The North American launch of Forza Motorsport 3 is still a few days away, but the pre-launch parties for Microsoft's crown jewel of racing have been taking place all over the world for the past two weeks, buoyed by rave reviews and a strong advertising and marketing push approaching Halo-like proportions. Recently in Toronto, Canada, MSXbox-World was invited along with several other members of the local gaming press by Microsoft Canada to get one last exclusive spin with the game before its official North American launch on October 27th. While our glowing review of Forza Motorsport has been up on the site for more than a week now, Turn 10's Lead Producer Korey Krauspof was still able to give an even deeper insight towards the developer's aim of "turning gamers into car lovers and car lovers into gamers"¯.
As mentioned in our review, Forza 3 boasts incredibly deep customization options for car aficionados, whether they be racers, tuners, drifters, or painters, and there are even photo and video editing modes accessible during replays that will allow players to take professional-looking shots or create dynamic movies complete with special effects. However, unlike in the past where the majority of these features either were buried into the game so deep that only the truly hardcore were able to access and/or understand them, or in the case of user-generated videos existed only due to the ingenuity of creative fans (much like Rooster Teeth's Halo-generated Red vs. Blue machinima videos before Bungie introduced the Forge replay editor), Forza 3 hopes to piggyback off of the strength of the Xbox Live community as well as integrate tried and true elements of social networking sites like Facebook and online commerce sites like Amazon to bring casual and hardcore gamers closer together. Quite fittingly, the two pillars that will work in unison to accomplish this feat are the aptly named Leaderboards and the Storefront.
Like other online racing games, the Forza 3 Leaderboards will keep track of the game's best racers, clean drivers, drifters, drag racers, etc., and will even drill down further to apply flags to players who are using the rewind feature or driving assists to win, so that the players at the top of their respective Leaderboards are indisputably the most skilled. However, the Leaderboards will now also extend to tuners, painters, photographers and directors, so that the most popular creatives in the Forza community can gain worldwide notoriety in three different ways: Having their content rated by their peers, Becoming a Favourite or selling their tuned-up cars and designs to other players via (gasp) micro-transactions. Players who still regard the gamertag Velocity Girl¯ with trepidation can relax, as Forza's micro-transactions still use in-game currency rather than Microsoft Points, but the similarity between Forza's community-driven economy and Microsoft's original vision of Xbox Live commerce is undeniable, yet infinitely cooler. Tuners and artists whose cars and designs generate the most sales will rise to the top of the Leaderboards, and depending on how much they charge for their creations, they can also quite deservedly generate near-infinite amounts of credits to tune up their own cars or purchase other players' works. Meanwhile, just like content on the Xbox Live Marketplace, all photos and videos created in Forza 3 can be rated, so skilled photographers and movie makers will also have their own stage on which to shine. Bringing it all together is the Storefront, which acts as a profile page for the player and allows anyone seeking out that player from any of the Leaderboards to easily browse, rate and even purchase that player's creations if they are available for sale. They can also add that player as a favourite if they wish to follow him or her and be updated whenever that player creates more content. The potential for expanding the community is multi-fold: Casual players who lack the time or desire to create their own designs and cars can simply purchase cars and designs from their favourite tuners and painters, players who have no real interest in racing can still trick-out rides, create new paint-jobs , create beautiful in-game shots and movies to their hearts content and actually get the attention and credit they deserve, and players inspired by the works of others or simply wanting to earn more in game credits without racing for them can become expert tuners and designers themselves, bringing more talent to the community and thus making it stronger and attractive to newcomers. Of course, the Auction House is still available for the pure mercenaries who simply want to sell their cars and designs to the highest bidder.
On a gameplay related-note, a returning feature to Forza Motorsport that will definitely please and surprise gamers is the 2-player split-screen multiplayer option available in Free Play mode, which will allow players to race against each other using any car, on any track, complete with A.I. opponents, all while still maintaining a blistering 60 frames-per-second frame rate. An even more surprising discovery was how close the feature came to not being included in the final game, as Krauspof openly admitted there were originally concerns from the production team that the split-screen mode would not be able to equal the quality of the single-player experience. According to Krauspof, legend has it that the determined, under the hood efforts of an unnamed programmer during a single weekend was key to bringing the frame rate up to par at the last minute, and as a result, all Forza players whose favourite opponent or most bitter rival is the person sitting next to them on the couch will benefit. Naturally, there are some sacrifices in split-screen: the cockpit view is gone, environmental details are somewhat reduced and additional on-screen A.I. opponents are limited to a maximum of two (N.B. Forza Motorsport 2 only featured Head-to-Head racing in split-screen, so this can hardly be considered a negative), but the visibility, fluidity and sense of speed in this mode still mirrors single-player so well that it easily stands out as the best implementation of split-screen simulation racing on the Xbox 360 thus far. Fans of this mode should waste no time getting on the Forza-related forums after giving it a spin and sharing their appreciation and or thoughts, as it will likely be the community's demand for split-screen that will ensure it remains a priority in future iterations.
Turn 10 has done a commendable job of ensuring that Forza 3 will have something for everyone, hardcore players, casual racers, players who spend the majority of their time on Xbox Live and even those who prefer to just race against their best friend in the same room. But more importantly, when coupled with Xbox Live, Forza 3 stands to offer the richest and most diverse online community ever for a console racer, far beyond what its closest competitors could ever dream of attaining. For that alone, Forza Motorsport 3 is worth any racing fan's attention.
Preview By: Khari Taylor
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