Test Drive Unlimited 2 (TDU2) is the latest pistonhead-oriented video game, a genre I’ve enjoyed since Test Drive first arrived in 1987. My PS3 usually spins two amazing time wasters: Gran Turismo 5 (GT5) for sheer hotshoe geekiness and the Grand Theft Auto series (GTA) for snark, storyline and reality-blurring gameplay. TDU2 sets out to blend elements of both, making it unique and intriguing in concept alone. But does the promise of a game that’s less serious than GT5 but more car-focused than GTA work in practice?

True to the GTA-side of the equation, TDU2 is escapism incarnate: you start in Ibiza (Hawaii comes later), the island famous for catering to the wealthy party-going set. That implies the need for top dollar super cars, flashy SUVs, and old school classics. The need for low-rent valets is obvious. That’s who “you” are: a hotel car-jockey daydreaming of a Jack Baruth racing lifestyle.

It’s a fun premise: TDU2 starts with poolside trust fund babies in a Penthouse apartment. You decide which person (avatar) best represents you: White/Black/Asian guy or girl. This sucks if you are a brown person but eventually I found a plastic surgery center, spent thousands of dollars and made “him” look more like me. Yes, really.

Back to the Penthouse: we learn that said party is in your honor. And there’s a gift in the garage: a Ferrari California! A woman wearing a dress tighter than Chrysler’s operating profit wants you to drive it. There are Barbie-doll females aplenty, but this is a “T for Teen” rated game: car-related dialogue matches the labored smack talk of a Fast And Furious flick. Ordinary conversations are whitewashed to the point of vapid PR jabber. Worse still, the majority of characters are complete douchebags, even the nice folks are fake and robotic compared to GTA.

Then again, there’s no Holy Grail of car-gaming communications: unlike GT5, TDU2 never insists on a catalytic converter upgrade on a pre-emissions vehicle. Good for them.

Back to the game, your birthday party is just a dream. And “you” wake up as a lowly valet, working up the ranks of a racing series called Solar Crown. The premise is kid friendly: TDU2 gets youngsters interested in cars by adding the social gaming elements of Xbox/PS3 consoles into the pistonhead mix. Kids won’t forget their smart phone aspirations, but TDU2 could make them lust for a Pagani Zonda.

Let’s dig into the social world: unlike GT5, one gets out of their car to do stuff. And you will explore: TDU2 demands purchasing more houses, more cars, attending (terribly pointless) driving schools and interacting with fellow racers on a variety of fronts.

My “favs” include car spots sprinkled around Ibiza: brand specific dealerships, performance garages, and automotive window dressings available via body shops. The free-roam gameplay is entertaining, kept organized by a map so beautifully detailed it makes Google Earth blush and GTA weep in agony. Much like said map, TDU2’s graphics are excellent, but the cars aren’t rendered to the point of GT5’s car-porn realism.

Too bad TDU2’s driving simulator is not for those old enough for a driver’s license. Vehicle dynamics contain enough vague responses to put away the race seat/feedback tiller in favor of a normal controller. And you must drive everywhere, at least once: unlike the geographically-diverse environment of GTA San Andreas, this gets old quickly. Making things worse, the music and DJ chatter is derivative, dull and repetitive. Earning TDU2’s style points for fast driving is also difficult, adding frustration for those with inflamed ADHD. City-to-city travel should let you have your cake and eat it too: this game takes too long to get to the goods, it’s an exercise in patience.

But, like the others, TDU2 lets one drive like a maniac without the pitfalls of vehicle collisions and their associated legal fees. Speaking of, there’s little damage upon impact and the island is deserted, aside from vehicular traffic. But the in-car views of the island are thrilling: watching the Lotus Espirt’s needles move to the right at full throttle was a great thrill compared to the UR-Accolade version of this game.

Back to why this is a non-driving simulator: while not a raging fan of online play, meeting fellow racers in the (awesomely rendered) clubhouse was wicked-cool. There were challenges aplenty created by fellow gamers, available at an activity desk. Back on the road, if you spot someone worth challenging, flash your lights, wait for confirmation, and get ready to rumble.

I’ve barely scratched the surface in this review, mostly because it feels like explaining the concept of an all-inclusive resort to someone that’s never seen an airport. This YouTube review will narrow the gap. If you like online interaction and wish to endlessly modify parameters such as the design of your homes/cars/avatar, this game can go on forever. Even with the driving simulator flaws and utterly trite dialogue, TDU2 is worth owning. If you have kids.

