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Forza Motorsport Review: Page 6
A Racing Simulation cont.
Of course, all of this is pointless when it’s not possible to verify your changes. In Forza Motorsport you can do this by verifying them first hand. While test driving your newly made setup, you can pause the game, make changes and continue racing — changes are immediately dialled in. Or, you can decide to study telemetry data generated by the replay system. This system allows you to view the telemetry data in real time. Everything you wanted to know about your car’s grip levels, G-forces, suspension, camber, caster, and revs can be viewed in the replay system. Replays can be saved to store your one of a kind racing moments or telemetry data for analysis.
Tuning your car is not a requirement to win races, but if you want to become a competitive player on the scoreboards or if your friends are Michael Schumacher or Mattias Ekstrom, then you’ll definitely want to find the right balance. Getting the right setup for your car on a particular track can result in shaving tenths of seconds off your lap time, making the difference between winning or losing.
Controlling the Cars
A racing game is made or broken by the controls, especially a racing simulation. A game is lacking some important factors of real life racing, but Forza Motorsport provides very small, yet helpful, details that helps you getting around the track quickly.
Your HUD can display a diagram of your tires’ temperatures. Green means they are at an optimal temperature providing maximum grip — red means they are overheating and you will notice they have become very slippery.
It is easily noticed when your car is oversteering, but preventing understeer requires you to listen to the tires and feel the car very well. The controller starts to slightly vibrate when you understeer and will stop when you have correct yourself. It is a very basic detail, but the way it is executed in Forza Motorsport allows you to get through a corner very fast and very smooth.
Another small detail is the ability to look around you using the right thumbstick. This way you can anticipate an opponent’s attempt to pass you, brake early and try to retake your position through the inside. Unfortunately, this functionality is not support when the controller layout is switched to using buttons for accelerating and braking.
Graphics
In the graphics department, Forza Motorsport has nothing to be ashamed of. Supporting 480p HDTV and running at 30fps is respectable and pretty much standard for Xbox games. Scenery in licensed tracks look really good, and the streets of New York easily taking the cake, but the fictional tracks appear less lively and inspired. However, replays show a nice change in depth of field making it look just a bit more realistic.