Forza 3 Just Saved my Life

The time is 10pm, on a freezing December night, 2010. England is experiencing an extended period of icy cold weather. Probably not the best time to be making a long, night-time drive alone? Well it didn’t stop me last night.

Forza 3 on Xbox360

Now, let’s do a “Lost” style flash-back to four weeks ago - the height of my obsession with the Xbox 360 game “Forza Motorsport 3”.

During 2010, I have been going through an achievement-whore phase, spending unholy amounts of time chasing virtual achievement scores on some of the most embarrassing games ever released (yes, Avatar). At some point I decided that if I was going to beat this multitude of sub-par ‘gamer-whore’ games, I should at least set myself the goal of beating ‘triple-a’ games like Halo, Call of Duty, or Forza at least 50%. Otherwise I’d feel too cheap.

So there I am, chasing the achievement “Drift Lap”, where you are required to earn over 100,000 points for drifting in a single lap. Now, as you will know, Forza is the primary driving simulator on Xbox 360; it is Microsoft’s proud answer to Sony’s “Gran Turismo”. The game prides itself on stunning visuals, immersive sounds, and thrillingly realistic car handling. And it turns out that with realistic handling, drifting is kind of hard.

So I spent the best part of a week on this driving-sim, trying my hardest to pull off Fast and Furious style drifts, slowly honing my skills. And I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Snap forwards again to last night. So there I am, driving along at a steady 80mph along the bypass (mini-highway) that runs from the nearest city to me, Leeds, back to my small town. Periodically along this road there are roundabouts. If you are not British, a roundabout is basically a huge intersection designed to (in theory) allow cars to not stop if there is no traffic.  It is a big circular obstruction with a curved roadway around it, and priority is given exclusively to cars coming from the right-hand side of your vehicle.

A busy roundabout junction

Now, as I approached one of these roundabouts, I passed beneath a bridge. I remember glancing up at the bridge, and noticing some alarmingly large icicles dangling from the underside like glass daggers. That should have been my first clue.

 

So I rattled on at a steady 80, approaching the roundabout. Now, as the time was 10pm, the road was deserted, so the roundabout should have easily served its purpose of allowing me to pass without needing to stop.

Now technically you should slow down, as proper lane discipline should be observed on the roundabout. However, at this time of night, I decided to hit the cusp of the roundabout and treat it like I was taking the racing line, in order to take the junction at a speed of about 60mph. Big mistake.

 

NASA image of UK last year

Now, I’d like to do another flashback; this time to one year ago. You may remember that last year England was literally covered in snow and ice, in what was the worst weather I have ever seen in this country. Back then, I remember passing this same junction, headed in the opposite direction, and seeing a car, upside down on the roundabout. How the guy had managed to flip his vehicle I did not know, but I think it would be a safe guess that speed+snow=fail. That memory should have been my second clue.

Back to the present (well, last night). I remember looking at the ground in front of me as I approached this roundabout, and noticing a faint glimmer. That should have been the final clue I needed.

But it wasn’t. I dropped a gear, tapped the breaks, and headed straight round the centre of the roundabout. Then, my wheels must have hit a patch of black ice, as the next thing I remember, I was travelling sideways at about 60mph.

What happened next, I didn’t even think about. My “wasted” time on Forza kicked in. I tapped the brake gently, and then quickly steered into, then slowly out of the slide. As I steered out, I progressively accelerated out of the drift. The result: pure awesomeness.

I wish so much that I could have filmed it, because to a spectator, it must have looked epic. My car drifted perfectly around the roundabout, then back onto the roadway, and I accelerated seamlessly out of the drift.

On a serious note, DO NOT TRY THIS. It was stupid and I will never do that again. I am lucky to be alive, and if the police had seen it they would have either hired me or sent me straight to jail.

The only question I have, though, at the end of all this is:

WHY CAN’T I GET THAT DAMN ACHEIVEMENT IN FORZA?!