Atari provided a copy of Test Drive Unlimited 2 for this review.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Time and time again, it’s the comparison that kept occurring to me as I played Gran Turismo 5 on my PS3. The fruit of years – and years of development, Sony’s Forza-killer was finally bestowed upon us this November. Befitting its immense gestation period, the game is a mix of out-dated user interfaces and standard cars and tracks, a sublime driving engine, and incredible detail on some of the newer premium cars. Originally targeted at Forza Motorsport 2, it came out after Forza 3, and it plays like something in between the two.

Polyphony, the game’s developer, went for the bulk approach here in order to clear the 1,000-car mark. Everyone begins the game with standard cars. I began the game with a ‘93 Silvia, whose wheels I couldn’t change, whose interior I could not view, and whose engine I could not turbocharge. It felt straight out of GT2, let alone GT5. It’s not actually until you move up to the premium cars that the game’s 2009 and 2010 development years are apparent.

Those premium cars are styled beautifully, with incredible attention to detail. Assume the cockpit view, and, if you’ve got a 1080P plasma HDTV, it’s as close as you can get to the real thing for under $100.

It’s much the same with other aspects of the game. The game’s user interface is so cluttered with tiny buttons, it harkens to an Acura’s center stack from the earlier parts of this decade. The execution is similarly lacking. Tap “cancel” to leave GT (career) mode, for example, and you don’t actually leave GT mode. You get to a red button, which you must hit again in order to leave GT mode. It wouldn’t be so bad, were it not for the fact that you actually have to leave GT mode to collect the prizes you win during career races! Meanwhile, I’ve never seen a game whose interface is so ridiculous that developers actually have to provide a zoom feature for users to decipher all of the buttons.

The online play provides more dismal results. Back in Forza 2’s heyday, I could download the fastest posted lap with a given car on a given track and try to chase it in order to better myself. Forza 3 later, and GT’s online mode is limited to some generic racing. Great. Though we shan’t enter into a PSNet vs. Xbox live discussion, suffice it to say online mode trailed Forza 2 and is left in the dust by Forza 3.

Finally, the customization options are the most lacking of all. Standard cars can be upgraded, but only with non-branded generic parts such as “High RPM Turbocharger” or “Supercharger”. Most pathetic of all: you can’t upgrade your brakes. Ever. So forget about six-piston Brembos like in Forza 3 (or 2, for that matter). Of course, licensing items costs money and takes time, but let’s not forget this game’s been eons in the making.

The tracks, like the cars, are definitely two-tiered, with some getting and incredible treatment and offering picturesque views while others offer what could only be called “2D Mania”.

So what’s the Dr. Jekyll to all of the Dr. Jekyll above? Two things: Pure racing and special events.

GT5’s driving engine remains sublime, on-par or better with Forza’s depending on who you ask. This game incorporates all kinds of racing – from the extreme (snow, dirt, weather changes, night racing, drifting, NASCAR to the zany (driving a VW Bus around the Top Gear airfield) to the traditional (flinging a Ferrari around Rome) to the downright cool (testing AMG’s at Mercedes’ home track). And every single mode of driving is phenomenal.

Drive a NASCAR car and you can feel the strange mix of the car’s heaviness and its gradually increasing fickleness as you pick up speed. Drive a VW Bus and you’re almost nervous about tip-over.Your controller with rumble with the torque steer of a juiced up FWD car, and your rear will break loose as you’d expect if you gun it too early upon exit. Brake too hard while turning and say hello to lift oversteer at the rear.There’s no Need For Speed-style fantasy physics here, it’s all the real deal.

Unfortunately, even the game’s best aspects were not immune to the pervasive issues that plague the rest of the game. The damage modelling is mostly cosmetic and ineffectual. The GT mode is a grind, involving racing and re-racing the same tracks over and over again to level up, to get better and bigger parts. And of course, the AI is as deficient as its always been in the series. Take the lead on it, stay on the driving line and it may never actually pass you, no matter how slow you’re going.

It’s tough to know what to make of GT5. Every single time it pleases with an exquisitely delivered race, you know Mr. Hyde lurks in the shadows – lo and behold, here’s an eternal loading screen then dizzying array of buttons and Japanese elevator music. It’s the only game I can describe as both immensely frustrating and immensely satisfying at the same time.

