f13.net

From Azazel:

Ever read a review written by someone who's not normally a fan of the genre, but is won over by a specific game? This is not quite that review. I've enjoyed a racing game or three through the years, but my lean has been much more towards car combat (Twisted Metal) or just arcade fun (Top Gear for the Amiga, Burnout). I enjoyed the first Need for Speed, even. PGR1 on X-Box was okay, even. Gran Turismo on the other hand, no thanks. I don't want to fiddle with my gearbox, I just want to drive. So that's my perspective goin g in and the type of gamer this review is written for.

So anyway. Forza. Well, it came free with my 360, and after a month, I decided to give it a whirl. It has an "Arcade" mode, after all. That must be for the casual car game players, like me.

The good: Looks beautiful. Gorgeous graphics, lots of shiny, more real cars throught e years than you can shake a stick at. Tracks appear to possibly be real ones as well.

However, if you're not a hardcore fan of the realistic racing genre, this game sucks. In my first race on easyidiotmode, I pwned the thing and was bored out of my gourd, going around in meaningless circles. Now most games involve an amount of treadmill and repetition, but this was just stripped too bare. Painful. Every other race I tried, however, was an excercise in sliding around the road like I was having an epeleptic fit.

Now, I know I'm crap at racing games not called Burnout. I don't need to be told that. But I can safely say that FM2 is in no way a friendly bit of fun for anyone remotely casual about their racing. If you're a Gran Turismo afficionado, this might be for you, but for players like me...

-

Stay Away.

Lol, I know he made it clear from the beginning that he didn't like the sim genre, but umm... Well, why the hell do a review for it then? Wrong person for the job. This game is awesome. I don't even own a 360 and I'll say that. Also, there's basically no alternative without a new GT release yet, so it's pretty much must buy by default.

It's a good review of the Warning To Others type, of which there are not enough.  There have been plenty of times when I have tried to break out of my gaming-box and try new stuff, and there are times I was burned for it.  A short "Burnout fans, stay away from Forza 2" is much better than most of the reviews you'll read on IGN or GameSpot.

If you liked GT or have any interest in racing or cars, Forza 2 rules.

Here's a suggestion for anyone doing reviews: don't do a review for a genre you hate.  People who also hate the genre won't be buying it anyway, so don't bother.  Also, you likely don't know enough about the genre to comment on good/bad points who people who do like the genre, or who may be on the fence about it.  FWIW, I don't care for racing games either, so I've no interest in Forza either way.  Not picking on Az either, as I've seen several people do this.  Otherwise, it's like reading "Jack Thompson reviews GTA3".  Predictable and unhelpful.

I'd have loved to have read a "Gran Turismo fan plays Midnight Run" review before I wasted my time and money.  Usefulness is in the eye of the beholder.

Seems handy to me to have people who aren't fans of a genre give their thoughts on it. I hate most sports games but fricking love Mario Hoops 3 v 3 on the DS. What does that mean? Fuck if I know, but it's a handy data point for others.

There's a difference between not being a fan of a genre, and hating it.

Hmmm... I should do a review for WoW.

Good review. I like the arcadey stuff, too. Me and a friend played a ton of NFS: Hot Pursuit (the first one). Then one day I went to his house and he was on lap 27 of 983 or something and he was telling me how awesome this gran turismo was. A thousand laps on an oval track. And he had some hotrod car that was lapping the shit out of everyone else. I slammed a beer quickly to be sure I was seeing and hearing properly.

Actually, I slammed the beer so I could get the fuck out of there. It kind of creeped me out, like peeking in your parent's closet to find your xmas gifts and finding an s&m dungeon instead.

So...I can dig where Az is coming from. It's ok if the rest of you have s&m dungeons.

I love Gran Turismo. I love Ridge Racer.

I could not get into the new Forza. The liveries were >>>>> the rest o fthe game.

OK, I admit that those high level goals in GT are ridiculous (it ain't 983 tracks, but it's still pretty bad). And usually, you'll get a pretty crappy car as the reward. So it's not even worth it in the end.


But... There is a game in these sims for the most part. Oval tracks are the least part of what they offer. And the game is 1) learning a track enough to be able predict changes 2) maintaining your best/most optimal speed in it without fucking up. Just getting to the finish line isn't enough.

