Forza 2: It's Here! Huge Launch Feature

It's a screaming orgasm of a racing game that gives us everything we want in one stunning product. We chat with the game's producers and offer detailed impressions of the final game, before our contest and final review.

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The Photo Mode, borrowed from PGR3, shows that the detail on cars is not far off the ultra-glossy pre-rendered intro that plays before you start the game. The options you have in photo mode and how you control it seem improved slightly, but since the focus is on the car rather than your surroundings, you can't wander off around a whole track in camera mode. Rather, you can shoot from a max distance of about 50 metres away (which is a lot closer than it sounds). You can upload photo immediately to Forza 2 community website, and photos are generally available in less than one hour - then you can put it on your desktop, on forums, whatever.

"The other thing we had in version 1 was the paint and decal editor," explains Chou. "We had 400-600 layers you could put on the car - now there's 4,000! So players are even more empowered to make murals. When you're watching a race in Spectator Mode, it's not eight of the same cars all in the same colour; they're all very unique, different cars. Because of our car classification system, no one car dominates a class, and because of our upgrade and paint system, no cars look the same. I can sell that at the auction house, and be rewarded as someone in the community who's not just a good driver, but rewarded as a great tuner, a great set-up maker, a great painter."

Meanwhile, all fans are going to love the Xbox 360 Racing Wheel - it's a beautiful, slick wireless product. There's force feedback and resistance in the wheel, with rumble support, so if you go off road a bit you're going to feel shake and resistance. "There are a lot of wheels that you can get out there on the cheap," says Lee, "but we wanted to make something high quality - the plastics and the metals that went into it, we've spared no expense... we think it's what racing game fans have been dreaming of. We only had one shot at making it, so we had to do it right."

Chou adds: "If I could see these physics in my brain as I was driving, it would make me a much faster driver. This is what you need to be feeling with your hands. It's actually what force feedback tells you. Rumble is not just a nice feature to have, it's an absolutely critical feature for making a simulator, and we've spent a lot of time tuning it; you get rumble when you shift, you get rumble when the engine's trying to tell you to shift, you get a slight vibration as you're getting to the peak of your tire friction, and so on."

The phenomenal multi-screen set-up, allowing you to position three large HDTVs plus a small screen for your rear view mirror and even a live replay monitor, is nothing short of awesome. After positioning monitors, you can specify degrees between front three screens and degrees hidden. It's a shame we don't have three HDTVs handy to try this right now, but we've previously tried it at events and it's simply awesome. It's not just more immersive, the cool thing is that the 180-degree view you have across the three screens literally allows you look further afield and actually plan corners better - it's seriously hot.

It would be cool to make an eight-screen set-up forming an Octagon around you so you can see literally all around you, or maybe even take that huge 360-degree screen that EA used at the last two E3 shows! We can dream. The three-screen set-up is going to be an extremely rare novelty for most gamers though, since you'll need three HDTVs and three Xbox 360s to get it up and running. But it's awesome that it's in there right from the menu - it makes the product feel that little more exhaustive and complete.

A Tough Act to Follow
"We got feedback that Forza 1 was quite difficult," admits Lee. "For the hardcore guys, they were loving it, but for people who were maybe just getting into simulation, we wanted to add a braking assist to help them with the learning curve. In the first game when you turn your assist on you get less of a reward when you finish a race, but now as your skill level progresses you can turn the assists off and it's still extremely challenging. But with the racing lines too, it can make you into a better racing gamer, because you learn how to take the corners, how fast you should be going. It even helps you in other racing games, as you get more into this genre!"

What else can Forza fans look forward to, then? Any downloadable content on the horizon? "For sure we're doing DLC tracks and cars," confirms Chou, "but the truth is, we're trying to ship this thing. We're late! We said holiday, and we didn't hit it. I firmly believe that you don't ship a date, you ship a game, and we could have hit our date with a bad game, but we wanted to make a fantastic game."

We have noticed a few glitches like the drivers helmet clipping through the window as he leans to the left in replays, but overall, there is very little to complain here. Forza 2 has surely taken Gran Turismo's crown of excellence - at least for the time being.

'Tune in' again early June for your chance to win copies of the game, and our final review.

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