Before landing a part-time gig as an automotive test monkey, I cut my teeth driving virtual cars on Gran Turismo 4 (GT4). Developer Polyphony Digital’s attention to detail was startling. You could/can feel subtle differences between ostensibly similar cars, such as an ’89 and a ’93 Mazda Miata (hint: chassis rigidity on the older car sucks). Sure, GT4’s artificial intelligence was a joke. And the lack of damage was mildly disappointing. But it was a great game, except for the understeer . . . the terminal bloody understeer.

The GT4 simulation was realistic (anyone who says otherwise has never driven into a tirewall in real life). But the game failed to provide methods for countering understeer. No amount of parking brake abuse, lift off or trail-braking could get the back end ’round. All three strategies relied on unsticking the rear tires, which were kept stubbornly nailed to the track by an anti-flying-car script. Those not turned off by the lack of dorifto either ran afoul of the anal-retentive license tests or burned out their Playstation2s (and marriages) trying to complete the dozen-or-so 24 hour endurance races.

Though not quite as beloved as the pick-up-and-play-able GT3, GT4 was popular, in no small part due to its “gotta-drive-em-all” car list and a track called the Nürburgring. As GT5 began its development process, a host of new titles began crowding the “driving simulator” market. The increased and increasingly realistic competition left GT5P with a lot to prove.

Graphics are the series’ traditional strong point. In this, GT5P doesn’t disappoint. While standard resolution is slightly jagged, high-definition play is breathtakingly photorealistic, with crisp car models, real-time reflections and spectators who’ve graduated from cardboard cut-outs to animatronic mannequins. Though framerates stutter during formation laps, the races themselves run at a full 60 fps.

Thanks to the Playstation3’s internet connectivity, GT5P has been constantly upgraded through online patches. The current iteration features six tracks and 70 cars, up from 36 vehicles on initial release. The physics—already a major step up from GT4—have been tweaked. Hand brake, lift off and trail brake oversteer are now, finally, available (though accompanied by some squirrely behavior).

Tracks can kick your car sideways with bumps that racecar drivers swear mirror real-life topography. Masochists’ bonus: you can now fully disable the ABS braking nanny, showing those belly-aching yellow-bellies what understeer truly feels like. For weenies, the “Standard” physics mode gives you a drift-happy arcade experience. But for real men, “Pro” mode is where it’s at.

Unfortunately, while GT has always been a doddle to drive with a controller, controller calibration here (especially for the gas pedal) leaves something to be desired. Even worse, in-game traction and stability controls are way behind state-of-the-art. You can either drive your Ferrari 599 with what feels like the stability control system of a Toyota Camry or with everything off, oversteering between every turn on just 1/4th throttle.

On the bright side, even with the bigger 16-car fields, artificial intelligence drivers now dice with each other, make genuine mistakes, overtake, react to being overtaken, and ram you under braking only 50 percent of the time . . . which is about on par with A1GP drivers.

GT5P’s biggest disappointment: the online experience, which is ten parts bitter, one part sweet and just a teensy bit salty.

The online lap leaderboards are terrific, appealing to narcissistic perfectionists everywhere. Without zen-like focus and a complete lack of social life, getting into the top ten is beyond difficult, but it’s more fulfilling than any other in-game achievement.

If only the online races were up the challenge. They’re slow-loading and updated sporadically. And there are no options for creating private races or filtering out the yahoos who bump, grind and crash their way through each race. Happily, clearly-displayed gamer tags over each car help you identify targets for revenge. That’s the salty part, by the way.

Still, GT5P is great for what is basically a demo. Recently, Inside Sim Racing rated GT5P 75 percent versus Forza2’s 90 percent. That’s like saying half-a-GT is almost as good as the whole Forza enchilada. So while GT5P has its flaws, it’s basically a public beta-test, sold for profit, and merely suggests what GT5 will be like. And with talk of dynamic weather and track conditions, over 90 tracks and 600 cars (details here), the full GT5 experience may have just enough positives to silence even its staunchest critics.

But damage?

There’s a reason why I only do a handful of track days per year. Paying for blown shocks, bent rims and crumpled fenders is downright painful. And I don’t go online to have some anonymous thirteen-year-old with road rage ruin my race on the very first corner. I just want to race. The rest of you whiners can go play “Burnout” for all I care.

Ratings:

Graphics *****

Always a GT strong point, graphics are good enough to eat.

Gameplay ***

Realistic physics are let down (ironically) by realistic handling foibles. Not for the faint of heart. Steering wheel strongly recommended.