At it's barebones, that isn't unlike most other games really. i.e. learning a level or a boss, and trying to make a perfect run through it.

That Mario Hoops 3v3 isn't a standard basketball sim.  Which... none of the Mario sports titles going back to the NES days are.  I used the word genre, but what I really mean is that any product has an intended audiance; what is it trying to do, and does it do it well.  Mario Hoops isn't intended to be a basketball sim, so if it is being rated on that scale it is going to do poorly. 

This review is by someone who doesn't much like racing games saying he doesn't like the the next big racing game.  This is not a surprise, but says more about the author's tastes than the game.  If I were interested in getting into racing games, would this be a good one?  Does the difficulty ramp just right up so that I could get into it easier?  How does it compare to other, similar, games?  The 360 pushes hard to have good online play, so how does this game do online?  A key point is that this is boxed with the XBox Elite, except at Wal-Mart, so apparently MS thinks it has enough mass appeal to be worth packaging it in.  Az says no and that's fine, but I'd be interested in knowing *why* so that as a potential customer I could make something out of it.  Afterall, every single review on Metacritic gave this game high marks (edit: all but 6 of the 65 reviews being "universal acclaim").  I've no problem with someone wanting to break from the pack, but why?  He got bored on SuperEasy mode after a few laps around the starter course?  But he doesn't like racing games, so he's going to be predisposed to turning it off when he runs into things he dislikes.  He assumes it's not for him from the start.

I think you missed something (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=11536.0).

I can't be bothered to read the rules again, but if there's something about them that says that people who don't like entire genres can still be qualified on whether something in said genre should be played or not, then I'm not down. It's an excellent game for what it is -- at the very least, he should qualify his "stay away" comment with some exceptions.

You mean like where he said "If you're a Gran Turismo afficionado, this might be for you, but for players like me...", just before he gave the rating of "Stay Away"?

No, like, he should give two ratings. "Stay Away", and then something else. Don't just end it on that note.

He's going with the format.  I did suggest elsewhere that these topics be done as polls so everyone can register their own opinion and have it viewable at the top of the thread for convenience sake, but for now this is the format that schild wants it would seem.  Besides all that though, any of us can read the original post and decide for ourselves how much stock we put in the reviewer's point of view.  Azazel saying "stay away" isn't going to have an effect on the metacritic score or cause Forza 2 sales to plummit, and these reviews aren't being put forth as the official position of f13 or anything.  It's just a quick "what game are you playing right now and right from the start, are you having fun with it?" kinda thing.

Eh, OK. Fair enough. Still though, that F13 is seemingly one of the sites with a bad rating on Forza 2 makes me a  :crying_panda: . Meta-critic or not. Official statement or not.

Forza 2 is a bad game for people that like arcadey racers. Ridge Racer and F-Zero and such are much better.

Forza 2 is a great game for people waiting for GT5. Which is the better simulator. Fo' serious.

No, the review is by someone who doesn't get into realistic racing sims.
I qualify this from the very beginning to make readers aware of the perspective that the review is written from - Mr Super-Casual Driving Game Guy who spent an hour or so (trying) to play it. If you're a noob to the genre, and not willing to spend a lot of time with the game, then no, it's not very friendly at all. The difficulty ramped up from ridiculously easy in my first race to a brick wall hitting me repeatedly in the face in my second and all subsequent ones. I played a number of races, not three laps around the initial course.

How does it compare to other, similar games? Not sure, I don't play a lot of these. Go read the IGN/Gamespy/Gamespot review where no doubt their top car racing game playing guys with an encyclopedic knowledge of the genre fought for the honor of reviewing a title they assumed they would love. Online play? Not sure, my LIVE gold ran out a few hours before I played it, and while I have a card here, the SP experience was not the type that would make me put in my code to try it out online.

As an aside - I had the beginnings of a mess around on PGR3 last night afterwards. MUCH more playable for people like me. I'll write it up after I've spent a little more time on it.



Stray - stop being a fanboy. I qualified my perspective at the start and also made the exception for GT fans.

