Eudemon

Forza Motorsport 7 Announced Racing fans of all over were in high spirits while watching the Xbox E3 conference, as during the show the first showing and details of Forza Motorsport 7 were revealed. When you are one of the biggest names in the racing game scene it doesn’t take much to get people excited about a new one, however Forza games have always not taken this for granted and generally strive to eclipse what they delivered previous. And who better to talk about it than Turn 10 studio boss Dan Greenawalt. Up on the stage he delved into the many details about the game before presenting the first ever look at Porsche’s brand new 911 GT2 RS, which itself will be the cover car for the game. Personally I think this moment was wasted on the audience as many of them didn’t seem to realise what was actually happening. In the way that Gran Turismo is a showpiece for PlayStation, Forza Motorsport has become one for Xbox, and with the newly announced Xbox One X FM7 is going in all exhausts blazing to demonstrate what it's capable of: running at a native 4K resolution at the trademark 60fps the games are known for and displaying an image quality and clarity that has only been seen on higher-end PCs compared to console. Setting out to be the largest Forza ever, FM7 will have over 700 cars including as said by Greenawalt, “the largest collection of Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Porsches”. That claim isn’t only about the car list either, there will be 30 environments consisting of over 200 track configurations, made up of real world circuits, locations and fictional creations from Turn 10. This is great to hear as FM games can tend to lack in the number of circuits available department, and some of this number will be made up of former entries to the series, with Mugello being one of the first of these to be spotted from the video (1m27s). Another desire of fans has been answered too, with the featuring of dynamic time-of-day and weather conditions. Customisation is always a favourite in any Forza game and FM7 has now expanded this to include… your driver. Players can personalise their male or female character’s appearance through a wide range of racing gear that spans multiple decades and areas of popular culture. During the show a pair of female racing drivers played through their own races, the first on one of the brand new Dubai layouts in a Porsche 911 GT2 RS, and the other racing a Nissan GT-R racecar around a wet and stormy Nurburgring. Set to launch from October 3rd for the Xbox One family and Windows 10, FM7 is exhibiting that it could be the game many players have been waiting for!

Project Scorpio Becomes Xbox One X Microsoft has taken the covers off of Project Scorpio and revealed its real name to be, Xbox One X. Keeping the ‘Xbox One’ in the name shows that MS has stayed true to their promise that this is in fact just a super powerful version of their current console. Priced at $499 and launching November 7th, the One X is aimed at hardcore gamers and this new system is a seriously hefty step up from its siblings, the One and One S. With that sort of premium there has to be some monumental increases in power, and there is. A beefier Radeon GPU capable of pumping out six teraflops of graphical processing power, 12GB GDDR5 RAM and a built-in 4K Blu-ray player means native 4K visuals are a reality, although buyers without a 4K tv will feel and see the benefits on a 1080p set too. Despite being the most powerful of the Xbox One systems, amazingly the One X will also be the smallest! Incredible how over time technology gets to a stage where such a significant increase in power and performance can be scaled down to be even smaller. It’s not a massive difference between it and the One S but still it’s quite remarkable that this is the case. Perhaps surprising (at least to me it is) is that the included controller is not an Elite but instead a standard one. And is a 1TB HDD enough space for storing all those 4K native and enhanced titles that are to come? External storage is obviously an option but hasn't the ability to swap hard drives become the obvious and preferred choice these days? When rumours were circulating around the price being what it turned out to be, some were put off, however they were willing to accept it had these two items been more on the premium side. Whatever the case, the One X will be the most powerful console out on the market when it launches in November and will have to stick around for a few years before a next-gen Xbox can be shown. Well at least you would hope so.

Need for Speed Payback Gameplay Trailer A new gameplay trailer for Need for Speed Payback has been shown during the EA Play event. The video is of the same heist seen in the original reveal, where the stealing of a Koenigsegg Regera from the back of a moving truck is the objective. The action kicks off with ‘Tyler’ and ‘Jess’ taking off in the Mustang and it’s not before long that they are needing to take down a ‘House Enforcer’, who in true bad guy form are found driving around in aggressive looking blacked out cars. Once free of that, it is time to catch up to the truck itself. After a cut scene shows your characters being brake checked and the truck somehow managing to cause absolute carnage and chaos on the road ahead, it is once again time to put your foot to the floor. [caption id=attachment_7001" align="aligncenter" width="800] How did that truck do all of this?![/caption] Dodging all the debris that is strewn across a small stretch of tarmac, it is time for another small cut scene that shows the two speeding along as the chase continues, however ‘The House’ cartel has ramped up their attempts to stop you as more enforcers start to hound you, and these are tougher, requiring multiple hits, or having to be persuaded to hit a stationary object, hard, before they will go down. Side note: With all of the action going on it is easy to miss how gorgeous the game is and how expansive it seems too. As the path becomes clear and you ride up to the marker beside the target, the character switching dynamic comes into play and now via a cut scene we see Jess climbing out the passenger side window and leaping onto the trailer, walking across it, and entering from above. Building up a bit of tension as the trailer snakes from side-to-side and looks like it is ready to topple, Tyler is calling out to Jess with an understandably worried tone, but wee Jess has this, as with the trailer tipping, the Regera bursts out of the back in super slick slow motion and heads out in the opposite direction to the Mustang. Control is given back to the player and as they squeeze the power out of the ultimate Koenigsegg, driving against the flow of traffic, it’s not long before yet another (!) cut scene makes an appearance, this time it's the Police and they are out in force, fronted by an extremely adventurous helicopter pilot. It alludes to many instances from the Fast and Furious franchise, pushing hard on the action and cinematic experience, which if done right, could be some mindless action packed fun!