Come away on a mini-fantasy with me. You line your car up on the starting grid behind a highly-tuned Lamborghini Murcielago. To your left is your bitter rival in a Ferrari F430. You exchange glances as the first red light appears, you blip your throttle to let everyone know you're not here to mess around, the screaming of the 700 horses under the hood of your modified, supercharged Porsche 911 Turbo reverberating around the starting grid, the upgraded exhaust system roaring like an infuriated lion, causing the ground to shake. Now they definitely know you're not kidding. The second red light appears, quickly followed by the green and it's time to put the pedal to the metal and teach these guys that they've got a bit more tuning to do before they'll even be able to read the writing on your rear bumper.

This is the world of Forza Motorsport 2, one of the finest, most in-depth racing games out there at the moment. You see, this isn't your everyday racing game where you just jump into any old car and manage to drive like Michael Schumacher. Oh no, this is a game that requires skill and, to an extent, some knowledge about cars. Not to say that this won't appeal to those of you who don't know their exhaust from their elbow, but Forza has a level of technical tweaking that hasn't been seen since the almighty Gran Turismo series on the PS2.

Every car in Forza 2 can be made better, stronger and faster (just like the Six Million Dollar Man), with the use of upgraded parts, and the level of customisation is unbelievable. For example, you head to the Nissan dealership and pickup a nice 350Z, then you try it out and decide it's just not fast enough, or doesn't handle as well as you'd like. So what do you do next? Sell it? Nah, don't be silly. Take it down to the upgrade shop and keep tuning it up until it's ready to go into meltdown. There's a whole range of parts you can add to increase pretty much every aspect of your car, from changing the brakes to nice shiny carbon-ceramics right up to the extremes of swapping the whole engine out and converting it from a rear-wheel drive monster to a corner munching all-wheel drive super car. Seriously, I haven't seen anything quite like this; it's amazing to watch your piddly hair-dryer-for-a-turbo vehicle being transformed into an absolute monster; I imagine it's like watching your kids grow up, except probably not as important in your life (or at least I hope not!)

Everything you could want to change is here; you switch clutches, drive shafts, turbos, superchargers, radiators, intakes, cams, valves... the list is endless. I should also mention that you can't just bolt on bits and bobs and turn your car into some sort of Bugatti Veyron Formula One car lovechild; you see, in Forza 2 all parts have positive benefits but they may also hold some negatives. You could spend all your hard earned credits on that super-charged Porsche, but if you don't throw some credits into upgrading the handling and brakes, you'll quickly find yourself screaming head first into a wall. You need to know when your car is at its limits.

Forza 2 includes the most powerful physics engine ever witnessed in a game. The real power doesn't come from the car engine, but rather through the tyres. Whilst you're out flying around the Nurburgring or Silverstone, the game is constantly calculating the forces that are acting against your car. Each tyre consists of three zones (inner, middle and outer edge) and is being monitored all the time. It's measuring the friction acting upon them, the heat and from there working out what effect these forces are having on the tyres and subsequently, what's going on with the car. Start drifting around corners and the indicators along the side of the screen glow red to let you know that the tyres are overheating and, once at this point, you're actually wearing them down at a much faster rate than before. Drive like your granny and your tyres won't warm up, giving you much less grip and thus less traction around corners. This can be avoided by fitting higher rated racing-slick tires (yet another upgrade) that have much better grip, warm up faster and give you extra traction to get you through the corners with ease.

With all of this technical wizardry that developers Turn10 have incorporated, we're left with an unrelenting simulator. It's really not your average 'pick-up-and-play' sort of game; you can't expect to jump into a Ferrari Enzo and start powersliding through sweeping turns (you can try, but no doubt you'll end up going sideways into a wall and end up left with whiplash and one hell of an expensive repair bill). You've pretty much got to be at the right speed for the turns; the physics engine is constantly watching and waiting for you to slip up. It takes a bit of time and patience to perfect the art of cornering in Forza 2.

The game itself consists of three modes - Arcade, Career and Multiplayer (Xbox Live, System Link and Split Screen). It's really in the Career mode where you'll spend most of your time; you begin with enough credits to purchase your first vehicle, which unsurprisingly consists of low-powered cars. From here you get thrown into the novice races, each one consisting of a few laps around small, tighter tracks. Winning earns you some credits, which at this point isn't really a large amount, but is just enough to start modifying your car. I should add that these races are categorised, as we've seen in Gran Turismo; you get your usual entry requirements such as FWD, RWD, AWD, Japanese, British, American and so on. There's nothing really new in the approach taken here but it works very well.

The basic premise of the game in Career mode is as you would expect; race through the different events, earning as many credits as possible for use with that next car and subsequently tuning it to perfection. There are quite a lot of events within the game, each category usually has about ten or so events, and there are around ten different categories, each rising in difficulty over the last. This game does take you around some of the world's most spectacular tracks too; how about blasting around Silverstone, the infamous Nordschleife and even Laguna Seca. They're all here and they're beautifully detailed.

