Forza Motorsport; Dungeon Lords; AOL Service Assistant

FORZA MOTORSPORT, Microsoft

For years, Sony's Gran Turismo series have been the racing games to beat, but with Forza Motorsport, Microsoft has finally left Sony staring at its taillights. Forza is easily the most authentic, impressively detailed racing simulation to date -- on any system.

It offers a straightforward array of playing modes -- Arcade, Career, Multiplayer, Time Trials and Free Run -- that accommodate most levels of interest and skill. Casual gamers, for instance, will spend most of their time competing in races in Arcade mode, while enthusiasts will get much more out of Career. That mode plays almost like a role-playing game, with its many opportunities to develop your character and car by, among others, placing high in races and developing relationships with vehicle manufacturers. Forza's competitions begin separately in the United States, Europe and Asia, but over time you can win access to races and vehicles outside your own region.

An Xbox Live subscription lets you play Career mode online against other gamers. Not only can you race against seven people simultaneously, you'll be able to post your stats on 1,400 leader boards and "buy" exotic cars unavailable in your own region with points earned from successful races.

The inventory of vehicles is enormous -- 233 cars from 60 manufacturers, an inventory that runs the gamut from affordable (a Mini Cooper) to high-end (a Mercedes CLK 55 AMG Coupe) to nearly unattainable (an Enzo Ferrari or Saleen S7). All this hardware is lovingly depicted in Forza, with graphics that capture such finer points as the fast-moving shadows on a track. Unlike Gran Turismo 4, the cars here show actual damage. And not only can you see the hurt a race has put on your ride, it's going to affect how well your car performs from then on.

-- Tom Ham

Xbox, $50

DUNGEON LORDS,

DreamCatcher Games

This game comes from a developer, D.W. Bradley, with a long history of making titles for hard-core fans of role-playing games -- the folks who grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons on pen and paper. Dungeon Lords heads in a different direction. As a single-player, third-person-perspective role-playing game, it has you spending much more time running, jumping and slashing than patiently collecting swords and shields or "leveling up" your character by succeeding at side quests.

Because of all the monsters that keep appearing randomly, you can rarely let your guard down -- something that ought to appeal to action gamers. On the other hand, role-playing aficionados will also find a detailed character system that allows for plenty of interesting diversions in the form of side quests, guilds to join and non-player characters to meet and sometimes kill. These two schools of game design, however, don't always combine pleasingly.

Once you've hacked through the first few beasts and figured out the lay of the land, Dungeon Lords starts to fall short in other ways. Parts look embarrassingly unfinished: You can't craft your character's looks, even though the manual says you can, and the hotkey for bringing up a map overlay doesn't do anything. The graphics look average at best and suffer from a lack of variety; how long do you want to waste blundering around lost in the same nondescript woods? Finally, the monsters here act pitifully stupid. Some can't climb stairs, while others simply stand there and yell at you as you ventilate them with arrows.