When it comes to racing games of all kinds, the Xbox has certainly had its fair share. In my opinion it's probably just about hit the saturation point but there's been one constant source of amusement amongst PS2 owners, one that has been giving them one last tenuous reason to turn their noses up at the Xbox. That reason? The true, hardcore racing simulator.

Sega GT2002 came close and was a very popular racer that was given a breath of new life online once its 'sequel' Sega GT Online was eventually released but the Xbox has never had a real racing simulator worthy of being hailed the 'Gran Turismo killer'. Quite a few of us had opportunities to play early builds of Forza such as the demo that featured on the Official Australian Xbox Magazine and while it showed promise, the Laguna Seca track and the handling didn't win over as many of our forum members as would have probably been expected. Happily we can report that the extra time spent on Forza by Microsoft Game Studios has been time well spent indeed and the Xbox has received one of the highest quality racing games that we've ever been fortunate enough to play.

The first thing to include in any serious racing game is the car count and Forza comes loaded with 231 beauties from around 40 manufacturers just waiting for the loving hand of a master tuner to squeeze every kilowatt of power out of them. From Shelby Cobras, Bentley Continentals, Dodge Vipers, Mazda RX7's, RX8's through to Subarus, Toyotas, Saleens and the always popular Ferraris and Porsches there has to be a few in there that you will like! The manufacturer count is quite high and includes a number of car makers that I wasn't expecting to see included such as Lancia, Vauxhall and Lexus, and the best thing of all? Not only does each car come with some of the most realistic handling and physics yet in an Xbox racer, they can be upgraded, tuned and customised as you see fit, and to top everything off, the one feature that I was prepared to write off as a 'great, but useless idea' has turned out to be truly remarkable.

That feature is the 'Drivatar' which allows you to train up an A.I driver that you can then use to compete in races for you (for a cut of your winnings of course). At first you race through a couple of 'learning scenarios' that calculate how accurately you perform through every sort of cornering requirement. This gives it a starting point that you can then teach further once your own skills in the game improve. I honestly did not foresee how great this feature would be, and how great it is. Even after the basic instruction I decided to let it run a demonstration race for me in the handy 'Observe' mode and it was just plain freaky seeing the car accelerate the same way I do from the green light, nervously take each corner, over accelerate and break traction out of the corners and generally exhibit every bad habit I did when I failed to take Forza seriously for what it is.

Basically if you load up Forza and expect to be able to bounce off the other cars, handbrake around every corner and drive like a maniac then you are quickly going to throw it in the bin and never come back to it. The handling in Forza requires driver finesse, careful, early braking, cautious acceleration and deft overtaking techniques if you wish to win unscathed and start making serious progression through the career mode.

When you create your Career Profile the first question asked of you is which part of the world you wish to select as your home region, North America, Asia, or Europe. This decision impacts on the types of cars that will be available to you and their prices as they become available due to their 'rarity'. I selected Asia (no particular reason why) and my first purchase was a trendy Mazda 3 sport. A fairly common car throughout Asia, it's not as common in other regions and therefore costs a little bit more in the U.S and Europe. Similarly, the American classic cars are rarer in Asia and therefore cost more when purchased there. Most of the people I've been speaking too seem to be favoring Europe, no doubt due to it being the home of Ferraris and Porsches and as I've progressed through the career mode, I've been fortunate enough to win a couple of each of these anyway. One of the great consequences of this is that of course not everyone will select the same region and Forza even lets you sell your cars to other gamers online!

If a racing game aimed at simulation nuts doesn't sound that interesting to you, you may take some measure of comfort in that Forza allows you to tweak the difficulty settings and then rewards you accordingly. If you want to switch the A.I to easy, do it. If you want to turn the racing line off, do it. Every change you make to the settings that increases the difficulty gives you a small cash bonus at the end of the race. If you make it too easy though, you can also be penalised but progression through the game is still possible and it's great to see Forza accommodate those of us that need to be eased into games such as this. The racing line itself is almost indispensable and rather than being just a solid line that you follow blindly around the track it actually changes colour based on your speed. If you are heading into a corner too fast it will turn red, if you are just at the right speed it hovers around green and turns yellow when you are just at that upper edge of safety. It's a fantastic learning tool but in my opinion needed just one more colour to be perfect, and that is blue. For beginner drivers Forza quickly lets you know that you are going too fast to take a corner, but doesn't let you know if you are coming out of it too slowly. Many times I've been erring on the side of caution to have the opposition sneak by me while cornering and while its nice to know that I'm going too fast this one extra colour on the racing line to help when exiting corners could have made this fantastic feature truly excellent.

As mentioned, the racing line is indispensable and while I've managed to do without traction control and some of the other settings I can't ever see myself being able to turn this particular driving aid off. I'm either never going to be good enough to master the braking, or perhaps its just too much of a security blanket having it there but at the same time it also makes you feel like you're cheating a bit. Fortunately it's one of the few areas in Forza where I found myself experiencing conflicting emotions.

