AbleGamers Takes Forza Motorsport 3 on a Test Drive

{sidebar id=1}Forza Motorsport 3 is a highly-detailed racing simulation game, which builds on the rich and detailed environment provided in Forza Motorsport 2, adding more tracks and track layouts, and an immense variety of cars and vehicle upgrades. As in Forza 2, players can buy or win production and concept cars, which can be upgraded and modified with a wide range of parts and automotive accessories. As players win races and complete race series, they earn money to buy new cars and upgrades. Players also receive new cars as prizes, improving their chances of successfully competing in subsequent races.

Considering that Forza 2 was released in 2007, it isn’t surprising that Forza 3 has dramatically improved graphics and puts them to work rendering astonishingly beautiful tracks in Japan and Europe, even if it’s difficult to look at the scenery while accelerating out of a hairpin turn. Forza 3 also provides test tracks, benchmarking tools and substantially more in-game explanations of tuning, gear ratios and the like, allowing inexperienced players to dabble in some of the game’s more complicated aspects with more guidance and help than Forza 2 offered.

While Forza 3 improves on some accessibility elements from Forza 2, the developers made a critical accessibility error in using voice-over tracks in the game without providing closed captioning or an option to enable subtitles. With that noted, let’s see what other options Forza 3 offers gamers with accessibility concerns.

Considering that most of the accessibility improvements made in Forza 3 were incremental, the lack of subtitles becomes the single most important accessibility concern in the game. Related, but not identical, text occasionally appears on screen while the announcer is speaking but this text appears inconsistently. It is far more likely that a gamer with hearing concerns will see a speaker icon on the screen with the word announcer next to it, indicating that someone is speaking, but not see any text to accompany the voice-over. Not all of the voice-over is important to playing or completing the game, and the amount of voice-over diminishes as players progress, but voice-over tracks seem to be present throughout Forza 3.

Even noteworthy subtitling failures such as Red Dead Redemption, which used an unreadable and illegible font, and Mass Effect 2, which made its subtitles unreadable and illegible for many people by designing the interface for high-definition television, at least tried to provide subtitles. Forza Motorsport 3 makes no such effort, making it the only game I’ve seen for the Xbox 360 that doesn’t even have an option. While deaf gamers may be able to work around the absence of subtitles, they shouldn’t have to. Simply put, this is one of the most glaring and unfortunate accessibility oversights in any game available for the Xbox 360.

The remaining accessibility concerns in Forza 3 are no worse than they were in Forza 2, and generally show incremental improvement.

Where Forza 2 reduced a player’s winnings for enabling assistive modes, Forza 3 instead offers percentage bonuses for selecting higher difficulty levels. Gamers who need assistive modes to play are no longer penalized for using them which is a clear improvement. Anti-lock brakes, automatic shifting, traction control, stabilizing and Suggested Line (an on-screen path which indicates the best course to take as well as when to brake and accelerate) assistive modes all return from Forza 2 with no changes. The Hire A Driver feature also returns, although it does not appear until later in the game.

The controller configurations are greatly expanded, offering 12 separate layouts with limited remapping. Default layout 12 uses the right stick to control accelerating and braking and the left stick to steer (although players can still choose to use the direction pad to control steering). Default layout 9 assigns accelerating to the A button and braking to the B button, while default layout 8 assigns accelerating to the A button and braking to the X button.

More impressively, Forza 3 now features automatic braking which greatly improves its accessibility since players can enjoy the game doing nothing more than steering and holding down the trigger, stick or button to accelerate. Since many gamers with use of only one hand have already developed some form of workaround for triggers and buttons, this single change makes the game significantly more accessible.

In fact, by turning on automatic braking and acceleration, you can play the entire game with only two switches!

However, if that improvement wasn’t enough, Forza 3 also adds a Rewind mode, which allows players to reverse the game for a few seconds to correct a mistake – over or under-steering, a crash, a cornering problem and so forth. Furthermore, Rewind can be used an infinite amount of times, even in a single race.

Combined with the automatic braking feature, the Rewind feature and the other assistive modes carried over from Forza 2, Forza 3 doesn’t seem to present any insurmountable problems for gamers with precision concerns or with use of only one hand. Forza 3 might not be easy, but it does offer exceptional accommodations for gamers with those disabilities.

The save system is automatic and saves after each race and after purchasing a car. Players need to manually save progress when painting or customizing their car with decals, shapes and logos, which is important to remember since it’s possible to spend a significant amount of time decorating only to lose that progress by pressing the wrong button.

Finally, Forza 3 carries over the same accessibility concerns for color blindness that were present in Forza 2. The Suggested Line feature still uses red to indicate when to brake and green to indicate when to maintain speed or accelerate.

Likewise, purchasing upgrades for cars still displays improvements in green and decreased performance in red. Forza 3, like Forza 2, grades a car on a scale of 10, 10 being the best possible performance, and those numeric values are the best way for gamers with a form of color blindness to determine how an upgrade affects their car. However, some improvements do not change performance sufficiently to result in a numeric change, even though they reduce weight or offer a nominal increase in acceleration, handling, braking or another category. In this case, players will have to pay careful attention to the horsepower increase, weight decrease, or other change indicated in the part window. Some parts also display graphs demonstrating the change and these charts may assist gamers with a form of color blindness as well. However, allowing players to assign different colors to indicate improved or decreased performance would have made it easier for players to see how a part affects their car.

While Forza 3 improves on its predecessor in nearly every aspect of gameplay, the absence of subtitles is a critical oversight which significantly reduces its overall accessibility. While the incremental accessibility improvements in other areas are a welcome change, failing to provide subtitles is a flaw which is simply too big to overlook.

At A Glance

Precision: Forza 3 adds an automatic braking feature, enabling players to focus only on steering. The game also adds a Rewind mode, which allows players to reverse the game for a few seconds to correct a mistake. Recommend rating of 10 out of 10.

Deaf Gamers: The game uses voice-over tracks and occasionally displays related, but not identical, text on screen. The game does not offer an option for closed captioning or subtitles. Recommend rating of 0 out of 10.

One-handed: Forza 3 offers 12 controller layouts. When combined with the automatic braking assist, three of these layouts enable gamers with use of only one hand to use the left stick or direction pad to steer while holding down a button, trigger or right stick to accelerate. Considering that most gamers with use of one hand have already identified workarounds (such as pressing the controller against something to hold a trigger down), this change seems to make Forza 3 as close to completely accessible as is possible for a console game. Recommend rating of 10 out of 10.

Subtitled: Subtitles are not included, and there is no option to enable them. Recommend rating of 0 out of 10.

Color Blind: The game uses red and green in the Suggested Line assistive mode to indicate when to brake, and when to maintain speed or accelerate, respectively. The game also uses red and green to indicate whether an upgrade part represents a performance decrease or improvement. While Forza 3 also assigns numeric values which change with certain parts, some upgrades offer a nominal improvement that will not trigger a numeric change. Recommend rating of 7 out of 10.

Checkpoint / Save System: Recommend rating of 10 out of 10.

ABLEGAMERS EDITORS NOTE: While I agree that Scott is right to point out that the game has a lack of voice-overs subtitles, I disagree with his assessment that the missing subtitles hamper the overall accessibility of the game. Quite the contrary, the voice overs that are present add nothing to the game play, and does not take away from the Deaf gamers enjoyment of the game.