Product Description

Forza Motorsport 2, the sequel to Microsoft Game Studios' award-winning, fully customizable driving simulator Forza Motorsport 2 speeds its way onto Xbox 360.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9336 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Microsoft
• Released on: 2007-06-08
• Platform: Xbox 360
• Dimensions: .33 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Preview
Coming out towards the end of the original Xbox’s life, the first Forza Motorsport was a sadly overlooked gem that was as realistic as Gran Turismo but far more exciting and accessible to the average player. Despite being close to release, surprisingly little is known about the sequel, although it has been confirmed that it will include over 300 licensed cars with everyone from Nissan and Volkswagen to Lamborghini and Chevrolet having a presence on the track. All of the cars feature realistic damage; this can range from tiny scratches on the paintwork to almost splitting your car in two during a particularly devastating crash. If you’re the type of driver that likes their car damage-free, you can set the realism of the modelling to whatever you want.

The final game is expected to include over 70 different real world tracks, including Suzuka Circuit in Japan and Sebring International Raceway in Florida. There are also many fictional tracks, some inspired by real world locations. The game also supports multiplayer via Xbox Live, split-screen and system link. Every vehicle is customizable via the in-built decal editor, and you can trade cars and liveries with other players via Xbox Live. If you fancy the ultimate driving experience, then grab the official Xbox 360 Wireless Steering Wheel that has been developed specifically for the game. And to really impress your mates, you can setup multiple TV screens for an almost 360 degree view of the game. Any more realistic and you’d need a driving license to play. - HARRISON DENT

Manufacturer's Description
Forza Motorsport 2, the sequel to Microsoft Game Studios' award-winning, fully customizable driving simulator Forza Motorsport 2 speeds its way onto Xbox 360. With authentic simulation physics, bone-jarring damage, photo-realistic graphics, and licensed tuning and customization options, the franchise improves on the unprecedented features gamers enjoyed in its debut instalment. Loaded with more than 300 of the world's hottest cars for you to collect, personalize and tune, Forza Motorsport 2 gives you a complete racing experience.

Lap the competition with truly next-generation features. Made possible by the power of Xbox 360, Forza Motorsport 2 burns rubber at 60 fps with 4x full-screen anti-aliasing, motion blur, and high-dynamic-range lighting in crisp 720p high-definition glory. And you can feel every nuance of your car and the road thanks to support for the official Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel.

Experience uncompromising physics simulation. Top automotive engineers, professional race car drivers and programmers teamed up to create the most complete racing experience available. Cars incur dramatic damage and wear, which affects car performance. Advanced tire and suspension models respond to heat and pressure changes as well as weight transfer and aerodynamic load.

Master real-world tracks from around the globe. From the famously challenging Nürburgring Nordschleife track to the spectator-lined streets of Rio de Janeiro, race on meticulously designed tracks with an incredible sense of speed and realism. Forza Motorsport 2 features more than 60 tracks carved out of 18 environments, including 13 real-world licensed circuits such as the Road America race track, Silverstone Circuit, Tsukuba Circuit and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. Sebring International Raceway is among four new real-world licensed circuits added to the repertoire of Forza Motorsport 2.

Collect, upgrade and tune hundreds of cars. From sport compacts to purpose-built race cars, collect more than 300 cars from over 50 of the world's leading manufacturers such as Ferrari, Porsche, General Motors, Lamborghini, Nissan and Volkswagen. Take your car to the garage and install alternative engines, suspension kits, bolt-on superchargers, brakes, rims, racing slicks and more. Dial in advanced suspension settings, tire pressure and gear ratios. Forza Motorsport 2 allows you to own the cars that will own the competition.

Create and share your masterpiece with the world. Express your inner artist in the paint and upgrade shops with near-endless visual personalization. Customize the shape of your car by combining licensed rims, performance parts and aftermarket body kits. Create your own unique paint scheme using millions of paint and decal options. Take in-game pictures of your creation in Forza Motorsport 2 Photo Mode.

Compete in a vibrant online community. Take your personalized car onto Xbox Live for some intense online wheel-to-wheel racing. Earn in-game credits and complete single-player career objectives while racing over Xbox Live. Watch the best racers as well as your friends from around the world compete on Forza Motorsport TV.

Customer Reviews

Forza 2 - Excellent 9.5/10
Finally, a decent racing sim has graced the XBOX360's ever growing lineup.

Firstly, the basics:

300+ cars
12 tracks with 45+ combinations
Career
Online racing
Tournaments
Auction House
Visual Customisation
Performance upgrading
Performance tuning

Detailed
________

Cars:

300 cars, is a lot, and there is an absolutely gigantic range of cars, from the D-Class (More on that later) road cars (Though still, pretty quick road cars, ie. Golf GTi), to the B and C class performance optimized sports cars, to the A, and S class Super Cars, to the U class over the top cars (and they are almost undrivable!), to the racing optimized cars in R4, all the way up to the Le Mans styled cars in R1, there is something here for everybody.

The game is really split into two halves, first you have your arcade, and then you have your career. In the Arcade mode, you start with most of the cars unlocked, and you unlock more by completing exhibition races, and time trials. You can use these in splitscreen, and in multiplayer through XBOXLive.