The career mode doesn't contain any kind of story telling and is a fairly linear progression upgrading your ranking to win cars by finishing first in every race. Cash is also awarded to fund your upgrades and smaller amounts are awarded for lower placings so it's not really necessary to restart the race when winning is out of your grasp. Second or third place still sees you earn a nice cash reward and it all starts to add up fairly soon. The races in Career mode are restricted to specific types of cars and other categories such as where it was built, weight and power. Most races allow you to choose any car from that particular class, but there's also a few that are specific to certain types such as Mazda RX7's versus Toyota Supras and winning sees you earn a nice shiny faster version of one of those cars, in this instance, a gruntier and rarer RX7. The other restriction placed upon you is your ranking and you are unable to race in certain events until you meet that level. Ranking up starts off pretty quickly and before you know it, after an hour or so of game time you will find yourself ranked 10 or higher but the further you progress, the bigger the gaps between each rank become, just like the Kudos based system in Project Gotham 2.

The other path to unlocking cars is the Forza Arcade mode which gives you a couple of tracks and forces you to finish in at least third position in all races to unlock more tracks and cars. The rewards here again are based on your skill and finishing third in every race will still see you unlock cars, but finishing your races in second or first will earn you even more. Luckily everything in Forza looks so damn nice that it's never a chore to go back the 2 or 3 times required until knowledge of the track sinks in and second or first place starts to happen regularly.

The graphics in Forza are some of the nicest on the Xbox, which I guess is to be expected for an exclusive game at this stage of the Xbox's life. The cars are all highly detailed and while they may not seem to contain a great deal more detail than in PGR2, once you start customising them they truly start to come into their own and become something personal and dear to your heart. There is a high amount of damage modeling with scrapes and bumps damaging the paint work and impacts at higher speeds causing parts to get totally wrecked or fall of. Unfortunately there seems to be no way to absolutely total the cars and Forza seems quite happy to just punish you for your recklessness by adjusting the steering to simulate damage to the drive train and suspension. One nice touch is that when you scrape alongside barriers, the actual scratch on it is the colour of your cars paintjob. A small feature, but one indicative of the attention to detail that Forza brings.

The tracks feature excellent details with some of the highest quality and most realistic looking texture art yet seen. I know we keep saying that, the texture art in game XXX kicks arse etc etc but when you see trackside detail such as the variation and quality of something easily overlooked in other racing series such as trees, well there's not a cheap flat bitmap graphic to be seen anywhere here. The trees in Forza look amazing and another graphical highlight is the New York track with its great looking neon signs and rampant advertising billboards as you scream through Times Square at over 200kph. Laguna Seca feels hot and arid but it would have been nice to see weather or different seasons simulated to give the game even more variety. That's right, it never rains during the races in Forza. The only difference is that some of the tracks are raced at night and this is definitely one area it would be great to see expanded upon in Forza 2.

Forza features full Xbox Live support that is as well put together as anything we saw in PGR2. The game supports up to 8 players online and in full races (hosting on a Bigpond Cable connection) lag was next to non existent and voice quality was even higher than in a few other games. Sometimes there are those players in your games that always sound a bit more muffled or quieter than everyone else and while it still happens in Forza, it definitely doesn't sound as bad as it normally can. Full options to customise your races if you choose to host are available, track selection, lap amounts, car classes etc but it is certainly very popular online with Optimatches very easy to locate as well. One great feature that is a first is that the Career mode in Forza can also be completed online against gamers worldwide. It's a great feature but if you don't have Xbox Live, there is still plenty of great offline racing to be found.

I briefly touched on the customisation options in Forza earlier and once you upgrade your cars with professional parts you can adjust just about every aspect of your cars. Tuner freaks will love this area of the game and each adjustment can be benchmarked and also test driven to make sure the changes behave as you intended. Tyre pressure, camber, gear ratios, spoiler angles, suspension as well as loads of other options are available to fine tune your cars but the big talking point so far has to be the Decals.

With the ability to personalise each of the 6 main car parts, the top and bonnet, the left side, the right side, the front and rear bumpers and spoiler, and then being able to create artworks consisting of up to 100 layers of separate decals, the sky is almost the limit and at first the budding car artist will be licking his lips in anticipation. Now while there are plenty of decal options and shapes and graphics of all kinds that can be coloured, twisted and altered to create amazing works of art, for some reason old fashioned letters were left out. Also, the ability to place text on your licence plate and other areas of the car isn't available and debate reigns in forums worldwide as to the logic behind this decision. Although, after using the supplied shapes on offer to create a few profanity laced bumper stickers I guess I can see why this may have been left out' ;-)

The sound in Forza is great and no two cars sound alike. The screeching of tyres and the engine noises all sound pretty accurate with little touches such as turbos and different clutches all lending each car their own distinctive personalities. The music consists of some pretty decent rock tunes but with custom soundtrack support, any music on your Xbox hard drive can be used in the game as well.