Roac - I went in with an open mind. As I said, I've enjoyed many racing games of various kinds through the years, it's just not my genre of choice. Forza has an option on the menu called "Arcade Mode" so I was certainly willing to give it a go. It was shortly after that that the game beat me over the head with the difficulty stick. One of the GT series (on PS1) had an "Arcade Mode" and that was actually okay for me. I remember it because it had a Cardigans song on the soundtrack.

You're reviewing something for what it isn't, rather than what it is. It's the best thing that genre has to offer right now, and all you can do is trash it for not being Burnout. How am I being a fanboy for bringing that up?

[edit] Eh, screw it. At least you got people talking about it.

You have a PS3. It's region free.

The best thing in the genre right now is GT5 Prologue.

No. You're not reading it right. I'm reviewing it from the perspective of a non GT-fan trying it out. It's not Burnout and that's totally fine, but it's also not an accessable game to the non-hardcore. If you love it so much, why dont you marry it? write your own review from the perspective of a serious racing fan? That would provide a good counter-perspective to my review.

Mine is from:
Do you like the occasional racing game? Thinking of picking one up for you and your girlfriend/wife to have a play around with? Checked the reviews of racing games? Gee whiz.. it looks like Forza 2 is about the best racer on the 360 right now. All of the reviews fellate it endlessly so it MUST be for you. Except, it's not..

wait.. "at least I got people talking about it." What the fuck? Not a fanboi?

Counter point to this from someone that does not like/buy/rent racing games: I love Forza 2.  It nearly made my top 20 list.

Arcade/sim doesn't matter: I didn't like Need for Speed, Gran Turismo, any Mario Kart except the original, F-Zero, etc.  I'm horrible at all of them and generally don't play them enough to ever get good. However, I took a chance with recommendations here and picked it up after getting better at the demo and even enjoying it somewhat.   

The game really has a great diving model and the controls are just near perfect.  Plus, there's a lot of difficulty settings you can tweak in the case that you're like me and REALLY suck at driving games.  I have most of the assists turned off, except when driving RWD cars exclusively, because I'm just bad at it.  The performance tweaking/upgrading system was excellent also.  There's something appealing to me about driving a 400hp Mini that handles like a go cart. Heck, this game even got me to try my hand at artistic creation designing a Monkey Island themed car.  I'm pretty much artistically retarded but I managed to create a Murray graphic and the MI logo before the driving pulled me back.

My achievements on this game are a bit misleading, I sunk a lot of time into it.  Other games pulled me away and if there's any knock, it can be a little bit difficult for those of us that absolutely suck at driving games.  I refused to make it too easy, because I thought (besides RWD issues) the difficulty was appropriate for me at the default settings.  And there's something thrilling about winning a tightly contested race where your maneuvering, not the AI's retardedness, won the day.

Caveat: I don't play the arcade mode.  I don't find that to be this game's selling point nor strong point.  Comparisons to GT's nutcrunching are a bit off base, I think.  The endurance races run about 30 laps as far as I remember and that's the only category of that kind.

I'd recommend this game to anyone, knowledge of their tastes unknown.  It's just excellent. Looks great, sounds great, plays great. 

See, here we go. I disagree with Rasix' recommendation of the game to anyone. 

But that's the thing about reviews. When it comes down to it, they're opinion.


Rasix, you say you've put a lot of hours into it, what did you think of the game when you first started playing, since this is supposed to be reviews of those first few hours?

First hours for me would be misleading since I played the demo for a bit. 

First hour or so I generally liked.  I started right away on the career mode, started in Europe, picked a Mini and started rocking (sort of).  I won/placed in a race here and there, but generally didn't win enough to take the Gold in the series I was trying.  I kept practicing, kept upgrading, kept playing and was having fun. 

Some initial comments of mine from the original thread: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=10153.0

Heh, forgot about the whole gunk-on-the-disc nightmare.  My first hours may have been extended due to technical problems. 

My butisitfun review may have been more guarded since I technical issues piss me off pretty fierce, but there would have been a line about why I'm still playing the game.  Any racing game that manages to keep my attention outside of multiplayer is impressive.  I imagine at the time I was somewhat amused I wasn't cursing and tossing my controller.

Dude chill.  :oh_i_see:

Besides, even if I was a fanboi, whoopty-fucking-doo. Cars are cool. Pretty much got the world on my side with that one.