Arcade features a handful of races that once completed unlock some of the cars in the game so you can head to the dealership and spend your hard earned credits on. But it's in the multiplayer that Forza 2 really shines, almost upstaging the excellent Career mode. The Xbox Live integration is awesome; you can choose what sort of game you'd like, then choose what class you'd like and away you go. Due to the nature of damage and simulator style gameplay, you rarely see many people who just drive like they actually stole their vehicles. It's actually refreshing to play an online racing game without worrying about someone driving head first into the side of your car when you're trying to take a corner.

Speaking of cars, this game has a hell of a lot of them to offer - over 300 in fact! From old-school classics like the VW MkII Golf GTi and the VW Scirocco to modern super cars like the Lamborghini Murcielago and everything in between, Forza 2 has it all. Seriously, every major manufacturer makes an appearance - BMW, Porsche, Ford, Nissan, Renault, Ferrari, the list goes on an on. Not only this, but Forza Motorsport 2 has one feature that no other game has managed to achieve with such success; it's got one of the finest car painting systems I've ever seen in a game. Using a number of preset shapes you can create some absolutely stunning custom paintjobs; take a look at screenshots on the net and you'll see some seriously awesome custom designs. People out there have even made cars featuring the legendary Borat, using a number of layers of preset shapes to create an image of his face. It's truly amazing stuff and will keep you occupied for hours at a time, applying and reapplying your preset shapes to create the ultimate street-machines.

Even better though is that Forza 2 has its own auction system. Created a custom design and want to sell it off? Stick it up for auction and watch the bids roll in; anyone, anywhere can see the auctions from within the game. This is a very nice touch and it's very rewarding for aspiring artists! It's not just the artists that can benefit from it though; you can quite often pick up bargain vehicles that are being sold by other players.

The graphics within the game are stunning. The cars look amazing, featuring full reflection and shadow, as well as showing damage when they're hit. It's a nice change to play a game where damage actually means something, rather than just showing a dent or missing a part from the bodywork. In some of the levels, I couldn't help but feel that time hadn't really been spent on the atmospheric elements of the game though; the tracks and cars look top notch, but the bits outside look quite bare and unloved. Luckily, Forza 2 is the type of game where you probably won't even be looking beyond the track, but still, it would have been nice to have some more spectators and such, if only to add a bit more atmosphere to the overall experience.

I don't even know where to begin when describing the sounds within the game, they're that good. Every car has its own exhaust note and every engine sounds different. Turn up the sound and it's an absolute treat to hear all those cars screaming away behind you; everything sounds perfect. Go into a tunnel and the sounds echo and reverberate through all of your speakers. Blast down a straight with another car a couple of seconds ahead of you and you'll still be able to hear a faint engine sound coming through your front speakers. This game features some absolutely amazing effects, with some of them even sounding just like their real-life counterparts. Forza 2 also features a great soundtrack; with the likes of Faithless' Insomnia and other big name songs, it's one of the best I've heard in a game in a long while. It's only utilised during the menus though, which is actually a good thing because you won't get as easily bored of listening to the same music over and over again.

I especially love the amount of customisation possible, the insane number of vehicles on offer and the stupendously powerful physics engine. Added together, we're left with one of the most detailed racing games to ever grace any games console. Just customising the cars is fun, but tweaking every last MPH out of them is an awesome experience. Sure, it's not a game that your friends can play straight away, but it's nice to have a learning curve at some point; if anything it relies on skill to win rather than blind luck. The only thing I don't like is the scope of the events that you can take part in. Once you've completed some of them, you end up having to buy vehicles that will probably only get used once, which is a lot of credits to have to earn for one race that will yield less than a 25% return on the amount you've spent to enter. I think if there were more events available, it would have been a bit better, but on the other hand, we all know how insanely long it took to complete even half of the events in Gran Turismo. This is a small negative point for what is my favourite game on the Xbox 360 at the moment.

Being a massive racing games fan [Really? I hadn't noticed! Just kidding, your enthusiasm is contagious! Ed.], I couldn't wait to get my hands on Forza Motorsport 2 from the moment I heard it was in development. Come release day nearly six months later and I absolutely love it. It's got to the point where I haven't had another game in my Xbox 360's drive in days! In fact, I don't think I've seen the sun in a few days either (only kidding, but it really is that addictively good). This is exactly what Microsoft needed after the success of Sony's Gran Turismo and, better still, it provides a solid foundation for future sequels to be built off and expanded. This is definitely one of the must have games on the Xbox 360 at the minute - just be sure to strap yourself in tight!

Reviewed by Harmz Singh for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).