Once you’ve created your design, you can add your car to the Auction House, which can be accessed from the Forza 2 website itself where thousands of cars are currently up for auction and racers can bid on any car they like providing they have the funds. It’s a solid system that cannot be really exploited too.
(Edit: Oh boy was I wrong with that. There were issues with the editor that allowed gamers to unlock locked designs and therefore flood the auction market with ‘dupes’ - Darren)
Lastly I shall just quickly mention the camera angles. I’ve already mentioned that there isn’t an in-car-dashboard view, which is a major downer no matter how you see it. The other views available are one hood cam, a bumper cam and two exterior behind the car views, which is what I mostly use for playing. Given that titles like Test Drive Unlimited and PGR 3 all had dashboard views, it’s quite a sad omission but then those titles were nowhere near as complex.
There’s no in-game music luckily, but the menu screen does have licensed tracks from big name artists like The Prodigy, Bloc Party, The Chemical Brothers, The Crystal Method amongst many other performers. Menu music was quickly switched off right away as it just gets annoying in games nowadays.
Multiplayer
Xbox Live is where Forza 2 just shines. Not since the 360’s launch with PGR 3 have I had such a laugh and unlike PGR 3, the online side of things isn’t dominated by a single car, as it used to be common to see nothing but scarlet red Ferrari F50’s no matter what race you entered in on PGR 3.
Forza 2 has a split screen mode giving you the ability to go head to head with your friends in the same house. You can also have an 8 player LAN or go onto Xbox Live with upto seven other human racers. The latter is what makes Forza even more enjoyable. With its realistic damage system things can get hilarious or tense depending on who you play with. Unlike PGR 3, which would turn into demolition derby without the demolition (no damage model) you have to be very careful in Forza because you suffer if you hit others or trackside objects. For the past week I have been playing with friends and have had a complete blast, in fact it reminds me of the early PGR 3 days but even more fun because Forza has wider tracks instead of the narrow street tracks that PGR 3 mostly contains. The most hilarious race I’ve been in so far was an all VW Beetle race. The starting grid looked hilarious, the car colours were completely awful and the race seemed like it would just never end!
As for the smoothness of it all, there is hardly any lag and I’ve yet to see players jittering around the track. For me connectivity was an issue for the first few days after the games release. Out of my first 20 or so attempts to connect to a running game it would just result in a failure for reasons unknown but I can connect every time now. Gameplay online is super smooth, and quite funny should someone start talking about Black Mamba’s and Vanilla Ice… Players can choose to race with the normal factory spec cars or choose their own cars from their garage and it’s a great place to show off your rides with their customised paintwork.
The Forza community is gigantic, and this is the best thing about this game. People will be playing it for ages and creating custom cars for a long time to come. On the whole, online play is superb and will definitely keep this title alive for a long time.
