I've already expressed my feelings about Forza Motorsport 3 in comparison to FM5/6/7, so I'd like to begin with stating a few general observations about FM3:

• Clean and minimal UI with nice menu music make everything between races look and feel great.
• Respectable amount of cars and racing tracks, but the game doesn't offer much gameplay variety.
• Driving physics are great as always in the FM series. The game looks beautiful in action and the loading times are relatively short.
• Soundtrack is fantastic, but playlist is too short, so after a while you may get bored of it.
• Career mode starts off great, but later becomes tedious with way too many long races.

My biggest complaint is definitely about the game's career mode that loses its momentum with the introduction of the longer R2 and R1 class races. 11 and 13 twenty-minute races tournaments are just not fun to play through. Thank god, they're mixed up with shorter tournaments in-between races, but I always wanted just to get over those long races and later started skipping them by hiring an AI driver. This wasn't exciting.

While menu music sounds appropriate and the collection of in-race music tracks caressed my ears with the beloved sounds of rock and drum & bass music at first, 30 3-5-minute tracks are just not enough for a game that takes at least 30 hours to complete.

I'd also like to mention an introduction to the series of a somewhat controversial for sim-racing video games feature - mid-race time rewind. I don't remember seeing rewind in any other racing games before FM3 and Dirt 2 (both 2009), so I'll just make these two responsible for the feature's popularization. I don't know, I think it may have a place in arcade racing, but in my opinion, doesn't really fit into sim space. You are right to say that it can be just ignored, but when you mess up during the race (especially, a longer one), temptation to use rewind instead of restarting it is just too high. The effect is huge - you don't sit at the edge of your seat during the races anymore. Personally, I'd rather not have rewind in the game at all.

Though it has its portion of shortcomings, that become obvious later in the game, overall Forza Motorsport 3 is a great addition to the series. It sure kept me excited for the most part of time spent with it and it was great to see a much well-rounded product from Turn 10 after playing through variously disappointing 5th, 6th, and 7th entries to the Forza Motorsport series.