Replayability ***

It’s a demo. There are just six tracks (plus variations) and a smattering of online events.

Multiplayer **

Read above. Add slow loading times and unfiltered play rooms.

Price *****

Bargain price. Extra online content comes free.

Overall ***

Great demo. But now we want the real thing.

As always, the game’s story mode is its main selling point. You start out as an aspiring racer who moves to LA to take on the big guns. From there, it’s all very familiar. You start out with a barely capable sport-compact (I picked the 240SX), competing to earn money and reputation points, unlock other events and upgrade your car’s parts or your car itself. Along the way, you’ll have to put up with contrived cut scenes rife with bad acting. As a casual racer, then, Midnight Club: LA fits the bill perfectly.

The cornerstone of the racing in the game is checkpoint racing. You’ll race in the streets of LA, from checkpoint to checkpoint. Checkpoints will appear in front of you as billowing towers of smoke in the distance, providing targets to drive towards. It’s up to you to navigate the streets to find the shortest distance between those checkpoints. You can’t miss a checkpoint on the way to the finish line, and first across the line wins. Repeat ad nauseam.

There are other types of racing to interrupt the monotony. Police pursuits can occur anywhere. You can also deliver your vehicle to someone for someone for some reason, or opt for series racing. The latter consists of consecutive checkpoint races for GP-style points until someone (hopefully you) hits a certain number of points, or your beer buzz wears off.

Playing MC:LA has its other frustrations. Chief among them: the pure insanity of the AI drivers. No matter how well you race or how much cash you pump into your car, the computer’s whip or whips will be one to seven seconds behind you. The AI will be riding your bumper Nascar-style. Then, one wipe-out and it’s over.

The police pursuits are ridiculously difficult. Cops randomly appear on the map– even as you drive towards their location. Les flics are also way faster than you are, and have a knack for pulling 180s without hitting anything or anyone. Yes, they can dodge cars you can’t. And they’re shit hot at immobilizing you against guardrails– or anything else you can’t drive through. If you can’t beat a pursuit within two minutes, pull over and pay the fine. As a pursuit gets longer, cops get more numerous and nastier, making them nearly impossible to escape.

Given that MC:LA is set in the streets, obstacles are abound, from gateways you somehow can’t crash through, to cars that veer into an intersection and wipe you out right as you hit your nitrous. Going from top speed to zero is a frequent occurrence. It happens so much that it ruins MC:LA’s long-term playability.

After winning a few series and grinding out highway races to earn reputation points, I found myself tired of having to manage all of the following simultaneously: watching for the smoke checkpoints, watching for cops not to create a pursuit mid-race, checking the in-game GPS to make sure I had the optimal route, watching the other cars in front of me, watching racers and dealing with the “track” in general.

While the AI manages all these tasks with gusto, running flawlessly race after race, twelve minutes of wetwork can be negated by one unfortunate entanglement. This game could hugely benefit from a mulligan system like the one seen in GRID. If you could re-take one turn, instead of having to restart an entire series, MC:LA may be playable beyond the point of initial novelty.

It’s a shame, because there’s a ton that MC:LA does right. Driving is intuitive. The customization options are vast, but easy to use. Graphics are great, and the city of LA is faithfully, stunningly represented. Even the music ain’t bad. But unlike GTA, in which the driving was only a means to an end, in MC:LA, driving is the end. And to that end, after I’d unlocked enough of LA and seen enough cars, I had no desire to come back to the frustration of elastic AI, multitasking demands and the tedium of grinding out easy highway races to earn scant reputation points.

Rating: 3.5/5
Platform used: Xbox360

While the simulated car’s simulated physics are more realistic than previous GTA iterations, that’s a bit like saying Sam Wiggle is a better singer than Greg. GTAIV’s driving dynamics are still more Roadrunner than road-worthy. A sharp handbrake turn at 30mph can set a car on its side. Hardly real world reflective. Or, as Travis Bickle might say, I could tell by the way they related there was no connection whatsoever.

Assuming you don’t hail a cab, the game begins behind the virtual wheel of a crappy-looking late 80s Buick look-a-like. All the cars in GTAIV look like real-world automobiles, with subtle and no-so-subtle “enhancements.” No points for guessing what a “Coquette” or “Dukes” would like to be when it grows up. Just in case a manufacturer might get upset about ripped-off whips engaging in criminal activities, GTAIV’s programmers occasionally hedge their bets by morphing two cars into one. The “Infernus” combines a Lamborghini Gallardo front end and a Pagani Zonda butt. Like the game itself, the $1.5m cut-and-shunt is strangely satisfying.

