forza 2: good, bad, not ugly

As anyone who has me on their XBL Friend's list will no doubt know, I've been spending a copious amount of time playing Forza 2 recently. So, how is it?

First, the bad. Bad as in bugs.

Graphically, the game is quite nice, but every now and again I'll experience a bug where the game will fail to draw the track and ground textures. I'll be driving, and suddenly, there is no track. There is no grass. I still see rumble strips and cones and walls, but no 'ground'. I'll see the background texture and black...like I'm seeing through the track. If I pause the game to take a picture while this is happening, I'll get a disc error and need to reboot the game/360. I've had it happen on more then one track and in different game modes. It'll happen in two turns one lap, and then not at all the next lap.

Audio wise, I've only run across one bug so far, occasionally a song will 'skip' during a loading screen. Sounds like a record skipping. So when I load up into the race track, I won't have any audio other then skipping song. Quite annoying, especially since it required a game reboot to fix.

On the control side of things, I just did notice my first bug, an inverted righ stick control during picture mode. Racing the "endurance" race at Tsukuba, paused to take a photo, and the right stick was suddenly inverted. Up was down. Down was up. Backed out of photo mode and re-entered it, without unpausing, and all was fine. Quirky, but a bug nonetheless.

OK, now my gripes, and I've got quite a few...

Pit road. First off, there is a glitch that disallows contact on pit road, as soon as car control is taken away from the palyer...so you can scream into the pits at full speed, and not really worry about hurting your car if someone else is already there. I've used this trick to gain lots of time on those in front of me, and even pass people.

Secondly, why is there no pit crew? Or at least sounds of a pit crew? That seems kinda like a blaring oversight. Someone works on the cars. To me, it really kills the whole 'simulation' feel when there isn't so much as the sound of an air gun to be found.

Lastly, what's up with the equipment sitting ON pit road? Tool boxes, tire racks, engine hoists and other crap is sitting ON pit road. Where cars drive. It's nice to see these, but at least put these on the other side of the wall.

Paint shop. Boy...I've got lots of complaints here. Why the deletion of flat paint? Why the deletion of carbon fibre 'paint'? Why can we STILL not put decals over top of carbon fibre parts? Why is there no chrome? That last one may just be an oversight on my part. I like how we're able to paint more and have more paint choices and decals and layers and everything else, but that doesn't mean we need to sacrifice what we already had.

And while I'm on the subject of paint, and as a transition to my next point, why aren't there blank race cars for us to paint? Why are we forced into using only what the game developers thought were good enough for inclusion into the game? Make a plain white version of all the R-class cars that we can buy in the dealership and that we can fully customize in the livery editor. Why give us all these racing shapes and decals if we're forced to use them on cars that the game doesn't consider race cars? Race cars live in the R-class, the other classes are simply stock and modified cars.

Continuing on from the previous point, why can't we have a race car version every car in the game? Make more race classes, and have the option to "race modify" your car for a race class. As I see it, the race car classes could break down as such: U/R1, S/R2, A/R3, B/R4, C/R5, D/R6. When you race modify a car, it'll default to the equivalent race class the car is already in. Lets say a car, stock, is a C-class car...race modify it and it'll be an R5 car. If you modified the car into A-Class, then when you race modify it, it becomes an R3 class car. The only thing I'd have to limit what race class you can modify a car for is that you must have a stock motor/drivetrain. Swapping the motor of a D-class car to bring it into A-class wouldn't take you from R6 to R3. I'd do this to keep similar cars in the same race classes and more in line with how real race series works and breaks down race classes. When you race modify a car, it'll be 'homgolated' much like all the R-class cars were for the shipping game. Your HP, weight, and other things would automatically go up or down in order to bring it in line so that it is competitive, but not dominating. Of course, with a race modified car, you'd lose the ability to change parts without first dropping the race modification. I see it as an all encompassing race modification, your motor would be upgraded (or restricted), transmission and driveline upgrades, top-spec suspension components, top-spec differential and weight reduction, race tires, and a special body kit to wrap it all up. And of course, we can paint the car any way we want. To me, this is just a huge miss on the part of Turn 10. Sure it's fun to race cars we'll never see, much less drive, but let us fulfill our fantasy other ways and take our daily drive and turn it into a REAL race car. Let tuning and driving be the judge of who wins, not the car you drive.

That was a long paragraph, I know. But it's a huge point on my end. Let me fucking modify my damn S13 into a race car and race with similar cars and be competitive. As it is, when you throw all the 'race parts' on a car, you go into S-class, where you usually aren't competitive.

I also don't like how you can't jump to your garage of cars and select any one, at any time. Sometimes, I'll be in a car that is eligible for a race, but its not the one I want to race in that race, so I have to change the car through choosing a different race series where my car isn't eligible, chose one that is, then go back to my original race and rechoose the car I wanted to begin with. Why not just give me a button to press to jump me to my car list.

I do like the favorite feature for my car list.

I also like how cars have dis-similar fuel usage rates. It used to be that no matter what car you drove, no matter how you drove and no matter what parts you had installed, all cars used fuel up at the same rate. Now, if you drive a guzzler (Ford GT anyone?) you'll need gas before I do in my 914/6.

I don't like how some tracks are gone. I miss Alpine Ring, Rio de Janeiro and the Test Track Oval. The game lacks from the lack of Test Track Oval.