Forza Motorsport 2

Too Fast, Too Furious?

The poor AI isn’t the biggest issue though, it’s the fact that it’s all too easy to find yourself racing by yourself. Bizarrely, the grid layout at the start of each track is determined by who has the fastest car, so if you go into a race with the fastest vehicle on the track, you’ll start in pole and probably never so much as see another car for the rest of the race. I can understand why Turn 10 has done this, since a qualifying session before the race would probably produce a line up very similar to what’s seen in Forza 2, but it does leave you in a position where human error is often the only thing standing between you and first place.

Surely you won’t always have the fastest car right? Well you’d think that would be the case, but unfortunately it’s all too easy to make sure that you have the fastest car on the track thanks to the modding/upgrade feature of Forza 2. Obviously no driving game worth its salt these days would be seen without a method of customising your vehicles, but with Forza 2 it’s just too easy to create a completely unstoppable car that can leave all the computer controlled automobiles for dead. If you find yourself struggling in any race, simply drop out and upgrade your car then go back to the track and waste the competition!

And there’s absolutely no sense of realism with the upgrades either. I personally spend altogether too much time and money modifying my cars to get the best balance of performance and handling out of them. This usually involves careful upgrades of the induction system, the exhaust system, intercooler and ultimately a new ECU map that takes advantage of all the other physical modifications.


Having been down this road with several cars I’m well aware that some potential upgrades simply aren’t possible, whether that’s due to a lack of physical space in the engine bay, or the fact that pushing 400bhp out of an engine designed with 200bhp in mind will result in a big bang coupled with a big repair bill.

Forza 2 takes none of the realities of automotive modification into account. Is that naturally aspirated engine not cutting the mustard? Just slap a massive turbocharger on it, regardless of the fact that there wouldn’t be space in the engine bay. Then there’s the small issue of whether other components in the car can handle all that extra power and torque. Forza 2 is happy to let you more than double the power and torque output of your car without forcing you to, say, upgrade your drives shafts or your clutch, or even your gearbox. Amazingly a gearbox that’s been designed for 200lb ft of torque can quite happily live with well over twice that searing through its cogs Forza-land. Ultimately, if Forza 2 was going to move the game on when it came to realism, it really should have adopted a more cause and effect attitude to modifications and upgrades.

It’s also not as if finances can keep your desire to upgrade your cars in check, because you’ll soon find yourself flush with cash without even having to try too hard. This means that not only will you be able to buy upgrades to your heart’s content, but you’ll also be able to buy some particularly exotic metal before long. Some effort has been made to limit your financial freedom, by limiting the value of cars that you win in races – so while upgrading your brakes will set you back over 3,000 credits, if you sell your pristine Jaguar E-Type you’ll be rewarded with a measly 100 credits. Of course you can auction the cars you win online via Xbox Live, but considering how easy it is to win the car in the first place, anyone would have to be terminally impatient to stump up cash to buy a car that they could get for nothing by winning a few races!


In many ways Forza 2 suffers from the same underlying issue as Project Gotham Racing 3, whereby it’s not difficult to be driving the car of your dreams after only a few hours’ play, which then leaves you wondering whether you can be bothered to soldier on through the rest of the career mode.

To be fair to Turn 10, there are some very impressive aspects to Forza 2, not least of which is the fact that the game runs at a constant 60fps, unlike the somewhat dead 30fps exhibited by PGR3. This fast frame rate produces a very smooth and believable feeling of speed, which is exactly what you want from a racing game. However, I can’t help thinking that the impressive frame rate has come at the expense of visual quality.

There’s a worrying lack of anti-aliasing in the game that leaves what should be smooth curves looking jagged and rough. It’s hard to admire the beautiful lines of a Porsche 911 GT3 as you pull up next to it when the wheel arches and spoilers resemble bread knives. Likewise, the edge of the track can also end up being a mass of jaggies, while the textures on the cars themselves have a tendency to shimmer as you approach them.