I hate to start out my relationship with BitMob on a sour note, but certain things have to be said: the trailer for Forza 3 makes me sad. Honestly, I shouldn’t care: I haven’t played any of the Forza games, I have a somewhat flippant relationship with Gran Turismo, and my favorite racing game of all time is Need for Speed Underground. And yet I found myself slack-jawed in disbelief (and not in the good way like you want) while watching Forza 3’s trailer during the Microsoft press conference and even more-so when the gaming community seemed to embrace Turn 10’s offering with open arms.
My main concern stems from Dan Greenawalt describing the game as “the definitive racing game of this generation.” It’s a very interesting statement. At first, I took it (as most did) as a declaration of victory for racing games in the seventh-generation of console gaming. That alone is bad enough, and I’ll tell you why: when paired with the trailer, it immediately made the statement ridiculous. Watch it again:
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HglaUEGweQ 560×340]How can anyone show that video, and then expect people to accept the game as being exemplary of the definitive racing experience? Certainly it’s driving (and one might go as far as to call it car ballet), but I thought I’d be hard pressed to find anyone other than Turn 10 and Microsoft who would consider that to be what a racing game looks like.
Though keeping in full disclosure, Greenawalt also said “Forza Motorsport is inspired by all things cars… It’s this love of cars that drove my team,” which (when pared with that trailer) I can fully respect. The problem is that that there is a lot to do with cars and car culture that has absolutely nothing to do with racing. In fact, Turn 10 and Microsoft seemed to be fully cognizant of that fact when they continued their Forza 3 rollout by featuring a collection of artists who use Forza as their digital canvas.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M80G7sKsdts 560×340]The problem is, while Forza 3 features 400 unique cars that can be customized (read: painted) to your heart’s delight, Gran Turismo [PSP] features 800 unique cars… at this point, can the “definitive racing game” claim really hold water? And while Turn 10 may have created the definitive car culture game, by taking the focus so far off of racing it’s hard to swallow that it will ever define the sport.
On the other hand, maybe he’s right… maybe this is exactly what my generation wants out of a racing game. That’s scary as hell to me.