After playing and exploring all the roads you get to drive on in the demo, adding in the amount of time on these forums reading about it, it is everything I was expecting it to be.
It kind of feels like I'm driving around in the world of Red Dead Redemption. Beautiful scenery, the night time is amazing. The headlights of the cars look pretty realistic, with how they reflect on the road surface and how far they light up the road ahead. The reflections and lighting in the game in general looks to be more true to real life compared to Forza 4, but I think this has more to do with the dynamic day/night cycle, than improved graphics. If you stop the car and just admire the landscape, you'll notice the trees slightly swaying in the virtual breeze. You might see some birds(mountain hawks perhaps?) flying in the distance. When it starts to get dark, you'll begin to hear crickets making their night time soundtrack(with the music/radio volume off). It really is quite amazing the amount of detail they incorporated into the game.
Driving the Evo around on the dirt and paved roads felt pretty good with the controller as well. It made me wish I had the $300 for the Fanatec CSR wheel, so I could cruise around and drive like I would in real life. It would make driving around on the smooth curved and banked roads even more satisfying.
That brings me to the feeling I get after playing the demo, despite just using the Xbox controller. It was satisfying. Drifting around on the dirt roads, attacking the S-bends and curves, and even though I'm using the regular controller, I could still get a sense of feeling the car catch grip after each slide and drift. The physics do have a different feel to them compared to Forza 4, but they're by no means arcade. I have the ABS set to on, steering simulation, traction control off, and it honestly feels great for this type of game, especially compared to the other games in the open world driving/racing genre.
All in all, like I said before, I'm glad I pre-ordered it. Got it coming from Newegg for $45 bucks when they had a special sale a couple months ago.
Quick question though, has anyone used a wheel with the demo yet? How's the experience compared to using the normal gamepad?
Sideways action all the way!