Each car offers specific driving dynamics: front wheel-drive cars understeer. All wheel-drive SUVs feel heavy in corners, and then pull strongly out of them. In this game, weight matters. In a “Patriot”, the only things that will scare you are big rigs, walls and tiny trees. More importantly, driving skill is (now) a critical factor; poor drivers will suffer immensely through the many vehicular missions. That goes double for the multiplayer races. The old turn-and-handbrake technique is no longer sufficient. Multi-tap subtlety is required to negotiate a bend “just right.”

Dab hands will opt for the first person view from behind the windshield. That’s where the sound of the stereo is drowned out by engine roar (or sputter, if you’re driving some old junk). Talk about aural sex… While the powerplants’ sonic signatures aren’t as faithful as, say Gran Turismo, they’re even more addictive. SUVs have booming big-block V8s, flat 6s wail and tasty imports provide plenty of turbo whine. The radio doesn’t stand a chance. It’s a bit of a shame; a multitude of stations offer some wikkid variety, from DJ Iggy Pop to NPR-style talk radio.

The game’s main mission is good for removing at least 30 hours from your life. Side missions can take up an additional 10 hours, hidden jumps and hunting for “flying rats” notwithstanding.

Despite some poor textures up close, the graphics are where it’s at. The game’s main appeal resides in its setting and the clever dialogue, not its racing qualities. Humorous touches abound, entrance and delight. Liberty City’s Statue of happiness holds a cup of RF’s favorite brew. Even without excessive caffeination, driving around is a buzz– enough to make random meandering almost as much fun as the game’s trademark violence. Bonus: the weather changes randomly, including rain and fog, which alter a car’s handling.

Rating:

Overall, 5/5 stars. Other than repetitive missions, it’s a real show stopper.

As a racing game: 4/5 stars. Gran Turismo and the Forza series are far superior. Then again, if you’re an aspiring gangsta– and who isn’t?– this is the place to be.

The game’s heart is its career mode, which is structured in a series of “Race Day.” Each race day has a minimum point requirement for victory. If you collect enough points after a few races, you don’t need to finish the entire event to unlock more Race Days. However, you can choose to continue an already-won Race Day to collect even more points and earn a “Domination” victory, which unlocks better rewards and gives you more cash.

And so, you go from Race Day to Race Day, unlocking other Race Days. Gone is the “Free Roam” which allows you to meander through the city, exploring the limits of the car or trying to incite the police play bumper tag with you. All the various types of races within each Race Day are standard fare for experienced Xbox racers: straight-up races, time trials, sector shootouts and drag races. The only “free time” allowed is race practice.

It’s not a bad set-up for a pure racing game, but there are many disappointments. Track-based drag racing, for example, is new to the NFS franchise. It was an idea that must’ve sounded cool to a bunch of geeky car/gamer guys sitting around on bean bags, but wasn’t. Each NFS drag race starts with a burnout. The goal: heat your tires by keeping your revs in a specified power band. Do well and you’ll be catapulted at the green light.

From there, drags are ridiculously easy. Time your shifts to claim a victory. Presto. No race lasts longer than 24 seconds. (Surprise!)  In other words, it’s pure tedium; especially since most Race Days include at least one drag event. In comparison to the canyon duels– an innovative wrinkle introduced in NFS Carbon– drag racing is a non-crashing bore.

The other issue with Race Days: car typing. When you buy a ride, you select one type of racing for the vehicle: grip (standard racing), speed, drag or drift. Switching a car from one mode to another deletes all previous tuning. Obviously, some semi-pro racers optimize their cars for one type of event. But forcing gamers to do the same adds little value to the game, and another dollop of ennui. It seems obvious to me that a stock Corvette Z06 would be a competent dragster and time-attacker all at once.

Another unfortunate mystery: why an all wheel-drive (AWD) car can’t enter drift events. Seriously. I can still recall earning the “Drift King” achievement in NFS Carbon with an AWD R34 Skyline, a car known for its ability to drift. Yet in the next game of the series, the car is apparently unable to drift.

On the other hand, ProStreet introduces damage modeling to the series. Not there’s much to it; there three basic states of damage, each of which hampers your performance slightly. And of course, it costs money to repair your car (which you must do at the end of each Race Day). Unfortunately, there’s no distinction as to what’s been damaged (e.g., steering, engine, gearbox) and how each type of damage hinders you.

