#FF00AA

Well, that’s not much of a surprise: the game looks pretty much perfect. The visuals and sounds are spot-on (right now I’m letting the game race itself in the background, and it really feels like there’s a race running on TV, with better camera work and minus the obnoxious commentary — actually, I want to be able to set that as a screensaver), the physics feel more realistic than ever, and the streamlined menu system, while obviously simplified for the demo, already shows its qualities.

As it happens, the two things I’m least convinced with are the two prominent bullet points on Forza 3’s list of additions: the cockpit view, and instant rewind. The cockpit view feels claustrophobic, but that may be due to my playing on a non-widescreen monitor; more importantly, turning your head requires inconvenient precision with the right stick, and I’m still clamoring for a game to try turning the pilot’s head automatically when I turn the wheel — as long as you don’t prove me otherwise, I’ll say that should be the way to go.

As for instant rewind, never minding the one time it bugged (and wouldn’t rewind further than ten seconds), the big problem is that you can only rewind by chunks; you can’t actually decide exactly where you want to take control back, and that’s just a little inconvenient if you end up rewinding to a spot where you had to hold the wheel just so, and the brakes just so, etc., and you lose control again in the middle of a turn (I’m not sure if the game engine tries to intelligently decide at which point to let you travel back in time, but if it does, it fails).

I didn’t try the bullshit auto-brake assist, but the game is pretty fun with all other assists turned on, and it’s super realistic with all assists turned off (I’ll just assume that “manual + clutch” is not intended for gamepad players, because having to press the left bumper to switch gears is just about unplayable). Unlike Forza 2, where stuff like ABS felt like it was a physical simulation of the real thing (skid, let go, skid, let go, skid, let go, only faster than the driver can react — useful to avoid an accident on the highway, but not so inefficient on a race track), the assists here leave the game completely playable — and it looks like even the automatic gear switching won’t penalize your performance too much (which won’t stop me from complaining that you can’t force a gear change when you want to). I didn’t expect Forza’s developers to understand how to make their game more accessible to a general audience (to make up for the disappearance of Project Gotham Racing), but it looks like they might have — except you can’t really drift unless you turn off most assists, and then it gets… harder, obviously.

As for the demo itself, it’s a little limited: the track is gorgeous, but feels small (mostly because it’s cramped, making it hard to overtake opponents), the game is limited to two-lap races for some reason, and there’s no online mode. But the game didn’t really need a big demo anyway. (And it’s 1.25 GB already as it is.) That game is gonna be a must-buy.