Trigger Finger

Well the demo of Forza 2 landed and joy was mixed with outrage for many of those who have sampled it.

Joy that the wait was over, joy that the game plays as smooth as butter, outrage that the game fails to live up to the screenshots graphically. Of course I am using the words of others when I use the term ‘outrage.’ There are many more important things in life than the graphic quality of a racing game. Wars are outrageous, poverty is outrageous, refereeing decisions in favour of Manchester United are generally outrageous. But dissapointing is a term I might use for the graphics on display in the demo.

Generally speaking… the game looks great. unfortunately (in the demo at least) they seem to have removed all traces of AA and AF on the cars (of all things!). Lets face it, the focus of your attention in such a game is the cars. The environment generally shoots past in a blur, but we spend hours admiring our beautiful beasts and to skimp on processing power there seems daft to say the least. I suspect that this is a Demo-Only problem.

I have seen it before with MotoGP 06, and TDU only to find that once you get the full game the full rendering engine is effect and things look great again. I guess they wanted to keep download sizes down, and even if it was released looking like the demo it is still on a par with most competing licenses and it wouldn’t stop me buying it on release. But I am sure I have seen the marketing material (admittedly not the most of reliable sources usually!) boasting that upto 4xx FSAA would be in use so lets wait and see. And as for the important bit (the racing!) its fantastic!

So, literally any minute now, petrol heads, racing enthusiasts and general fans of all things car-like across the world will see the demo of Forza 2 drop onto Xbox Live.

You have witnessed my obsession with a game I haven’t even played on these very pages, it seems to be contagious as people who I didn’t even know were gamers have been talking about it today at work. The post on the www.forzamotorsport.net forums that announced the demo release was coming got around 200,000 views within a couple of hours! Here’s hoping the demo whets the appetite rather than dissapoints!

Now to try and talk the girlfriend through downloading it for me whilst I am at work!

Here is the evidence!

I have never been so excited about a demo, especially one that is single player only, but still this will be the taste of the greatness that is to come on June 8th in Europe (earlier in lucky bastard locations around the world).

My speculation is that we will see it released along with the dashboard update… but then I make a career out of being wrong a lot May I suggest we spend the time waiting by harrassing the Luckiest Guy in the World??