Forza Motorsport 2 is a racing simulation that doesn't let the “simulation” aspect slam into your face like a cinder block and is one of the most enjoyable racers to hit any platform in recent memory.

Much like the original title on the Xbox, this is a game that prides itself on its realistic take on racing as well as its depth in a wide variety of areas. The game features over three hundred vehicles from dozens of manufacturers from around the globe, each modeled to some extent after their real life counterparts. Each car can be upgraded from one of up to usually three or four quality levels of parts, such as air intakes, braking systems, fuel injection systems, and many others. Every part that is upgraded has an effect on the vehicle’s Performance Index rating and class.

A stock Ford model that you bought for around 20,000 credits may only be a D class racer with a sub-300 performance index rating, but spend some money on upgrade parts and you may find that the car jumps up a few hundred P.I. points and is now a B class racer. Some cars upgrade better than others, and a Chevy Cobalt that has the highest level of upgrades possible isn't going to hold a candle against even the stock models of the higher end vehicles.

There are a variety of race classifications that are unlocked as your driver gains levels. At the beginning of the game the races you can take part in only have the most basic of requirements such as having a rear wheel drive car or one that came from a European manufacturer, but future races may have such requirements as a car over/under a certain weight, under a certain horsepower, open only to a specific class of car (D, C, and so on), etc. Because of this, you simply cannot play through the entire game with a single vehicle, and instead must build up a stable of cars that can be tailor upgraded / downgraded to meet the requirements of the races you want to take part in.

The racing itself deserves high praise, as not only does it have a high degree of realism but many of the more hardcore elements can be toned down to make the game more accessible to novice or even arcade style racers. The difficulty level is essentially a string of settings; at its hardest Forza 2 has the player operating with a manual transmission, realistic damage, tire wear, fuel consumption, and skilled AI drivers. However, to make the game more accessible, players can opt at the beginning of any race to turn off such features.

Players can also turn on a driving line which is a colored series of arrows that shows up superimposed on the track; by following the line the player can find the optimal path through turns and corkscrews and by following the color (green means speed up, yellow means coast, red means slow down). The downside of this is that drivers who have assists on will earn fewer credits per race than those that do not, but not to the point that there is a massive rift between the two unless you compare the absolute highest and lowest difficulties against each other.

The multiplayer component ties into your single player career in that your driver level and credit count is shared between the two. Multiplayer races can be set up with a variety of options and restrictions such as forcing a specific class, driver level, and other options to tailor the experience to whatever the players in the room want. The game handles lag and the synchronization of players very well, and aside from a few isolated incidents where cars kind of skip around in position a little it can be hard to distinguish between a single player and a multiplayer race.