Anyways, what I mean is: At least it has sparked discussion, and wasn't completely forgettable. Good for you. Most successful review evar, in that respect. You don't seem to realize how controversial (for lack of a better word) your review is. Controversial enough to get more people than usual to jump out of lurkmode and offer alternative opinions. That's a good thing.

THE FINAL RATING ISN'T IMPORTANT.  Fuck.  This attitude is the problem with game reviews.  Sure there's some shonky ethics and questionable journalisms but if readers only look to final rating and can't read the whole thing and form their own judgements on the game then we'll forever be stuck with 7 to 9.9 out of 10 reviews.

Ratings make for good referencing. Doesn't necessarily have to be a number though. I don't know why you made that jump. I never said anything about it.

/golfclap dude, Given the tone of your posts, expect some stick right back.
You've spent your last several posts in this thread attacking me for giving a game you like a poor review from my specific perspective (OH NOES ZELDA ONLY GOT 8.8 OUT OF 10! BURN TEH WITCH!!) and feeling sorry for the poor game's metacritic score (which is one fo the things that does make me think fanboi, though at least you're admitting as much now)  - I love me some Max Payne but I don't know or give a rats ass about what the overall Metacritic score thinks of it. Is It Fun? is the important thing for actual gamers, so why would you give a fuck about the Metacritic rating? A poor review of a game you like doesn't hurt you. Disagree if you like, but stop taking it as a personal affront.

Alternative opinions are a good thing, and not every review of this type of a popular game has to be a love-fest. We're not GameSpotIGNetc.

I demand that only fans of a game can review that game, and only give it a "Buy It" review. The last line of the review can always read:

"If you're the sort of person who likes this game buy it!"

Helpful!

I'm not, nor do I have any reason in the slightest to take anything personal. I don't even own the game. I said that in my first post here. A post that started with "lol" at that -- all of which are not the words of a man getting defensive about a beloved game, I must say.

The complaints in this thread were never about defending specific games... But just about reviewers needing a little more open-mindedness when it comes to genres. No one expects a guy used to reviewing Garth Brooks albums to review a Tool album either. Same should apply here.

I have no problem with Az trashing a game. He'd just get less shit from me if he trashed one from a genre he did like.

I. DON'T. HATE. RACING. GAMES.

I am not a fan of realistic driving sims. I do enjoy an arcadey kind of racing game. Forza proudly boasts "Arcade Mode."

dots. join. the.

But this is.


Let's give it a rest now, eh?

I know you don't hate racing games. But arcade and sim are different enough to be seperated into their own categories.

As for Forza's arcade mode, that IS a fair point -- but are you limiting your review to that? I really can't tell. Nor can I understand why you'd want to.

I submit you are not getting the basic point of this system, Stray, and I do mean "basic" since it's meant to be simple and to-the-point.  You want a traditional review, if I read your text properly.  These impressions are not reviews, not in the normal game-journalism use of that word.  Furthermore, BiiF fixes some basic flaws in the review system.  One being that it's not an Official F13 Rating, but a single gamer's opinion of fun value.  Furthermore, his bias against the genre is clearly shown and conclusions may be drawn from that combined with the impression itself.  If there was any obfuscation, I'd say this wasn't a good writeup but everything is very clear and easy to use as reference material.  I'd probably even say Az's post can be used as a template.

Debates about the merits of the BiiF system can be taken to another thread, if they must continue.  If, instead, you want to post "OMFG FM2 RULEZ N U SUX U FAG" then this is the thread to do so.

OK, then this section is pretty pointless for me then. My bad! Seriously.

Yes, I want more balanced reviews. Not impressions from just anyone -- which is why you'll never find me, for instance, actually giving a review of WoW (despite me jokingly saying I would). It wouldn't be fair, or even the least bit illuminating for mmo players.

I'll explain. As I've now said once or twice, I'm not a detailed racing sim gamer. So since I own this game, I thought I'd try to see if there was any fun in it for the simpler arcade raging gamer. Since "Arcade" mode is likely to be much friendlier to my kind than "season" or whatever it's called, I started there. If I enjoyed it and found it easy enough to get into, I'd have progressed from there. Since the first race was unfun and easy, and subsequent races on different trracks with different styles of car were like the game was repeatedly hitting my nuts with a hammer with the handling and such, I did not progress to the more "realistic" modes of racing.