Forza’s guiding line is shamelessly aped, though ProStreet’s line is nowhere near as accurate. Follow it at your own risk. Most cars handle like buses at any speed above 40 mph. Some car rumps still have that cartoonish jiggle under acceleration. The steering is vague and imprecise as always. Visuals are not much better than Forza Motorsport 2 (released a year earlier) either.

NFS, in any incarnation, has never been a purist’s driving game. As long as it had that taboo underground  feeling, the arcade feel and a city to explore, you’d forgive the unrealistic driving, where brakes are an afterthought and a Viper can hit 120 mph in 1.5 seconds. In a more adult setting, NFS’ driving flaws are laid bare.

And yet someone at EA decided to let NFS step up into the big leagues. Wong answer. Let’s hope EA returns ProStreet to the streets or… no, that’s it. That’s what they need to do.

Forza Motorsport 2 offers several modes, the most interesting of which is the career mode. Don’t look for any story here; this game is all about racing. Period. There are no drug package deliveries, no free roam, and certainly no police chases. The entire concept of career mode is to finish a series of races to unlock a harder series of races where better cars can be used.

Starting out as a grassroots racer, you’ll take your track toy to humble, simple tracks to hone your skills. Forza offers all manner of driving aids for the beginner: automatic transmission, ABS, traction control and stability management. Minor point of irritation: all driving aids are available to all cars, even cars that have no business having them. You can now recreate the legendary Ferrari 312P / Ford GT40 face-off, only with traction control.

The best driving aid, of course, is the famous Forza guiding line. Not only does it provide an approximation of the best driving line, it glows red and green to prompt you towards the optimal speed along this line. It’s such a good teacher (or I’m such a bad driver), that I found my lap times dropping drastically on other driving games after playing this one. Of course, to achieve the “elite” times you see on Xbox live, you’ll have to learn to do things on your own. The guiding line doesn’t cut chicanes where possible. Worse yet, the automatic transmission shifts a wee bit before the redline, depriving you of that last ounce of the engine’s power.

As your driving improves, you’ll find it natural to step into better and better cars, on better and better tracks. Each step along the way is well-nuanced; a feat that sets Forza apart from other racers. Early on, the lo-po FWD compacts are forgiving and easy. Midway through, the Ferrari F430 or Corvette Z06 makes you honest about being smooth on the buttons, lest you lock-up going into a bend or spin out coming out of one. Near the end, the Le Mans LMP1 cars will truly test your testicular fortitude.

It’s evident the developers focused on car behavior. Each car, even compared to cars in the same class, has a unique personality. The Ferrari Enzo isn’t shy about singing the family tune through its exhaust. There’s a weight penalty as your AWD Lancer Evo hits the end of a long straight. The Corvette’s ridiculous grip and snap oversteer are present. And so on. There’s no doubt about it, Forza is one of the most faithful reproduction of the driving experience available in videogames today.

The driving dynamics’ gain, though, came at the expense of almost every other aspect of the game. None are major gripes, but taken as a whole, they leave Forza feeling somewhat unfinished.

Being a nice guy, I’ll call the graphics and re-used crowd representations “understated”. Customization is disappointing, especially on higher-end cars. Some of the Le Mans cars can’t even be tuned at all.

Then there are the tracks. Forza 2 offers less tracks than the game before it. The stalwarts are back, but it’s infuriating to buy the game and then pay to download a track as inane as a plain oval on Xbox live. At least the tracks that are included are faithfully represented. You’ll see just how annoying Laguna Seca’s corkscrew can be, or how challenging it is to apex through the carousel on the Nordschleife.

Unfortunately, the interiors come right out of the GM playbook. Every single car has the same interior. The cockpit of your Porsche 914 and my Ferrari P333: identical. Considering many games published a year before this one had distinct interiors, it’s as forgivable as the Corvette and the Aura sharing a steering wheel. Ahem.

My biggest gripe, though, is the number of cars per race: Eight. MAX. In that formation, you’ll find yourself all alone for huge stretches on the game’s bigger tracks – sometimes for entire laps! No one signed up for time attacks, Microsoft.

For Forza 2’s designers, game play was job one – and it’s apparent in every aspect of the game. This game’s realism and driving experience are unmatched.

Bottom line: **** Far from perfect, but you will never stop to ponder the game’s flaws as you hear your tires thumping along Sebring raceway.