| Author | Review |
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SpectreSubZero
108,282
TA Score for this game: 1,600
Posted on 22 August 09 at 14:27, Edited on 29 November 11 at 20:51 |
This review has 32 positive votes and 5 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Alright lets start by saying everyone I talked to said this game was complete garbage! But I traded Ace Combat 6 with a friend for this game, and I am far from being disappointed.
The game was released in May of 2007 and the graphics are amazing for an 07' game. Of course current games are a little more impressive as far as graphics, but I'm going to rate this game as if I were playing it in 2007. The controls are considerably better and more responsive then the Nascar series of games. The customization of your car, as far as performance is concerned, far surpasses the Need for Speed series of games. The one thing I really like is that you can't just do every race with one car, and there isn't just one bad a$$ car that is the best in the game. Instead you need to keep a very large inventory of different types of cars, in order to be eligible for different race types. The career mode is pretty expansive with hundreds of races. Here is the breakdown:
Career: (9/10)
A lot of races, and you can unlock cars and discounts from auto makers for parts and other automobiles.
Graphics: (10/10)
I say 10/10 as if I were playing this in 2007, for 2009 I would give it a 8/10. But, I'm sure Forza 3 will have no problem in making this a 10/10. The car details are top notch!
Customization and Car Selection: (10/10)
This game has the largest car selection out there. Easily a couple hundred cars if not more. Absolutly amazing. The car customization is rediculously amazing with every part of the engine, suspension, exhaust, etc., needing to be purchased to upgrade your car.They have just about every car out there in this game. Unlike Need for Speed that has just one ultimate car and you basically go through sequential order of cars, in this game you will need a garage full of cars. Most races have restrictions. So far I would say I'm about 20% through career, and I have about 35 cars in my garage! There is no ultimate car per se. So if you play people online, everyone may have a different vehicle!
Controls: (10/10)
Very easy to learn and use.
AI Difficulty (7/10)
You have to play this game on hard, otherwise you will place first in every race with not even a contender to deal with once you put some money into your cars.
Tracks: (7/10)
I like the racks a lot and the graphics for them are pretty good, but you will see the same tracks a lot!
Sound: (9/10)
Pretty good soundtrack. As you modify your car with upgrades, the sound of your car changes which I think was pretty impressive. The one sound that is not so great are the crashes, like if you hit another car or wall, the sound is kind of bland in that respect.
Other Play modes: (10/10)
Free play, Exibition, and Time Trials. This game has just absolutly endless racing and unlockables.
Achievement Difficulty: (9/10)
They are not so much difficult to unlock, as they are extremely long to achieve. You will have to pump a substantial amoiunt of hours in to this game if you want to 100% the achievements on in this game.
So Overall for this game, I give it a (9/10). The only reason I give a 9 is because the tracks become a little repetative.
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sadelack
46,192
TA Score for this game: 2,108
Posted on 27 February 09 at 00:36 |
This review has 31 positive votes and 7 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
My opinion: fantastic. I love it, but, not for children, I think.
I challenged a 10-year-old to make one lap around Nissan Speedway, which is basically round, and he gave up after an hour.
There are a lot of unexplained details in this game. Tournaments, charts, tables, the linked website--I think there is a lot assumed by Forza2 that may have been explained in the first installment. Interesting that the Microsoft driving wheel accessory was designed in tandem with this game, so it works very well---better than with PGR3 or 4.
This game, the 7th best selling game on the 360, according to Wikipedia, knows more than I do about cars. Tuning minutiae like camber and toe, sway bars, etc. forced me to have a sit down with a few real mechanics and they confirm the real-world effect of the tiny adjustments. There are a few out there who have assembled staggering tuning calculator sreadsheets for each car on each track.
The Brits take road racing pretty seriously, and there are a lot of leagues set up online--2 years after the release of this game they are ragin full on.
The quick match races can be an exercise in stupidity if you are into sim-type racing, with clean rules. Cool, i guess, if you are into smaching up million dollar cars. But I prefer the realistic racing that comes with an organised league that offers judges, review panels, and ongoing series. There's tons of em.