These are capsule first-impression reviews. As per schild's decree: "please keep under 400 words". Arcade mode is as far as I managed to get since if I was getting my nuts smacked in idiot mode, I can only imagine the pain it would have inflicted on me in a mode advanced mode... I didn't try online for the same reason. Based on my experience of the gameplay, what I would have written there surely would have been: "I am shit at this game and got pwned by the bunch of randoms that I was thrown into the race with."


As for illuminating and fair - if you're a Gran Turismo kinda guy, then I am sure this game is probably the Bee's Knees. Not being that guy myself, I can't say with 100% certainty, but that's my best guess. Which I did mention. If you're like me, arcade-racing-centric, and you thought Forza might be a bit of easily accessable fun, then you now have a warning that it's not so. I don't think I could be any clearer about my own perspective.

The review is very helpful. I like games like F-Zero but not so much GT. Now I know that I probably won't like Forza. Mission accomplished.

"Objective" reviews are pure shit. It's much better for the reviewer to state where they are coming from up front, especially in reviews of purely subjective experiences. It's not supposed to be definitive and no single review *can* be definitive. Nothing prevents another person from reviewing the same game either.

Any review is a combination of what the reviewer thought and who the reviewer is. Both were stated clearly.

Fair enough. You can write what you want. I misunderstood the rules.

All of that stuff about it not being a good arcade racing game though pretty much goes without mentioning. This game was meant from the get go to be a competitor to GT on the Xbox. Nothing more. I thought that it was well known that it's a sim. I wouldn't call it a good arcade game either! The "Arcade" mode is misleading, I admit, but it's not meant to signify arcade-y gameplay. It's just for exhibition races (as opposed to Career mode). Some sports games use the same terminology to signify single game matchups (as opposed to playing an entire Season or Franchise) -- it's not something that magically transforms NBA Live into a session of NBA Jam.


P.S. I never used the word "objective". I just said "fair". And judging a game for what it isn't even marketed as isn't being fair. I mean, at the very least, if we can't have that, then this review section is worthless (I speak only for myself, of course).

Thanks for listening  :-)

P.P.S. Sky should review some console games.

This will by my last post in reply to Stray's endless crys of me being unfair.

If you're still failing to comprehend a clearly-made point about my perspective after this many posts, then I don't think you're ever going to understand.
(If they don't mean "Arcade" by "Arcade" perhaps they're using the wrong term?)

Until a month ago I didn't have a 360. To that effect, knowing which games on the 360 were aimed at whom exactly was not of much interest to me. I'm not sure what the latest and greatest games on PS3 are right now, either, aside from that adventure game. It'll become relevent to me at some stage later when I am about to get a PS3, but don't expect me to then suddenly know all about some game that was released in the middle of 2007, either.

My snapshot review doesn't mean Forza is an emperically shit game. I don't say the game is shit for all players. I don't say it's a bad game. I say that if you like arcade-style racers but not sims you should Stay Away.


You can have a witty rejoinder for the last word now, because I'm done explaining myself to you endlessly.
(and to touch on your earlier post, this thread only beats the Rock Band thread's post numbers because of the silly argument we've been having back and forth.)

 :uhrr:

Not looking for either an objective or definitive view.  Not looking for a comprehensive review in a 400 word post.  Nor do I really care what Az's oppinion is, since if anything, he was kinder than I would've been.  I'm looking for reviewers who like the type of game they're reviewing, so that if they don't like this specific one, it has some backing worth considering.  What I got from this review was:

1) He doesn't like the genre.
2) He plays badly at the genre.
3) This contributed to him not wanting to even play it for a month.
4) He played stupideasy mode, and got bored.
5) He played badly at other parts of the game that weren't stupideasy mode.
6) Oh, it has some "arcade" mode that wasn't the focus of the game to begin with, and wasn't all that great anyway.
7) He didn't like the game.

I am certain my own view will mirror that exactly.  But, I know I don't like racing sims, so I'm not going to even try a game that is as far as I know a racing sim.  Thumbs down is a foregone conclusion.  The oppinion is entirely valid, it's the validity of the process that I'm questioning.  I would hope that nobody would avoid this game if I suggested they do so, because I know I'm biased against it to begin with.  If, on the other hand, I thumbs down Red Steel (and I do), I think that carries more weight as it's a genre I like, a game I expected to like, and a platform I enjoy.  