You can, as far as I can see, get every car for exhibition, but the real incentive to go into the Career side of the game is the customisation of your own car, allowing you to put any car you like into the realms of the super cars, and make them look exactly as you want them to.

Tracks:

One of the first negatives about this game, are the lack of tracks, only 12 actual enviroments, with around 45 variations of those, is far less than many will have hoped, but, among those tracks are some brilliant ones.

From the nurburgring to Mugello, Suzuka, Sebring, Road America, Silverstone, and Tsukuba (and bolstered with a few made up tracks), there is certainly enough to keep you from not being bored for a while, because the tracks are good tracks, and the gameplay (More later), makes every moment of the game thoroughly enjoyable to the car loving.

Difficulty:

One of the best parts of this game is how it caters to the driving elite, and the not so elite, because the difficulty is so scalable.

For the less elite, you've got ABS, STM, TCS, Suggested Lines, no damage, and no tire/fuel wear, and if you're anywhere in between, you can take your pick on a number of different levels. The really hardcore, will be going cold turkey, for a truly great feeling.

The game rewards the hardcore, and allows them to excel faster through the game, because you get extra credits if you drive with the assists off, and less if you drive with them on, it gives a good incentive to get as many people to truly understand how the car drives.

The Artificial Intelligence, is a step forward from what has been seen on consoles before, the AI is fairly aware of the driver, and will react to where you are, and if you drive carefully, you won't get too many problems, though some of the slower races at the start can get a bit dodgy with the AI on hard. On hard, they are really hard, and most people are going to struggle to win, however the game does offer the flaw of most similar games... You can massively overpower every other car in most races. By the end of the career it does prevent you from doing this though, because the restrictions are very strict.

Career:

The career mode is a very simple process.

Buy car, win races, upgrade car, buy more car, win races, win car, upgrade car, etc. etc.

The career will take many many hours to beat, and it won't keep anyone necessarily wanting any more from the career mode. I haven't really stepped much into the single plaer career mode, so I'll refrain from saying too much on the subject.

Online:

For me, this is where this game truly shines, and for good reason, the most amazing thing about this game is that you can play the whole game without ever playing single player if you want to.

Offline, you can buy cars, win cars, upgrade cars, and online, you can buy cars, win cars, and upgrade cars.

When online, in the ranked mode, money you win goes to your career money, you do however get deducted the damage on your car.

The online system is in most areas brilliant, it has a comprehensive search system, and no area of customisability has been left untouched.

The host can choose from dozens of different options, to have the race exactly how he/she wants it. No stone is left untouched. They can even set up 7 race series or team racing.

The second flaw in this game is the lack of searching options when searching for a game. Though there are 50 or so options when makig a race, there are only 5 when searching for one, it isn't that bad, but it would be nice to be able to search for the perfect game.

Once you are in the game, you can choose a car (Which can be limited to a single car, class, or even more detailed things like certain drive trains, etc etc.), tune it, or load a premade by you tuning setting.

Its all finished off with a smooth as butter interface.

Once in the race, it works like any other race, just with up to 7 others along side you, and this is, like all games where another flaw occurs.

Though mostly, in my few days talking and chatting with people, the community is nice, friendly, and will laugh off an honest mistake, but there are those who are so scummy that they will purposefully take you out to come a place higher, or, when losing badly, just try and make everyone miserable.

Collisions can ofcourse be set off, but that loses some of the fun of racing in the first place, which is the risky danger.

The problem is that, Turn10 (Developers), probably could have sorted the problem, but the penalty system in the game is fairly poor. It doesn't affect your race position at all, infact, it only really screws you up if you're trying to set an extremely fast lap. It is very much a small and irritating minority who do it, but it can be extremely frustrating.

Online part 2: Tournaments:

One of the new parts of the game are the tournaments. They work simply. Usually about 8 tournaments are on the go per week, and up to 768 people can take part in some tournaments. You get into the tournament through hot lap qualifying, and then you get seeded, and it goes into a knockout. First 4 of each race go through, and eventually it filters down to a final race of 8, prizes, both monetary and car wise are fantastic, and its great fun, if you can make the cut, which most drivers are going to find hard. I haven't yet qualified for a tournament (though I'm on the cusp usually), so I can't go further in, but if its like most of this game, I'm sure it works fairly well.

Online part 3: Auction House:

One of the coolest parts of this game is the ability to sell, and buy cars made by other users. There are a few crucial things which make the seriously expensive cars.

Cool car
Cool paintjob
Great tuning
Great upgrades

The search tools through the auction are excellent, and there is no sniping like on eBay (People buying in the last second), it just adds on a couple more minutes.

The only flaw here is that you can't put in a maximum bid, you just bid. You need to be watching a car you want to buy very carefully through the last 5 minutes, and it can get tedious if you need to do something else.

While the auction house can get you some great bargains, there are some extremely expensive cars, the ones with the truly brilliant paintjobs go for an absolute ton.

