I started Forza Motorsport 3, the sequel to one of my favorite racers of all time (only behind the original Gran Turismo), with one of my favorite cars in existence: the Audi R8 v10. It was a gorgeous car and I got to drive it on a gorgeous track. Forza 3 won me over at “Go!”

The car above is not that car, but one I later acquired and put some LightBox Interactive make-up on. The reason the car above is not that car is because Forza 3 is like a drug-dealer. The first hit was free. After that introductory race, the game took my beloved from me and gave me a list of cars I could choose from. Let’s see here. A Nissan Versa, a Ford Fiesta, a… Oh my god. What is going on. These are all. They’re all… Hatchbacks. Cue Darth Vadar.

My first poor choice was the Versa.

While I was fighting up the ranks of Forza 3 with my hatchback, I noticed the extensive amount of assists that the game offered players. It basically allows players to choose a spot on the spectrum from bowling with bumpers to bowling without bumpers or a bowling ball. The analogy broke apart a bit there. The game allows for the traditional driving assists: traction control, anti-lock brakes, stability management, and driving line (full driving line or braking line only). Those are vanilla assists. Forza 3 takes things a bit further, though, and has options where the game will auto-brake for the player, making the turning and accelerating the only thing that players have to do. This is on top of Easy/Medium/Hard difficulty settings. And the brilliance of the whole scheme is that Forza 3 offers incentives for turning off assists and increasing the difficulty in the form of monetary compensation. Every race has a baseline cash award and the assist incentives work off of that. Turning from Medium to Hard, for example, offers 10% more money than the event baseline. Turning off the driving line maybe 5-15% more. Turning off all assists up to 20-25% more. It’s a fantastic way to allow players to get a base experience and earn money, but still provide gameplay-relevant reasons for players to try and make the game more difficult (and, hopefully, more interesting).

As I was driving up the ranks with my Versa I was rising in driving level. Eventually, the game awarded me with a car to tide me over until I had enough money to make my first major purchase. The Forza 3 benefactors decided I deserved a Vauxhall VX220. It was in this car that I started to feel like a real driver. I took this yellow mini-beast through the second of my World Series events:

The thing that Forza 3 does that its predecessor didn’t is to provide meaty rewards for every new driver level. And the rewards are meaty. As players level up their car level, they receive part discounts on upgrades by that car’s manufacturer. That’s neat and all, but as players level up, uh, themselves, they get entire new cars. The reward cars start out somewhat modestly, but as players go through the game, the gift cars get substantially more worthwhile. That Vauxhall VX220 was one such gift car and it was my go-to machine for an entire class event series. That VX220 treated me so well that midway through the event series I gave myself a little automobile treat; I had to choose between buying an Audi R8 of my very own and blowing all of my earning up to that point (which would prevent me from upgrading the new car) and something slightly more “modest” that I could upgrade a bit. I decided on the BMW Z4 in a sexy black color after hearing Brenda talk about her car so lovingly. The Z4’s a beauty, ain’t she? Like what a panther would be if wasn’t a car. Or if it was a Maximal.

Time goes on, though, and even the Z4 can’t fulfill my needs forever. Eventually I had to move up in the world. So I got my Audi R8 (pictured at the beginning of this article) and I drove the crap out of it. I love that car so much that after a series of upgrades, I ripped out the engine, bought a new one, and upgraded that one to R3 racing status so I could use the R8 in another series event. Having seen a Ford GT lying around Austin one day a few weeks ago, though, I decided that I should get one of those. The money was flowing in virtual Trent’s pocket. Of course I can get a Ford GT. I can even upgrade it. And probably get a nice smelling Christmas tree to hang from the rear-view mirror. Did I mention that Forza 3 is a gorgeous game yet? No? Well, it is. It also does not use its powers for good. This is my Ford GT moments before I flipped it:

Forza 3 is nice enough to include a rewind feature which lets players rewind time to a point where less awful and painful looking Ford GTs exist. It’s a fantastic feature that allows me to actually play the twelve-plus minute races that fill the upper-tier event series without cursing endlessly. The rewind feature fits into what seems to be the hallmark feature of Forza 3: letting people play the game they want to play. Turn 10 Studios (the developer) seems to understand that even people who love racing games may, generally, never “finish” a racing game due to the rapidly increasing difficulty/time investment. As such, while the time investment for a race may not change, the ease of finishing a long race is mitigated as much as possible. So much, in fact, that the only penalty for rewinding during a race is that the lap in which you use one of your infinite rewinds on simply does not “count” for leaderboard times. It’s a strangely non-punishing feature that I’d, frankly, expect to be in the same list of options as the assists (but is not).

It is, however, through the use of these features that I am able to continue to play and greatly enjoy Forza 3 beyond the period where I’d normally give up in similar racers. I’m even to the point in Forza 3 where leveling up gives me a free batmobile (Lamborghini Reventon):

I am Batman. Vroom vroom.