Are you a paddock rat who loves to spend all day shaving tenths of a second off your lap time? Well, then "Forza Motorsport 4" for Xbox 360 is a match made in heaven. But if you'd rather celebrate your car enthusiasm in an unrestricted digital universe with a cadre of dream driving machines, the forthcoming "Forza Horizon" is for you.

Before "Forza Horizon" was officially demoed at the Xbox E3 2012 Media Briefing leading into this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, we sneaked a peek at -- and briefly played -- the game. More importantly, we heard from two guys who have heavily invested their time into it. Ralph Fulton is design director at United-Kingdom based Playground Games, and his development studio has put together a visually striking package. Publishing house Turn 10 Studios' creative director Dan Greenawalt bleeds Forza and wants the franchise to appeal to an even wider car-loving audience. Knowing there are many different kinds of auto enthusiasts, it's hard to argue against casting a wider net.

So what is "Forza Horizon" like? To start, the backdrop and driving roads are modeled after the best that Colorado (especially Grand Junction) has to offer. The game's seeds were planted some time during E3 2010, and Fulton's development team surveyed Colorado last year before deciding it was ideal. An open-ended virtual world of majestic magnitude was born, consisting of long highways, rustic-looking buildings, fun twisties, and dirt paths. Day turns to night, and vice versa. Players can roam wherever they wish, dodging (or hitting) traffic and generally being a menace to society by powersliding, doing donuts, and knocking down signs and fences. The main focus is to enjoy your car of choice on your own terms. Fulton and Greenawalt wants to engage the youth audience who may not be as zealous about cars as we wish they were, and we're behind the two all the way.

Aside from driving around aimlessly, there are challenges too. You can partake in street races for points or pink slips, earn points for causing mischief on public streets, bask in car culture and an auto show in the game's Horizon Festival (the player's staging area), and Playground and Rival modes from past and present Forza games will make appearances. And like any good racing game, multiplayer action comes standard.

When asked where the horizon name originated, Fulton said, "'Horizon' connotes freedom, expansiveness, and it just seemed to work in terms of naming a festival. The name just stuck." Cool fact: In case you're lost, Kinect users will have access to a voice-activated GPS command that draws a route path to the Horizon Festival (non-Kinect players can mundanely activate via menus).

While the freewheeling "Forza Horizon" doesn't appear to be as technically intense as we're used to from the series, it retains the comprehensive Pirelli tire modeling system from "Forza 4." Additionally, there are 65 different surfaces you'll be able to drive over. That's no typo; we believe 65 shows serious dedication to making this game stand out.

Available vehicle information will be released during the summer, but here's a sampling of cars we spotted during our demo, all gorgeously rendered:

We drove the 2013 SRT Viper in a single point-to-point race on twisty roads and can't say the handling predictability and control response gives anything up from "Forza 4," though it does take a different driving mentality when weaving through traffic versus tracing the racing line on a track. The Forza-standard camera views remain in play. Amusingly, playing chicken with traffic cars will force the AI to flash their high beams as you zoom towards a head-on collision - a neat touch, that.

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"Forza Horizon" rolls out on October 23 in North America, South America, and Asia. The European market waits until October 26. Those who preorder will get something special but no specific beans have been spilled.

Be sure to keep your eyes on WOT for inevitable updates as "Forza Horizon" draws nearer to its release.