Graphically, I dont see how it gets better, and combined with the wheel's rumble effect, the physics are gripping.
The car design system is fascinating--I can make a neat geometrical design, but some people are able to translate Photoshop skills here and make truly astonishing works of car-art.
There's more, but I'm still exploring the game.
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Aqueously
75,213
TA Score for this game: 1,987
Posted on 17 April 09 at 16:07 |
This review has 19 positive votes and 3 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Finally a racing sim better than Gran Turismo 4...
Forza 2 is fantastic. Great physics, realistic graphics and so much customisation it's actually insane. While the car tuning aspect is on par with GT4, the visual tweaking (such as custom paintjobs, the ability to create hundreds of layers of vinyl, etc.) sets it apart.
With over 300 career races to complete and challenging time trials in arcade mode, this game offers a lot. Almost two years after it's release, I've still not completed it, something I'm only getting close to now.
The damage model is something that was always missing from the Gran Turimso series, and both the visual and mechanical damage in Forza is done very well. If you clip a wall, the bumper will crumple and you may break the suspension or engine. It's a small thing, but a nice addition.
While racing games online are usually a bit hit or miss, Forza is a gem. With online auctions for cars, leaderboards per event, TrueSkill rankings and Quick Races for those not bothered with competing, there is a much to do.
Achievement-wise, they're pretty straight forward for an RPG/racing sim. 'Chieves like "All Gold All Race Types" and "Flawless Race" are contrasted with "Car Broker" which asks you to buy or sell 10 cars online or "All Cars from USA" whereby you have to have exactly that.
Overall, I think Forza 2 is the best racing sim available on any platform. There are a few games that come close, but at this point in time (two years later after release!) Forza is still the benchmark.
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cc99999
252,763
TA Score for this game: 1,905
Posted on 23 October 09 at 15:37, Edited on 11 November 09 at 15:16 |
This review has 2 positive votes and 4 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Monologgin' Review - Forza Motorsport 2
With Forza 3 Coming out around the corner, I've decided to take a look at Forza 2 to see how the game faired throughout its life cycle.
Forza 2 is a racing simulator that is built around many series of one off races which involve certain cars and car classes. The only objective is to win races. Buying cars and upgrading them is strictly voluntary. As is tuning and adding custom paint jobs and adding your own vinyls and liveries.
Forza 2 also includes a simple arcade mode- where you can select your car class and car and race through fifteen tracks; a time trial mode where you have to beat a specified time, and free roam- which is essentially a practice mode.
Of course there is also an online component- but based on the game's achievement structure- it is not the primary focus of Forza 2.
Forza 2 includes a reasonably deep roster of cars from all of the major car manufacturing countries having at least some representation. There is also a nifty online auction house where you can post your own cars and offer them for sale- or try to find bargains on cars you might otherwise be unable to afford if you bought them through the game's offline auto dealers.
I am going to split this long form Monologgin review into three parts
1. Overall critical analysis of the game
2. Comparitive analysis with other current generation racing games
3. Summary
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1. Forza plays well but is it fun?
You have to pardon my sense of detachment when it comes to Forza 2. This is a title that I bought the day it came out, earned 98 gamerscore and sold to somebody after months of gathering dust. I recently picked up the Platinum edition, loaded up the bonus disc onto my HDD and gave the game a serious go on a brand new save.
My goal is to score 970 Gamerscore and call it a day. I have no desire to earn 1 million online credits- legitimately or by setting up an impossibly long race and hosing other online players.
Playing the game started out fun enough. Forza controls well and it is exciting to win a series and find out what new car I've won. This is a shortlived sensation, however, as the game drags on and on and on.
I believe that this is caused by a general lack of track variety coupled with a very bland color pallatte. The car models typically look well- but you don't get that eye popping visual flare unless you enter photo mode and freeze the action. When you do that - the car models are rich and well designed. Outside of this novelty feature- the cars kind of look underwhelming- especially Corvettes- which look boxy and ugly in the game.
