Forza Motorsport 2

You either play racing games or you don’t. It’s that simple. You’re either one of those people who live to shave 0.001 seconds off your best lap time around Nürburgring by tweaking the gears ratio and putting on soft tyres, or you pass by those games with cars plastered on their cover to reach for that one with the blood, the Locusts and the chainsaws. There is no in between. There is no halfhearted commitment. You either play racing games or you don’t. Like we say, it’s that simple.

If you don’t play racing games, you’re probably reading this out of sheer boredom or because your toilet break is taking longer than you expected. Some bad news – your bowels are broken! Some good news – your forced curiosity in this review could lead to a changing of your racing-game hating ways! That’s because Forza Motorsport 2, whether by accident or by design, could well end up bridging that elusive gap between those who play racing games and those who don’t.

Its intention was to throw option after option after option at the hardcore players until they drown in an ecstasy of options, crying their last breath about how the anti-roll bars can be tweaked while losing themselves to Forza’s addictive charm. That’s what Forza Motorsport 2 does. That is its thing. Options. It has options coming out of its exhaust pipe and every other car-based orifice as well as more customisation tweaks than you’ll know what to do with. Mini-Schumachers are well catered for and they could feasibly spend an entire evening doing nothing but tweaking their car, test-driving it, tweaking some more, test-driving it again, tweaking some more, notice the sun is starting to come up, wonder if it’s worth getting a few hours’ sleep, decide it’s not, then tweaking some more.

The side effect of all of this is that you don’t have to be a racing pro to feel as though you’re making progress. Even racing noobs who careen around the track with the grace of an Essex joyrider with steering wheel in one hand and can of Special Brew in the other will be treated to a slow drip-feed of in-game credits (known as CR), which can be spent upgrading cars. Forza Motorsport 2 does a good job of patting you on the back at every opportunity, even when you finish in last having been lapped three times by the race winner.

“Congratulations, you have won 0 CR,” it informs you without a trace of irony or humour. You giggle to yourself, then hit Restart and try again, just for that tiny inch of progression that Forza Motorsport 2 allows you. They might not be the biggest of carrots dangled in front of you each time but damn, they sure are tasty. With the promise of further tweaking and upgrading that your CR affords you, you keep going. There’s no such thing as too small a victory in Forza 2. Everything counts towards a bigger picture.

Token handling explanation The handling? Depends on your settings. As previously explained, Forza Motorsport 2 is a game of options. Not the most exhilarating statement but one that roughly translates into Exciting Game Speak™ like this. Do you see cars as mere obstacles to be overcome in your pursuit of a flawless lap clocking in at under two minutes? Then go right ahead and play. You’ll find the handling weighty, the margin of error slight and you’ll also find tailspinning rather hard to pull off, so you won’t get frustrated with careless opponents online or offline. Have fun!

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