Go past one of them – which is spectacularly easy to do even early on in the piece – and then slightly over-steer on a corner thus losing speed and line – and “Pow!” you are shunted into the Armco. Now, it may be that I’m not as observant as I’d like to think, but my observations of motor racing outside of your standard destruction derbies (‘banger racing’ to you) is that other drivers tend to be as wary of damaging their vehicles as you are.
There are two main reasons for this: firstly that cars of the specification that you have available in
Forza 2 (no Holden Commodores though, eh?) cost lots of money and are expensive to mend. Secondly, if you shunt up the backside of
the car in front of you, it damages your ride and as such limits its efficiency. So, if you’re angry about being passed and that anger comes from the fact that you might not win the race, why on earth damage your own car as revenge? Surely the best revenge is winning? Surely this is not a difficult concept for AI? Winning is the prime directive. Damage to car = less likelihood of winning.
In a pure arcade outing, I can understand it. But in a game that sets out to be a simulator, I was left bewildered – not dazed, though.
Equally bewildering, if you’re going to write a game that states that it is “authentic”, is the fact that you can carry out the maddest of customisations with no real nod to reality – bewildering but great, which brings me on to the next, and possibly most important, bit:
This is supposed to be a review of the game and not of the many online supporting features. But, frankly, it’s the online supporting features that make
Forza (all increments) more than a simple racing game. If you’re going to buy into
F2 then you’re going to be buying more than a driving, crashing, driving, crashing, starting again, winning, getting bored and find a new driving/crashing game.
Conclusion
To stop you guys who are already part of the Forza fan club from having any further internal dialogue (which you weren’t) about whether or not to fork out for this version – yes, buy it, you won’t be disappointed.
For the rest, Forza 2 is trying a little hard to be all things to all people. It’s not entirely sure whether it wants to be a casual driving game or a serious simulator. The artificial intelligence when racing with non-human competitors (and where else would you find AI, really?) should have been worked on with as much enthusiasm as the customisation features. However, in terms of explosion for your Euro, this game will certainly enable you to move from casual to semi-serious Xbox 360 racer.
SPOnG Rating: 70% (90% for the community)