Damage modeling is also bad- which may have as much to do with the limitations granted by the licensors and not what Turn 10 may have done design-wise.
There aren't that many tracks in Forza 2. You will easily see almost everything there is to see by the time you reach level 15 in the career. The fact that there are 50 levels to earn shows how skimpy the overall package is- once you get past the car roster and the customization features.
I also don't like the online Auction House. At least not with the way it was implemented. The very basic bidding structure is obtuse and, I think, very poorly done. Sniping auctions as they are about to close is impossible thanks to a timer reset after every bid. You must manually take your money out of auctions when you've been outbid. And there's no way to set your maximum bid and allow the auction engine to take care of the details. Everything about the Auction House seems like it takes two or three button presses too many. This really kills the feature for me.
With the lack of track variety and the repetitive feel of the different events, Forza quickly turns into a grind. Online play may make things better- but with no real incentive (via achievements) I find that this mode isn't all that compelling for me.
________________________________________________________________
2. Even at the time of its release, I did not believe that Forza 2 was the best racer on the Xbox 360. That game, in my mind, was Atari's underrated Test Drive Unlimited. Test Drive Unlimited had scores of customization features, many vehicles to buy and unlock, a slew of entertaining and challenging race types, and an environment which was the star of the game. I felt that racing games should take Atari's formula and improve upon it to progress the genre. Forza 2, like Forza before it, is stuck in the notion of winning cups and individual races. It's probably more fun than the banal formula of a Need for Speed game- but it doesn't really inspire you to race one more race.
Now, as Forza 3 is about to ship, Forza 2 feels all the more dated. Visually it doesn't hold a candle to Dirt 2, Midnight Club Los Angeles, or Grid. Nor does it have the same sense of style those games have. This speaks to the quality of the genre during this console generation as much as it has anything to say about Forza 2. Had Turn 10 seriously bumped up the number of tracks and the virtual world of Forza 2- then perhaps it would have faired better against the competition. But at this stage of the game- it feels like an old game.
________________________________________________________________
Doing a post mortum review on a game is not all that fair. It's been several years since Forza 2 went into development and so many things have changed. From the technology of the engines running racing games- to the way racing games are marketed these days. Forza 2 certainly plays well and that's no small task. But playing well and being fun are two different things. Forza 2 does alot of things proficiently- but it lacks soul, pizzazz, or whatever it is that gets you excited to race one more race...
isn't that what driving's all about?
Update:
I've dropped my review from 3 stars to 2 stars due to the fact that I'm at about 50 hours of gameplay and it's become quite obvious that Forza 2 is poorly designed in terms of career progression. If you want to unlock 25% of the game's achievements- you will have to grind out races over and over and over again. I personally do not have the stomach to spend two hours racing a long endurance race to be able to buy one of the dozens of 300,000+ cars. A better designed game would offer something to keep you interested. As it stands- this is a shallow game with the facade of depth caused by the pricey car stable. The auction system would help if it actually wasn't rigged to maximize the price of cars with the resetting 2 minute clock and incremental bidding.
With these considerations 2 stars is the maximum score I can in good conscience award this title.
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Da Cheif117
102,344
TA Score for this game: 2,108
Posted on 17 March 10 at 21:01 |
This review has 3 positive votes and 6 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Wasn't really into racing games, i just saw quite a few people with alot of gamerscore of forza 2 so i thought i would give it a whirl for some easy acheivements. After a few races i started getting into the game. As i started to improve my driving abilities it soon became apparent to me that this was the best racing game i have played, which resulted in being purchasing forza 3 (which is also one sick game) shortly after completing the career in number 2. Back to nubmer 2, their is loads of cars too choose (some suiting different races better than others) not that you will use them all due to their being so many, but the more the better i always say. The graphics in the game are good, they arn't perfect but the game did come out in 07 and also i've probably got used to the graphics on forza 3. Theres loads of tracks and i think its ace how long the game actualy lasts unlike other games that you can own in a few hours.
Graphics: 4
Gameplay: 4.5
Sound: 3.5
Acheivements: 4.5
Overall : 4.125 ( One Sick Game)
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