2 posts tagged “forza”

Ok, I just spent an entire hour custom painting this 2003 VW Beetle. The amount of customization controls are just amazing. I remember when the Nintendo 64 first came out there was a rally game (Top Gear Rally?) that had similar custom paint options, and I would spend hours on that just to add some sweet flames. Now Forza 2 comes along and blows it away, not to mention the ability to buy/sell cars through the auction house.

So that leads me into my 1 hour painting session to design Hello Kitty on a pink VW Bug. Am I a huge Hello Kitty fan. No. Honest. It was a total business decision -- yes, seriously. I needed to buy a VW car in-game for some races. I could have chosen a GTI or something equally fantastic, but decided to get a 2003 Beetle, soup it up and do a nice custom paint job so I could hopefully get somebody to buy it for a premium since I've put so much hard work into the design. Little did I know that probably 20% of all the bugs being auctioned are also adorned with Hello Kitty -- although I must admit mine does look a bit better than the competition.

Check out some photos of what I am calling the Scourge of Laguna Seca. If this baby doesn't sell in the auction house (starting price 10k -- not too bad!) then I am pulling it into multiplayer to destroy/embarass you other racers. Enjoy the photos. I need to get outside.

** Updates: It totally didn't sell for the $10,000 I wanted. Not sure, maybe people just aren't interested in VW bugs, or maybe there's not a whole lot of Hello Kitty fans using the auction feature - although I have seen other HK designs. Anyways, I posted it for $5,000 and somebody did buy it which still makes me happy to know that my design is out there driving around somewhere on someone's Xbox.

So what exactly is a Forza anyways? After an exhaustive Google search it turns out to mean either "Force" or "Go" or "Power". I think all are appropriate in some way, but Power is probably the closest as in: Power Motorsport 2. Whatever the translation may be, I think that Forza must actually translate to "Awesome" or "Bitchin'" - time for Google to update their Italian-to-English dictionary.

I had a chance to pickup the game last night. After a mad dash search running to my local Target, Gamestop, and Circuit City - all of whom were sold out - I was able to find it at Toys 'R Us. Plus, the clerk was awesome giving me the bonus Nissan Fairlady Z prebook add-on even though I didn't actually prebook it. Not that I really wanted the car, but free stuff is always good.

Ok, on to the game impressions. So far so good. My first ride purchased is a 2003 MINI Cooper S (no British Racing Green as a factory paint option ... weird). I spent over an hour changing the color and trying to add rally racing stripes on the 'bonnet' as they say. The amount of car customization with the provided decals is fantastic. I was able to take a vinyl decal that was a quarter-circle and rotate and skew it into almost identical racing stripes. Good stuff indeed.

I did some races in the proving ground and was able to win pretty easily with the assist lines turned on for braking. I was able to move up to level 6 in about 30 minutes, so that was nice. I think it helps that I dumped some money into upgrades while keeping my car in the C-class on the PI (Power Index?).

Overall: Highly recommended. Take a look at the Cooper S below, and admire those custom bonnet stripes.