Just quickly.
1) and 2): Sure, no problem. As long as we're looking at it as "realistic" car sims as opposed to "jump on and play" arcade racers.
3) A month? Que? These capsules are supposed to be a couple of hours impression, tops.
4) Yep.
5) The other parts were slightly-more-advances sections of the Arcade mode, which I'd have thought would be if not as easy, at least accessable.
6) Arcade mode has a point to the game. You unlock lots of cars there, so I assume it's a relevent part of the game, but I expected it to be the most accessable part. The "jump on and play" section, so to speak.
7) Correct.

To repeat one more time, I open with this:
As I make plain my biases at the very start, I doubt the review is going to make a firm fan of the genre avoid the game, but it holds relevence for others who have a similar bent towards car games as myself.
If I'd not loved the genre but it turned out that I loved the game, (as Rasix has) would that have suddenly made my review palatable or more relevant?

Arcade mode is a "jump on and play" mode. "Jump on and play this sim racing game", that is. :awesome_for_real: It's not meant to change the nature of everything. Still the same game mechanics. It's just meant to take you to the action without worrying about winning cash, tuning your car, worrying about permanent damage, winning series of tournaments, and that sort of thing. Relatively speaking, it's a very casual experience.

This is like someone who only likes Afterburner trying to review Falcon 4.

100% worthless. Next.

I stepped outside of my comfort zone (admittedly, my zone was a bit larger), you really didn't here.  Of course, how you come upon your viewpoint is really irrelevant for this framework. 

Would have been more interesting to me if you had dove into the sim portion of the game.  Reviewing just the arcade potion of the game is a bit silly.  Again though, framework. 

That's nice, but this forum wasn't made to just give you the type of review you in particular are looking for, so there's no need to piss on reviews that don't fit your criteria.  There are very few genres that I get really hardcore into, so I appreciate reviews from a casual player's perspective.  I'd rather read a review of a fighting game from someone other than Hammer Frenzy for instance, because he's going to be looking at things from a completely different perspective than most of us.  I'm not a huge fan of fighting games, but there have been some that I've really been able to get into.  People here seem to mistake "not a fan of the genre", for "I hate games like this".

It seems pretty pointless to me in a way for racing sim reviews to only be written by hardcore racing sim fans for other hardcore racing sim fans to read.  Fuck that circle-jerk.

You stated you owned the game for a month before playing it, which doesn't suggest you were looking forward to it.  It wasn't my intention to suggest you should have played it for a month.

Yes, this review format fits what I'm looking for just fine.  Play for a few hours, 400 words.  Buy, rent, avoid.  That's peachy; what doesn't work is going in with a bad mindset, which has nothing to do with the overall format.


Doesn't need to be a "hardcore" racing sim lover, just someone who enjoys racing sims and has played (and enjoyed) several so that they have some level of positive experience to draw from.  If you really want to push it and call such a person hardcore I guess that's fine, but then we'd all be hardcore.

I have games I've owned for a year that I'm still looking forward to.

Also, guys, the review fit the format. I'm not seeing the big deal. It seems like someone just got a case of the crazies. People are going off on Azazel worse than when I said 'meh, mario galaxy, just another 3D mario.'

Oh, nothing like that at all. I bought up a bunch of games for the 360 when I got it and over the weeks since, but barely had a chance to look at more than about 4 of them before less than a week ago, since the last 2 months of work has been crazy dayz. For example, I still have 8 games I still haven't even opened including Assassin's Creed, Crackdown, Saints Row, Just Cause, Fight Night, etc etc. I've played several of the ones I have opened for very short amounts of time as well. Like <10mins. I hope to rectify this now that I have a few weeks off work and the family committments of Christmas week are done with. Seeing schild's post, I probably also have 20+ PC games I haven't yet played from the last couple of years. Some of which I'll probably never get around to playing..  :uhrr:



As I've said, I went in hoping for a fun, accessable racing game for me/people like me. I didn't get that.
I was also honestly unaware that it was quite the full-on detailed racing sim, since as I've said, it was a pack-in and I really didn't bother following the 360 games catalogue in huge detail before buying the machine. This is why I was hoping for a more arcadey and looser experience from the "Arcade" mode. (I was going to get the one without the HDD and buy the 120gig one seperately, but since by all reports on f13 the 20gig is enough for most normal humans and the pack I got was discounted by au$80 for a few days I took the plunge. In Australia, and possibly Europe, you get FM2 and Viva Pinata as the packins (in the US, I believe it's VP and Marvel: UA as the packins).

