Forza 2 Demo - Mini Review
Ok, here is a quick mini review of the Forza 2 demo for all those thinking about giving it a download….
Demo Size – 696 Meg
Amount of cars you can Drive – 24 (3 classes of 8 cars)
Class C – Sporty cars that Joe Bloggs could own (Mazda RX8 etc)
Class A – The expensive street cars (Porsche etc)
Class RC2 – Purpose built “le man” type Cars
Tracks you can drive – Just the one.
Race Options – You can only drive a 3 lap race (against 7 other cars)
(but you can do this as many times as you want, trying different cars etc)
My Test setup
32” LCD at 720p
2.1 Speakers
Tried both Wireless Pad & MS steering wheel
Graphics
Tuff one. On the good side the FPS are stuck at a silky smooth 60fps. There seems to be zero slowdown no matter what happens on screen. The viewing distance also is amazing there seems to be no part of the track you can’t see quite clearly, no matter how far away. It seems this game has been tweaked for driver game play (where smoothness and viewing distance is key).
The graphics them self are very nice but they are NOT the massive jump forward that everybody seems to be expecting. To be fair I can understand why people would be disappointed because it seems on par with PGR3. However when you take into consideration that PGR3 has a side viewing distance of about 1 inch from the side of a racetrack to where a building is.... and then you see the hills, trees, spectators in Forza 2 that do look very 3D and not a cardboard cut out you then realize there is quite a bit of a jump forward.
The cars themselves suffer from the usual “just come out of the showroom” syndrome and are very shiny and reflective (you see some neat shadows and reflections in the paintwork). Yeah there are some jagged edges to be seen on cars but mainly just your own car in the external view modes. Oh that reminds me, you get 4 views. 2 behind car views, 1 bonnet view (but you don’t always see a bonnet depending on what car you are driving) and 1 sitting on the front bumper view. There is NO cockpit view (which is disappointing). You can also pan around the car while you are in the behind car view. This shows off some neat features, like the wheels and the disc brakes that glow under braking. Its hard to describe but the way the wheels look and turn combined with the disc brakes that look “active” it does look very real… but it strikes me as being a strange thing to put so much detail on! Another neat (but useless) detail is you can actual pan around the car at amazing speed (like 500 mph)... and it is all silky smooth.
Racing effects are a little disappointing. If you catch a kerb you get a little “puff” of dirt smoke... which is very “last gen”. When you lock up brakes you leave a skid mark on the track… and that’s about it!
Sound
Again I can see people not liking the sound much. For a start there is no game music, just menu music… this is something I like but I can see others not. The actual in game sound is very configurable. However the default setting is to have all the volumes at full blast which makes it very noisy and unrefined. I turned down the sound for the other cars and the tire squeal… leaving the engine and the crash noises up high. This made it less garbled and more able to hear the sweet roaring engine. Until you have tweaked though, the sound will be very unimpressive.
Controls
At first I tried the wireless pad and I was surprised how good it was. In PGR3 I felt the steering on the pad was too easy to over compensate on the steering. In Forza when you have all the driving aids turned on, it is very easy to get around the track. All you have to do is make sure you slow down enough for the corners or you will under steer and end up on the grass (which usually ends up in a spin). Turn off the driving aids and it gets very interesting with mainly brakes locking up and a load of over steer if you try and accelerate to hard out of a corner. Again the pad coped very well my only complaint really was the end triggers for the brake and accelerator don’t seem to have enough travel for my liking when you are tip toeing on the brake and throttle. Oh and there seems to be no rumble effects at all on the pads?
I then went onto the Wireless steering wheel. What can I say? Yes they have used the force feedback to great effect, you feel the pull on the corners, the car kick out in over steer / brake lock situations. You feel the rumble as you go over the rumble strips and go off road. Its all there. Driving with wheel is very natural and very fun when you are fighting the Merc SLR side wards through a corner trying to get the bugger to grip. If I had one complaint of the wheel it would be that the force strengths should be stronger but that is a fault of the wheel and not the game.
Crash Damage
This is the area I was mostly disappointed with. This is another game that has piss poor crash damage. At first I tried a few laps of high speed crashes into the walls. As a result very little happened. My paintwork changed to “scratched”. I lost my wing mirrors and I was able to crack some windows and loose the brake lights…. Wow. However after several high speed wall incidents the car only really looked like it had only been through a bad automatic car wash!
I then went on to attempt some PIT maneuvers on other cars... and I got a bit more success. I was able to knock off the other cars rear bumper. Then after I went around the track again it was still on the road… and was able to drag it along! Actually, I think I am going into too much detail here… overall its poor and not worth talking about.
Physics
I think this is where the game excels. Its hard to give this game a full review but I would say it is definitely more of a simulation than a PGR3 arcade thing… but then again the driver aids makes it feel "arcadey" to those who want it. The variation of the cars feel right in their differences and the scale of power. For example in PGR3 some of the more power full cars were stupidly hard to get on any power without loosing the back end. In forza, you still get this kind of thing but the balance seems to be what I would expect and not overally silly (like PGR3)
My only disappointment was that it seems possible for someone to nudge you from behind and either totally muck up your braking and miss a corner or send you into a spin. However, when I tried ramming others or the old PIT manoeuvre (which I tried a lot) I could not really cause the other cars any problems! Maybe I just need better US police training!
The other thing that gives me confidence in this game is the replay telemetry data. Jesus I have never seen the like… every thing is logged in real time... from the usual RPM to suspension data. This shows that the game is built up from a foundation of serious physics. I know the game will have a lot of car mods available (not avail in this demo). I can see the mods easily having in game physical effects.
Conclusion
If you are a casual driver and just want a racer to look good, then this is probably not going to appeal much. It is definitely not going to be the star attraction to show your mates.
If you are into your driving, then I think this game is going to give you something to get your teeth into. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t got a wheel because this is also great with the pad. Obviously the wheel is a better experience but the pad has been so well tweaked that it is still very playable. Combined with the controls, the frame rate, viewing distance and detailed physics I would say this is definitely designed for the driving experience and not for the eye candy!
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Re: Forza 2 Demo - Mini Review
Originally Posted by Rhys
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