Headache. Nausea. Blurred eyesight. Visions of lollipops dancing in my head. Okay, it’s not that bad, my eyesight is fine. Anyway, I picked up a copy of Forza Motorsports last night for my XBox. That, my friend, was mistake number one. Mistake number two was popping that sucker into the box and booting up this evil evil game. Remember, the first lap is free! Gah! I played from about 8:30pm to 2:30am (I’m home alone for a couple of days). I was obsessed. I couldn’t stop. One more race. Must buy one more upgrade. Need better brakes.
My poor dog stood at the back door wagging his stubby tail and looking over at me for two hours waiting for me to put him out to do his business. The door is two feet from where I was sitting. Finally he came over to me, lifted his leg and peed on my leg. It was warm. I kept right on driving. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for your sport, pal. You don’t get to stand on that podium and spray everyone with champagne if you stop to touch up your eye liner a few laps in. Besides, have you ever tried to do your business with Nomex gloves and a firesuit on? The Hans device make it impossible to look down anyway. The whole aiming thing needs, you know, hand eye coordination. Not good! Not good at all!
Here’s a list of things better about Forza than Gran Turismo 4 (in no particular order):
- When you wreck, and you will, your car actually accumulates damage you can see and feel. One time I hit the wall and I could hardly drive the car because it was pulling to the right so bad. I mean how cool is denting up a Ferrari Enzo? Well, not actually cool at all, but you get my drift (hah, a pun!) If you look at the car, you can see blown out windows, scrapes, and dents. Fantastic!
- This game helps you find the race line. It draws a line of arrows that you follow and the arrows change color. So if you dive into a corner and the arrows are bright red, prepare to meet Mr. Wall there Mr. Late Braker. This kicks ass. Good for the casual gamer like me. You can turn this off if you’re more hardcore, but I’ll take all the
handholding help I can get.
- The AI for the computer drivers is fabulous. It’s fun seeing a car ahead of you brake too late trying to pass and get all sideways and take out a couple more cars. Whizz past, so long suckers! Oh crap. Too hot! Too hot! Oh god, noooo! The wall! The wall!
- The sound is simply awe inspiring. Turbo blow-off. Throaty V8s. Other cars passing you. Spectators cheering. Wow. Gran Turismo’s cars all sound like souped up Civics to me.
- Career mode is actually fun. I actually got a real kick out of earning money and souping up my cars. Put on blingtastic rims. Paint them obnoxious colors. Stick on slicks. Put on race exhaust (which actually changes the sound of the car!!).
- The UI is easy to use. Some games really suck my will to live here. Ghost Recon, I’m talking to you! You beeatch!
- The tracks are gorgeous. Don’t look at the view too long though, you’ve got a hairpin coming up fast. Hah, like I’d ever do that. Damn, straight into the wall at 160. Whoopsi.
- The cars drive like they should. High horsepower rear wheel drive? You can drift around the corners. Front wheel drive? The car will push like a bit fat cow. All wheel drive? Launches off the line like a f-16 off the USS Enterprise.
- This game play has that hard to pin down combination of difficulty versus playability. They nailed the sweet spot. You know, like Halo nailed it. Hmm, both from Microsoft Game studios. Coincidence? You decide.
One tip though. It takes a while to get the hang of the controls, even for me with my mad Xbox skills (irony, look into it). If you jump right into arcade mode and into a Enzo, you won’t be able to drive it and you’ll get frustrated. This is pretty much what I did. I jumped in cars that I didn’t have the skill to drive and drive them right into the wall. Repeatedly. I was checking out the damage feature. Yeah, that’s it.
My advice? Do the career mode. You’ll start out in a little Acura or something and your cars will get faster proportionally to your skills. Career mode take a while, but it’s worth it. Especially if you’re like me and love cars and racing and the whole ball of sticky sticky wax. Mmm, waxy.
D’oh look at the time. I’ve been at work about ten minutes. That’s enough. Must go home and drive. Now. Eat my dust, suckwad!
Oh, one last thought (keys in hand and one foot out the door), I haven’t even tried XBox live racing yet. That promises to be a whole new level of insane fun. Omg, life is good. Damn, now where’s that Excedrin?
