Black Xbox 360 with Kinect System

So at a private party in downtown Los Angeles we got to grab hold of the Xbox 360 new Kinect system. Forza Motorsport 3 created an interactive game where you race a Ferarri F458 Italia down a mountain pass and acquire points from passing people. You just simply put your hands at 10 and 2 and steer the Ferrari. The gas and brake operate by itself as your steer around the cars in the pass. It was great fun and we even managed to score 200,000 points which was higher than our Turn 10/Forza host. The game also had an interesting feature that let you literally do a 360 walk around of the car without your controller. You can open the doors, change the point, hop into the interior, and even crank the car without a controller and moving your hands. The game even lets you duck down to look at thing like the wheel of the vehicle. It is quite a unique feature and we cannot wait until it is made public for purchase.

It’s now time to forget everything you have ever known about the Need for Speed series. The new gaming engine that is utilized in Need for Speed Shift is three years in the making and it is going to re-invent simulation racing games as we know it. We were invited to a special sample test of the game where the EA staff let us play with the Audi RS4, Porsche GT2, and a Zonda. This game is going to win surely on the details.

The interior details have to be the most amazing thing I have ever seen. While your racing in car you can use the secondary joystick on the Xbox 360 to rotate your drivers head around the cabin. You can look down and watch your driver operating the pedals. While looking at your gauge cluster you will notice the revs on your tachometer operate just like a real car as the NFS team eliminated the smooth arcade like motions of simulation games past and now have bouncing revs like a real vehicle.

The real amazing game play is when you focus outside the interior. The game makes you feel like your practically driving these expensive machines around a racetrack. On the faster cars like the GT2 and Zonda the car presents a great representation of acceleration G’s and braking G’s. The cars also represent an accurate version of understreer/oversteer that with some practice you can steer out of very easily. It just adds to the simulation level and realistic feel of this Need for Speed game.

My favorite feature is when you exit the in-car mode it keeps the car’s factory gauges on screen instead of putting some generic boring gauges on screen when your out of car. So if your playing with a Porsche GT2 and you leave in car mode you still see the GT2 factory gauges for speed and RPM’s.

Source: Wrecked Magazine