Forza Motorsport 3

Overview

Forza Motorsport 3 is a 2009 racing video game developed for Xbox 360 by Turn 10 Studios. It is the sequel to Forza Motorsport 2 and the third installment in the Forza series. The game includes more than 400 customizable cars (more than 500 cars in Ultimate Collection version) from 50 manufacturers and more than 100 racetrack variations with the ability to race up to eight cars on track at a time. These cars vary from production cars to race cars such as those from the American Le Mans Series.

New additions to the game include an in-car driving view, one button assisted driving, vehicle rollover with detailed undercarriages, drifting, drag racing, and SUVs (Mostly Crossovers). Also new to the series is the addition of stock cars, albeit generic. Furthermore, the game also provides the ability to paint and upgrade all cars, whereas Forza Motorsport 2 only allowed for production and tuner cars to be painted or upgraded (although one downloadable Peugeot LMP could be painted). Also included is the ability to upgrade certain production and tuner cars to the race-class level (represented by the performance ratings R3, R2, and R1) whereas Forza Motorsport 2 did not, as well as the ability to create in-game videos and upload them to the Forza Motorsport website.

During another interview at E3 2009, game director Dan Greenawalt revealed that the updated physics engine would include tire deformation, and the ability to flip the car over. He also included that there is a "pressure" system in which the A.I., depending on how the difficulty is set, would make mistakes when under pressure. In addition to improvements to the A.I. and physics, the new Photo Mode features ten times more polygons in each car model, bump mapping, and texture resolutions four times higher than before. Also, it is confirmed that the game would run at 60 frames per second. The interview also revealed that there would be several scoreboards ranging from driver scoreboards to painting and tuner leaderboards.

Forza Motorsport 3 received "universal acclaim" like its first two predecessors as reported by the review aggregation website Metacritic. IGN called it 'One of the best racing games of this generation'. Criticism mainly stemmed from the grid being much smaller than rival games (only 8 cars), the inability for users to tune their vehicles during public multiplayer racing, and the inability to create custom public multiplayer races. Turn 10 however is adding more modes to the online lobbies in an attempt to counter this problem, such as the Playground lobby which lets users play Tag Mode online in public races but custom public lobbies are currently unavailable.

Official trailer

Trailer. Watch on YouTube

Screenshots

Game details

Genres

Racing, Simulator, Sport

Developer

Turn 10 Studios

Publisher

Microsoft Game Studios

Series

Forza Motorsport

Platforms

Xbox 360

Age rating

ESRB E

Modes

Single player

Yes

Local multiplayer

Yes

Online multiplayer

Yes

Co op

No

Age ratings

CERO

A

CLASS IND

L

ESRB

E

Release dates

Editions

Buy this game

Playable today

Credits

Publisher

Microsoft Game Studios

Developer

Turn 10 Studios

Released

2009-10-22

Age rating

ESRB E

Region

US

Time to beat

about 36.6 hours