Honestly though, I don't feel a need to have posted all of the above as an extra paragraph of qualifiers in the body of the review.
It was a matter of: open game, pop it in and load it up, play for awhile,  :ye_gods:, and finish. Write BiiF review on f13 before going to sleep, check the board in the morning to find 21 posts in the thread and spend the day alt-tabbing occasionally to continue argiung on the internet with Stray.

Just add a "Stay Away" to the end of that and you'll have a BiiF-format impression of this thread.  You're on a roll, dude.  :awesome_for_real:

FIFY  :awesome_for_real:

Well, yes, since then it would have been unusual.  As it stands, it's "Person who doesn't really like sim racing games doesn't like this sim racing game".

Don't get me wrong, I'm not ragging on you here, but I'm a bit surprised you would even ask the question above.  It seems like a no-brainer to answer it in the affirmative.

So, which would be the right racing game on the Xbox360 for people like Azazel?

Be a rainbow not a painbow, people!

Wipeout HD for the PS3 is what he wants.

If you're looking for arcade racers:

Project Gotham 3 & 4 (though I didn't care for the motorcycles in 4) are good fun, highly accessible and look very nice.

Need For Speed:  Most Wanted wasn't bad at all, though I could have really done without the characters and 'story'

DiRT is a solid rally-racing title

I think all but PGR4 can be had pretty cheaply (~$20 used)

OK, I loled. Does he even have a PS3?  You could lend him one of yours.

Our local store has PGR3 for 20 and PGR4 for 60. Is PGR4 really three times as good as 3?

Not really - it adds motorcycles and weather effects and to my eyes looks a bit better, but PGR3 was a pretty good-looking game as it was, especially considering that it was a launch title.  I also didn't really care for the 'racing season' structure of the game, preferring PGR3's 'pick any race/class/car and go' approach, but that wasn't a dealbreaker.

I'm more of an arcadey racing guy myself and was a pretty big fan of the Midnight Clubs (at least 1 and 2.  Never played 3 because it was subtitled 'DUB Edition'.  I don't need psychedelic reggae with my racing, thanks).  Midnight Club: Los Angeles is coming out for PS3 and 360 sometime this year.

I actually don't mind realistic racing sims, but it's definitely a different mindset.  Finding a cpu 'turn-buddy' to press against while you take a corner too tight is standard fare in an arcade game, but should be a fatal crash in anything realistic, which is more about finding optimal lines.  I think of realistic racers as puzzle games and arcade racers as twitch.

Actually, I never really got into the Wipeout games for some reason. Or F-Zero for that matter.


I've got PGR3 and enjoyed the first one on the original X-Box a reasonable amount, though I didn't get very far. I've only put about 5 minutes play into PGR3 so far, so I may pick it up again and BiiF it in the next week or so. Downloaded the demos for DiRT and Sega Rally but they're not quite my type (though I felt DiRT looked amazing).

No PS3. High price (AU$1000 for the original, the only one worth having in this country - thats close enough to US$900) and not many games, followed up by discontinuing the decent one and removing BC totally in Australia makes it almost a never-buy. Shame, since I really like my PS2 and wanted to like the PS3. Sure I still have my PS2 but the lack of BC and upscaling for my substantial PS2 library really is a big deal since I have gotten my HDTV. Once they're sub-$400 here with decent pack-ins I'll consider it. But that's more than a year away at minimum. I could have imported one from the US, but what's the use of a Blu-Ray player that won't play my local Blu-Ray discs.

bah. /rant off.

A competitive simulation racer can involve a lot of twitch gaming =P. Just in a different way to an arcade racer. Though you are definitely right in thinking it can be like a puzzle game at points, break here, turn, accelerate out. Whee.