The upcoming Forza Motorsport 3 was available to play at the Microsoft stand at rAge 2009, and I managed to get a few races in. The set up at the Expo was how racing games are meant to be enjoyed - with a seat, wheel and pedals, particularly when the racing game being played is as realistic as Forza is.

The track set up was a circuit around a mountain that was reasonably technical, but not too difficult with the assists on. The dynamic racing line is especially helpful because it changes to a red colour around corners to indicate that you need to slow down, changing back to green once you’re going slow enough. The game runs very smoothly at what seems to be 60 frames per second, which helps immensely with the feeling of control and with driving pleasure. I didn’t manage to destroy my car but by the end of each race my paintwork was a little bit chipped here and there from bumps with other cars, and it looked really authentic.

Forza, being a simulator, is not very forgiving, but the anti-locking braking and traction control assists mean you can concentrate more on when to brake and accelerate rather than on just how hard to press the accelerator to prevent your car spinning when pulling off. I’ve always found that video game pedals don’t offer enough resistance for you to finely tune just how much petrol to apply.

A feature that is becoming common in racing games post GRID is the rewind feature. In Forza you’re able to rewind a section you did badly by pressing the Select button. I find that realistic driving games require intense amounts of concentration because of the tiny margin of error allowed when you’re trying to eek out the fastest times you can, so it’s great to know that if you clip a wall or enter a turn going just to fast then you can redo it. I couldn’t work out just how many times you can use this feature, and it’s obviously only valid for the single player game.

Forza looks to be shaping up to be the best racing simulator on the Xbox 360. There has been a lot of talk about comparing it with Gran Turismo 5 but that can be postponed for now because Forza Motorport 3 is out this month while GT 5 is only out in next year March. All you really need to know is that it is a lot better than Forza Motorsport 2.

Head over to our previous coverage for more information on Forza Motorsport 3, including screenshots and trailers.

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