The best sim racing game of the year is finally here.

I'm not going to lie and say that I'm a huge fan of sim racers. I've always been more of an arcade style fan, preferring stuff like Need for Speed (even some of the less than awesome newer additions), Burnout, and a little old school Sega Rally or Daytona over something like Gran Turismo, or even the original Forza title. I did enjoy Forza 2 on the 360 from a few years back though, and with this newest version in the series, Forza Motorsport 3, I have to say it's probably one of the best racing titles I've ever played. Even as someone that doesn't get too tied up into the hardcore tuning aspect (which this game totally allows you to do), I found Forza 3 to be incredibly accessible for any player, and for anyone that's a fan of arcade or simulator style racing. There's enough assists, difficulty manipulation, and automatic options to keep the game simple and fun, but at the same time the hardcore enthusiasts can opt to dive into the multitude of options and really get to the nuts and bolts of the hundreds of cars and manufacturers featured in the game.

When the game begins, you'll pick your difficulty (I opted for Medium), which will go ahead and assign certain assists to be on depending on what you choose. I was a little surprised that selecting the medium difficulty turned them all on, and I found that automatic braking was a little too much hand holding for my preference, so it was the first thing I opted to turn off. From there they toss you into your first race, just to get you accustomed to the controls and driving style of the game. I found the physics to be forgiving and fair, but not overly arcade like, meaning that if you go off track you lose a fair amount of speed, and bumping into other cars causes you enough damage to make it less of a tactic and more of thing to avoid. This also introduces the driving line, which is pretty helpful to get you accustomed to the track, and then the rewind feature as well.

I could see some people being upset about a rewind feature being so prominently used in the career mode, but I learned early on that you couldn't upload times to leaderboards if it's been used, and the rewind feature is non-existent in online races. Basically, you can use rewind any time you want after the first couple seconds of a race, serving as a tool to keep you from screwing up royally during a race and to help you learn hard turns and what not. It can make the career mode a tad bit easy, but it's a far cry from a total win button too, as you can still be outraced by the AI (and the AI is pretty unrelenting for the most part). I like that it's included, because it takes the frustration out of a four lap 3 mile race that goes wrong in the last two turns and puts you from 1st to last place due to a dumb screw up. I also like that it's included because certain tracks are hard to learn and figure out, and instead of wasting 15 or so minutes on finishing a race just to go back in and re-do it to try and apply what I learned, I can simply hit rewind until I really get it right.

Of course, the actual racing is no slouch here either. When you enter career mode, you'll be able to pick a vehicle from a pre-set number of cars, and then race in events that fit the car classes you currently own. There's a number of classes for each vehicle, some of which can be expanded upon by tuning, allowing you to take something out of a C class car and into B class and so on. There are a number of fine tuning options, taking everything from the engine to tire pressure into account, giving you a number of sliders to change up options, allowing an impressive level of customization for those that enjoy it. Of course, you can do just fine in career mode without toying around with these options, and there's even a quick upgrade option given before a race that allows you select it and the game will automatically apply the best upgrades to your vehicle without any shopping from the player. Once again, accessibility seems to be the key here, and Forza 3 definitely has that going for it.

The races you partake in are carried out over a season of play, and there are multiple seasons to attend in the career mode. They start off short and fairly easy, but as you advance to new seasons, and in turn gain access to more and more vehicles and money, you'll notice that the difficulty definitely starts to sharpen up. With the sheer variety of cars at your disposal it can be a little daunting to get into at first, especially if you're worried about whether or not you've picked the right vehicle, and dropped all your money into it, in the hopes of being competitive. While each car does seem to carry distinct differences, at the same time if you're within the right class you should be able to pull off a victory, assuming that you've applied upgrades and what not when available. Most cars offer advantages in turning and control over speed and acceleration, so you'll obviously need to choose which racing type suits you better. Losing a race isn't the end of the world either, you'll simply move on to the next event (but you do have the option to revisit previous events). There's no major penalty for losing, other than not making nearly as much cash the lower you place, so it's something you can easily get over with.

Finally, there's an experience system in place that's tied into two fields, driver level and car level. The more you race with one particular car, the more you can level it up. As your levels increase you'll gain better and bigger discounts with various manufacturers for after market parts, and as you level up your driver level you'll be granted gift cars from various manufacturers to applaud your abilities. It's a good idea from the developers to include this, as it gives you a reason to keep up with the season mode both because people love to fill up XP meters, and because it grants you free cars early on to expand the type of races you can participate in. You'll be able to devote more cash to much needed upgrades instead of spending it on new vehicles in the beginning, which helps quite a bit.

Outside of career mode, there are also all the online and community aspects of Forza 3 present, many of which carry over from the second game in the series. There's the super popular liveries and customization stuff, allowing for skilled users to apply an incredible variety of designs to their vehicles, and then turn around and make those designs available to the community through the auction house. Along with designs, you can also sell cars to other users too, or you can opt to buy new cars from the in-game dealerships. All of this uses the in game currency too, so no transferring of Microsoft points is necessary here. Along with that comes the actual online racing, which is pretty robust and definitely fun to get into. The online community for Forza 3 is already pretty big; I had no issues with finding races to play and people to match up with for full events. It's one of the better online experiences I've had this year, and it's certainly a good reason to pick the game up in the first place, outside of the already excellent career mode.

All together, if you've been looking for one racer to satisfy you this year, then Forza 3 is going to be it. I've played the big ones this year, stuff like Dirt 2 and Need for Speed Shift, and Forza 3 is still hands down the best I've had a chance to check out this year, and it's certainly the racing game to get. Even if you're not much for technical, sim like racing, you'll be pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to get into the mechanics behind Forza 3, and how incredibly accessible the whole experience is. On the flip side, there's enough customization and other options here to appeal to the hardcore sim crowd as well, and the developers have done an excellent job of straddling that fine line between casual and hardcore entertainment. Absolutely worth owning if you're a racing fan, and definitely the must have racing title of the year.