Forza Motorsport 3 (2009)

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.

And another X360 title in my quest to finish the last few titles that I'm interested in on the platform before finally selling the console.

I love racing games, but I've never really been a fan of the Forza Motorsport series. Not going deep into details, Gran Turismo is more of my cup of tea. Anyway, back to Forza. I have tried all of the games in the series (including all the Horizon games) and finished most of them (only FM 1/3/4 remaining). Back in the day I really liked FM2 and even completed it (in the sense of completion), but after that playing FM 5-6-7 on XB1 didn't feel the same. I can't say what exactly it is, but these entries in the series didn't excite me at all. They felt too similar to each other, I didn't like the career modes that made you play long series' of races using the same car. And, holy shit, I will never forget those countless Indianapolis oval laps I had to grind through to afford myself the ridiculously expensive cars needed to finish the stupid career in FM5.

Anyway, new year - new me. In the last few days I jumped back to Forza 3 and it's like the good old FM2 days all over again, just even better. I'm thoroughly enjoying the career mode with its cool seasons structure that constantly shakes things up by switching between races in the longer and the shorter tournaments. It's exciting to pick and buy the new cars needed for those tournaments based of restrictions instead of the game just telling you to chose from a certain filtered list. And another thing - the soundtrack. FM 5-6-7 have no licensed songs what-so-fucking-ever. NONE. Just a generic forgettable score - and it's a disaster for a racing game. It gets more obvious in comparison - how much personality these compilations of songs give to racing games. Well, of course, every racing video game ever released has a song "Tick Tick Boom" by the Hives, but other than that I've realized just how much these song collections define for me how I'm going to remember those games. Forza 3 has a sweet mixture of rock and drum & bass music, which is a cool time travel a decade back.

Overall, this game is a nice surprise after the disappointment that later entries in the series left me feeling.