Forza Motorsport 3 video game preview

Players can get under the bonnets of the cars themselves, tweaking engines and wheel-axels just how they like them

Format: Xbox 360 (exclusive) Developer: Turn 10 Publisher: Microsoft Games Studios Released: 23 October 2009

It’s perhaps not in my best interests to kick off a preview by detailing my ineptitude, but in Forza’s case, I’m willing to make an exception. Barrelling around the gorgeous track of Montserrat in a glistening Aston Martin, I brake late and zip into a corner too fast. With the apex of the curve on an incline, my tires kick up off the smallest integer sending my poor, beautiful car into a pirouette. I spin wildly off the bump, all four wheels leaving the ground before I crash back down onto the grass verge on the other side of the track.

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Now, ‘useless driver goes too fast into corner and spins out’ is hardly headline news for a motorsport video game as technical and revered as Forza, but going into that corner, I felt every single little bump, I felt the exact point where the wheels twisted my fate. The maths are that the tyre physics refresh at 360htz, meaning the track updates every 0.8ft, apparently. Frankly, I don’t have a clue what those numbers mean on a technical level, so I’ll happily leave them for the fact sheet. What I do know, as I found out all too well, is how those numbers translate into the drive that Forza provides. Somehow I doubt the tag-line "it’s never been bumpier" will make it on to the back of the box, but the feedback and authenticity of feeling every deviation in the track was what left the greatest impression.

Of course, it’s possible that that’s because spiralling off the track became something of a theme. Luckily, this Forza 3 aims to be the most approachable ‘serious’ racing simulation yet, from the ‘rewind’ feature which allowed me to go back in time during a race at the press of the button to the multitude of assists you can switch on and off before the start of every race. Steve Beiner, Head of Marketing for Microsoft Games Studios insists that while the third entry in the series will make a huge push for the uninitiated, developer Turn 10 have in no way ‘dumbed down’ the racing experience. Turn all the assists on, such as ABS, suggested racing lines and even an auto-brake, and Forza 3 is a laid back Sunday drive. The game cheerily holding your hand while you pilot a gorgeous car of your choosing through a winding mountainside track, spectacular views stretching out below you.

Turn all the assists off, however, and you have a ferocious, precise and technically brilliant racing simulator. This approach to being everything to every man could cause the wheels to come off, but Turn 10 seem to have struck that elusive balance. This ethos stretches to the career mode. If you wish, you can zip through all of the impossibly sleek menus -all clean whites and stylish sweeps- by tapping the A button, the game selecting your next race, the perfect car for it and tuning it up depending on how many in-game credits you’ve accrued. You are on the track and behind the wheel within a few button presses.

The more petrolheaded among us, however, can take their time in the garage. Building up a selection of finely-tuned machines that Jay Leno would be envious of, getting under the bonnet themselves, tweaking engines and wheel-axels just how they like them. The career for them is not a few sweeps of a menu screen, but a daunting grid of 200 events, waiting to be conquered.

Throughout Forza 3’s development, Turn 10 have repeatedly proclaimed it the ‘definitive racing simulation of this generation’. This is presumably code for "we’re going to be better than Gran Turismo 5." We still have to see what Sony’s racing giant has stored in its own garage, but on this evidence Microsoft’s Forza has set the bar. The race is truly on.