Forza Motorsport 2 Vs. DiRT Part 2

Posted under Games, Racingfreak92, Xbox 360 by Racingfreak92

Welcome back to the 2nd part of the comparison. This time were looking at the multiplayer and the extra/other features so I hope you kept your seatbelt buckled. If you missed the first part you can read it here.

Multiplayer
This is where Forza simple destroys DiRT in every way.  DiRT only has one mode online-play mode and it’s a dismal one. You and up to 99 other players race at the same time!  But, each on your own track competing for lap times on a limited amount of tracks.  Now I don’t understand why they couldn’t include real racing with multiple cars on the track in this game; but, according to Codemasters they were too busy making the single player portion of the game.  I would have preferred the game to be delayed then ship with this horrible online play.  And along with that comes horrible voice chat, think about private chat but set up by the game where you invite 1 other person to talk to them.  Now I understand 100 people talking would not only be laggy but extremely loud.  But why limit it to only one?  A better option would be to choose a channel system (like in PDZ or Solider of Fortune 2).  I’m disappointed to see the online play so limited in this game as I think that often gives the bulk of the replay value.  But hopefully DLC will be released containing full multiplayer or DiRT 2 will have it.

Forza Motorsport 2 has full multiplayer supporting up to 8 people online.  Players can race their career and stock cars with customizable race settings (including car class limitations) so any gamer can virtually run any specified series.  You can also play career races to earn money for the single player part of the game, the best part is that you can still play with your friends and send invites.  Most games would probably consider that a ranked game and say “oh no, playing with friends is cheating”.  I like that Forza does allow this because then you can use the money to upgrade the cars you’re going to race with online and I think its makes the game just that much more fun.

Extra/Other Features
Forza’s Replay System is bad.  Just plain bad due to some odd choices by the developer.  The fast forward skips ahead in bursts instead of fluidly going through the replay.  When switching between cars the screen goes black for a couple seconds and instead of pausing the replay, it continues on so you miss part of the action.  It also lacks a slow down button so you cant watch crashes in nice detail. I am completely disappointed in this replay system; it is a downgrade from the first.

DiRT’s replay, ironically, is not much better.  It is ONLY viewable right after the race.  Meaning no saving.  You might be thinking right now, ”what, I can’t save the replays to show off the amazing crashes I’ve been in?!?”  That’s what I said and I was extremely disappointed by this.  But we don’t stop there.  The game doesn’t allow you to look around the car in this mode either, so you can only see crashes from the front and back or from the “chase cam” (which is a staged camera on the track letting you see the race from farther back which most of the time missed your crash or its partly blocked from sight). And that’s not it.  No, you cant see the race from any other car either, the view is from your car only. The only thing this replay system actually does right is that is has a slow motion button and a rewind.

One thing Dirt has that beats Forza though is the menu system which might seem like a stupid thing but once you see it you will understand why. Think of the menu as a object floating in the air and you can rotate around it with light reflecting off of it at different angles and the whole thing is spread out for you in this white space, in the background you can see the other parts of the menus in the distance, the single player pyramid, the options menu. It’s almost as if you’re in a futuristic movie. And it not only has a unique layout but when selecting a race you can have you’re co-driver or Travis Pastrana tell you about the cars, tracks or even give you tips on what parts are more important to fix. I wish along with the voice they put the text so you could read it faster but it is still impressive. Then in the loading screens it shows you various statistics like how many times you’ve come in first, the longest distance you’ve gone with out crashing and the highest jump. Now this certainly isn’t a feature that would make you buy the game but I think its nice to see that Codemasters is going the extra step to add something in that we haven’t seen before. Forza’s menu is like the first one but for some reason I find it much more awkward and I often have to think about where something is in the menu.

But on to something more substantial, Forza 2 has a auction house where you can put your cars up for sale and bid on other cars which also ties in to forzamotorsport.net where you can look at your current bids and look at other cars that are listed. This system has a downside and a upside though, both are because of the ability to choose your price. On one side you get to raise the price for a car you tuned or painted but on the other people jack it up so high that only vet players can afford it. Another thing is the length of time it takes to load these cars, if it has a complicated paint scheme on it it can take about 20 seconds per car to load and when you’re looking through

Final Verdict
Even though DiRT is very fun and has amazing graphics FM2 will give you a better value with its long SP and MP and the vinyl system which you can spend 10’s of hours in, making designs to get the perfect car. Forza’s biggest downfall is that its content is mostly recycled from the original and the lack of anti-aliasing which can cause the game to look very ugly some times. Now of course if you love rally or off road games go with DiRT, same for someone who hates sims but if you’re just someone who wants a racer Forza will last you a lot longer.