Hi guys

I received Forza 3 in the post today. I have been playing it for the past 5 hours. I must say that I'm loving the higher fidelity in the feel of all the cars.

The sounds of the cars have also been improved considerably especially for the small hot hatches etc. They now sound like they do in real life i.e pokey with a great nasal punch rather than they kinda wishy washy lets just get straight onto the 500bhp cars feel of Forza 2.

I like the racing calendar which provides a focus to the game but it's good to know that you can go over to exhibition and take part in any championships that you have unlocked (you unlock far more along the way then you realise)

I'm a little disappointed in the visuals of a couple of the tracks, particularly Sebring as a few seem very much like straight ports from Forza 2 where as Maple valley and Silverstone do look a little more polished. This is only based on the tracks I have seen so far but the new ones do look fantastic.

The pricing of cars and parts have also changed and quite a few of the vintage sports and current high performance P1 class cars are now over a million credits or so which will make you feel like you have earned them! They same to be based more on real life prices now and so some real bargains can be had, especially a few of the M3 beamers one of which can be had for £18,000 which in game can beat cars costing £50k plus!

Well I'm tired now but I'll try to post some tomorrow, if you have any questions you'd like to ask about the game fire away I'll try to answer them, but don't forget I haven't been playing the game for 40 plus hours!

Apologies for concentrating on just a few aspects but these stuck in my mind when posting.

Can't wait to see a few of you online for some races!

Take care

Cool, I hope my game will show up on friday. Really looking forward to this title.

Staffan

Weird, it's not released until next Tuesday, as far as I know.

It's released this Friday in UK and Europe but next week in the US. A shop over here delivers so that you receive your game on release day but due to strikes at the Royal Mail on Thursday and Friday they posted the games out on Monday to ensure that people received the game on release. So many people that ordered from them have received there it. Yesterday evening there were about 30,000 people on the leaderboards.

should have mine tomorrow in the mail

Mine arrived today, and it is brilliant, even my wife that has no interest in cars whatsoever (planes is another story though!) has been gawking over my shoulder while I have been racing.... big thumbs up, I find it very good, and so far no issues with it.

On a more serious note, my neighbour asked me to get him a copy of the LCE versian the same as mine, I ordered it for him a week ago, and I was told yesterday by the retailer that it was on order from MS they had them all sold out for earlier preorders, thankfully a mail got in today that it is in the mail. Was told by that company that the 1000 copies they had received was sold out two weeks ago and that was just early preorders. for Denmark that is very impressive.

Staffan

Just got my copy today.

Wow, game is impressive. Very happy with it.

I hate you all! I am trying to resist buying this because I bought Aion last month, which I am plying heavily and next week Dragon Age comes out, which I preordered months ago. I was hoping to resist util Christmas, but you all are making that very tough.

Finally got my FM3 yesterday.

Comment so far:

Wrooom!
Wroroooooommm!
Wrrrom wrroom!
*screeech*
*CRASH*
Rewind!
Wrrroooooooooommmmmmm!

I love the community tools... will be great to post a video clip of a bad pass, or when leemz tries to claim he had the line when I really did, lol... also you can now gift replays, screens, and videos... not just cars... so if I lost or missed an event, someone could just gift me the replay then i could watch and post the results... very nice community tools.

BTW, screens and video in the the screenshot thread.

BTW, notices the 3 stock cars... be intresting to see what painters do and if FM3 will allow NASCAR copyrighted paints on thier site.

The drag racing so far, IMO, is lame.

Just out of curiosity I seem to remember some complaints during our races last year about the lack of environmental conditions affecting the cars and tracks in FM2. Have they improved this aspect of the sim at all or is it still basically racing in a vacuum?

Whaddaya mean "claim" I had the line?! That line is MINE, baby! HA!

Yeah, this game is great. Really impressed with it. My daughter was watching a replay of one of my races last night and she thought I was streaming a video of a real race! LOL!

They've really added some nice features, as Magnum has mentioned.


@Discord,
Near as I can tell, you're still in a vacuum. No night racing and no weather as near as I can tell. To be honest, it doesn't bother me. The novelty of weather and night racing wears off pretty quickly for me (I never use it in games that support it like Race Pro or rFactor).

Loving the game thus far. 100% worth the wait.

Pros (IMO):
Visuals are incredible.
Presentation is very well done. "Classy: is the best way I can describe it
Plenty to do other than race with the painter tools, community tools, storefront, etc.
Car handling is impressive.
For achievement whores like me they come fast and furious. Pretty easy overall. (2.5 hours gameplay and 16 achievements already)
Fantastic tracks.

Cons (IMO):
Load times between screens and races seem a bit long
AI can be weak at times
AI seems to hold line for the most part no matter situation. At times opp. cars look like they are on a rail
Some cockpit views only show half of rear view mirror. Why? I have no idea

Have not played any public online yet but I played a couple of buddies last night in private races and it was pretty much as expected. No surprises, although we just played a standard race and nothing new. I do like the fact that you gain credits and XP towards your career no matter where you race. This helps to eventually unlock all or the majority of the game wothout feeling you wasted time on racing with no reward (other than bragging rights of course)

Yeah I'm pretty sure there is no weather or night racing Lee. I'm not sure if this bothers me or not. At first I would say that this is a con for me because a lot of these superficial details impress me and help the reality of the game IMO but at the end of the day do I actually ever think "man, it would be nice if it started raining right now" while I'm playing......no not really so maybe it bothers me a little because I'm overthinking it when I'm writing about it and don't really care when I'm actually playing.....HA!!

How's the car/track interface? are there bumps in the road?

I would have to say smooth as a baby's bottom. I know that isn't necessarily a good thing for a lot of people. On the road edges, some tracks do have grooves (not sure what you would call them) and you get some feedback on the controller (and I'd assume on the wheel as well) but as far actually seeing an effect visually, there is none. Very similar to what we are used to from Forza2.

There are portions of Sebring that are very bumpy due to the cement grooves in the road going across the track, perpendicular to the direction you're driving. You can really feel it and hear it.

There are bumps and dips in the road, you just have to be going F-A-S-T to notice them. Really fast.

The Almafi coast tracks have some cobblestone sections that plays hell with your suspension if its not set up to handle them. One of my current tuning projects is to set upa car to take it on.