Forza Fever

 

You know its only been the last few months or so that I would here on a podcast or read in the gaming media that the racing genre has taken a fall. I find this to be strange to me considering the fact that I own 7 racing titles.

Well there's no better way to get people excited about getting behind the wheel then with the official announcement of Forza  Motorsports 3 at this years E3 this past week.

Do you remember  E3 a few years back when Jay Allard was introducing the Xbox 360 and talking all about what it can do on technical and community level ? Yeah, well then you might remember him talking about “Velocity Girl”. She was the “non-gamer” that could create content like  t-shirts and other user created content and put them up for sale in on Xbox Live.

Well Forza Motorsports is as close to that as we've come so far. Behind a incredible racing game is something much deeper and that's were Forza’s community lies. Even if you couldn't steer that car around the track for even one lap you could spend hours at a time playing Forza.

If you know what your doing under the hood of a car you could spend the time to fine tune a vehicle for others that cant even change their own oil (Me). The you put that car in to the Forza auction house for bidding.

Or if your the creative type with some artistic talent you can truly make some breathtaking paint jobs and put them up for bidding as well. For all you A/V buffs out there the new game will also include a video editor for uploading and posting to the net. And this is what people in the Forza community do.

You don’t need to be an expert to tune your car and paint it in the game, but the opportunity to get a car from someone who might be is there. Turn 10 the producers of the series make this very easy to do in game and also provide a great site for the community at ForzaMotorsports.net

Forza also takes the racing genre one step further with its superior controls and handling. Now there's plenty of games that can utilize a force feedback steering wheel, but non of then give the true drive experience like The Forza series. Yesterday I dusted off the old Microsoft steering wheel and fired up Forza 2 and was blown away all over again by just how great of a game it is.

If your thinking about getting into Forza for the first time of even if you have been playing the franchise for the past 4 years or so I highly recommend picking up a Racing wheel to enhance your gameplay. You can get the Microsoft wheel for around $99.99 and it is a great wheel. If your wanna be a bit more hardcore about things and spend some more cash you could checkout Fanatec.com for some higher end racing wheels.

With the release of Forza 3 this October I think Il be spending more time with Forza 2 and my wheel to get warmed up for the season and just maybe this year I'll reintroduce The Ballad of TormentX. See you on the track this fall !

-TX