To put it into prospective, a Honda S2000 just sold for nearly 500,000 credits, which is enough to buy 2 Ferarri Enzos. Why was it so expensive? It had a Dragon Ball Z paintjob on it. These cars are truly collectors items, and there is something for everyone.

Online part 4: Forza Photos, and Forza TV:

A new feature of the game is that you can watch other people racing online in Forza TV, which showcases the big tournament races, and just other good races which are going on, its good to watch, but the slightly dull replay cameras let it down a bit.

The other part of this section, the photos. You can now take photos of your car, with a brilliant tool which allows you to get almost any angle you'd want, and give it a number of different effects, eg. Exposure, Sepia etc, to get it looking how you want, you can then upload it to the Forza2 website, and show it to your friends.

Customisation Part 1: Visual:

Forza 2 comes loaded to the hilt with everything an artist would want for painting cars. Not being an artist myself, all I can really say is what people are achieving with it, and its unbelievable. These people are making anime characters look exactly like their real life counterparts, if you're good, you can do almost anything you want, because the tools are so good.

Customisation Part 2: Upgrading Performance:

The performance upgrading in the game is extremely in depth, not much has been left out, with just under 30 different parts which you can upgrade, and each one has a realistic affect on the way your car drives. Everything changes something, even the size of the wheels, or even the style of the wheel (Which affects weight). There is also body kits, which though mainly a visual customisation do alter performance by changing the downforce.

Customisation Part 3: Tuning:

If you know how a car works under the bonnet, you will be able to tune your car exactly how you want, and make it drive the way you want, from tire pressure, to gearing, wheel alignment (camber, toe and front caster), anti roll bars, springs, damping, aerodynamics, braking, and the differential, you have everything you need. No idea what that meant? Well, Forza 2 has indepth, in game tutorials for what it means, and it will help anyone to be able to tweak their car, and understand a little more about how cars work in real life.

Gameplay:

The most important part of any game is the way it plays, and this is game feels great. Though I'm sure it isn't exactly perfect (and as a non driver, I can't really say), most people I know who do drive, say this game feels very very good, and very very realistic, there isn't much more to say, it drives right, and thats what you expect from a simulator... right?

Graphics:

The graphics are good... Not great... Not bad... But, adequate. You won't be frowning, but you won't be crying with the beauty of it either. They are good enough, and thats that.

Other, miscellaneous flaws:

The biggest flaw in the game is the loading times, they are long, 10-20 seconds is fairly average, its also a lot worse online.

But, you have to admit, when the worst part of the game is the time waiting to make someone eat your dust... The game must be pretty damned good.

Gameplay: 10/10
Graphics: 8/10
Longevity: 9/10
Online: 9/10

Overall: (Not an average): 9.5/10 - Excellent

Gran TurWhatmo??? FORZA!!!
Seeing as how Amazon was selling the limited edition for the same price as the normal version I went ahead with the limited edition. With this you get a special booklet and a token for 3 bonus cars from the xbox 360 live auction room.

The game itself is brilliant. For the first couple of races you struggle to get used to the controls, and then you improve your cars handling and things really pick up. I've only had the game a couple of hours and I now have 10 cars and have completed about 7/8 cups.

The graphics on this game are wicked, the sound is very realistic and so is the game play. This game would be great for beginers or people who play a lot of racing games. I love the fact that your car actually gets damaged when you crash and if you hit another car.

There are obvious comparisons to gran tourismo, however I think that this game wins that battle by allowing you to get on with racing instead of having to complete licences first. With Forza you just build up credits and the more you get the more you can do. Apart from that the 2 games are very similar.

If you want a great racing game for the xbox 360 then it has to be Forza, I've played all of the other racing games and they don't compare. There are plenty of different game modes to keep you entertained and I'm sure the online game play is just as good.

Last but not least there are over 300 cars and when you consider that you can tune and customise every detail of each car then you could end up with endless possibilities. The controls are also very easy to use, you can use the triggers to gently ease off of the brakes or gradually build up the gas.

Buy it!!! and if you can get the limited edition then go for that.

What's in the box?
Forza 2 is a detailed driving sim that has great, realistic handling, plenty of options and on-line multi-player racing. The graphics are not jaw-dropping by 360 standards, but they are not ugly either. The game-play and slick frame-rate quickly make up for niggles I had about the visuals.

I didn't know what was in the special collector's edition when I ordered it. It was definitely a good move getting it though, as it comes with a very well produced full colour 156 page book.

The collector's edition comes in a carbon fibre box over twice the depth of a conventional game to store the book. A transparent slip-over cover with the Forza graphics on it completes the packaging. The game DVD case inside is plain. There is a voucher to download 3 free bonus cars - 2003 Ferrari Challenge Stradale, 2006 Saleen S281E and Subaru Impreza S204 from xbox live. The game disk is titled 'limited collector's edition'.

The book will keep me occupied for a while. There are luscious pictures, histories and descriptions of hundreds of cars. There are in-depth interviews with various people in the development team; enthusing over their creations, and a race driver giving tips on the mental discipline required. There are track guides with hints and illustrated driving theory guides. Its all very serious, high-brow and well laid out.

I think its well worth the extra for the book alone and this game is a must have for any petrol heads out there.