. I spun out and still caught up to him on the same lap and passed him on a sweeping corner but bumped into him and he had slam on the brakes then continued to bitch about it for 4 laps.
If i lose 5 seconds from spinning out then catch up to you on the same lap and pass you, maybe you should get the F out of the way.

Would you like me to fix that for you?

I'll be on the weekend of the 14th for one night, however it will be my FIRST time playing aside from the demo.

Yes, please do. I actually need practice driving behind other cars, and if i remember right I only beat you once or twice out of like 15 times. F3 gets you to race a bit more in the pack, but since i got some good cars/tunes even on hard i'm out front from lap one. I def need some passing practice.

All the races I do begin with a massive pile-up of peugot 809 or something like that, and me spinning in the grass with my ferrari F50.

Yeah, i find that 50% of the races i get punted off in the first corner by a Beginner (8) in a A565 rated car or something in a A600 race

I'm not a beginner, I'm just a bad player.

I'll take you on in my Range Rover as soon as I get my internet sorted out.

What's the maximum number of laps allowed? Still 75? Or more now?