Since Bizarre is now part of Activision, they won’t be handling the development on future Project Gotham Racing titles. In fact, they already finished up everything for PGR4, so they’re all done with Microsoft’s racing franchise. So who might take over? Turn 10, the internal studio at Microsoft who handles Forza might get the job. According to an interview with Shane Kim:
You know, we have a great internal racing studio in Turn 10, the creators of Forza Motorsport. And our goal is to roll the studio so that they can do more creative execution within the racing space. So you can imagine a future where they would develop a new version of Project Gotham Racing. We don’t have anything concrete there, and I do think that after four versions of PGR, it’s really important for us to take a fresh creative approach to it and to really think about what we want the next version of PGR to be if we do that.
I think taking a new approach to the series is a great idea. I’d love to see some new innovation with Gotham. I loved PGR2 and 3, but PGR4 seemed like just another game in the series. We’ll see what happens.
Thats right boys and girls, Forza Motorsport 2 is looking to get some brand new downloadable content right before the holidays. In this new pack you will be getting 11 new cars and a new track for 500 MS points. So if you saved up some MS points on your Xbox 360 or are just looking for another reason to dust off that copy of Forza here is a pretty good one.
The Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights demo for the Xbox 360 lets you play around with the career mode and buy one of 3 cars, a Mazda RX7, a 1969 Chevy Camaro SS or a Saleen S7, I chose the Saleen and tricked it out. This game tries hard to not let you forget that it is affiliated with HIN, there are mentions of it everywhere! The demo lets you play around with the different performance upgrades, vinyls and visual parts (hoods, scoop, spoilers, etc.) which is pretty interesting but their system is not even close to Forza, sorry guys.
The demo let’s you play on 1 race track against 6 opponents and once I tricked out my car it was no contest. The cars handle horribly, almost as if your car were on an ice rink. There is little to no control in corners and their is some damage physics so when you hit a wall it is noticeable, but I still was doing 165 mph with NOS afterwards. I pretty much bounced off of every wall and still won the race by a lot. The car models are not bad, but the graphics overall leave much to be desired.
There is an interesting aspect of the demo where you get DNA achievements based on different feats you perfomredduring the race, they are like skill points pretty much and will play out more in the full game. you can supposedly use your friends DNA to be part of your pit crew, I don’t know about you but I don’t want another man’s DNA anywhere near me.
The only thing worse than the bad gameplay is the horrible voice acting. The model they hired to act in this game as your guide should be shot on site. She tries to be hip and cool and it sounds very forced. From playing the demo I can’t recommend this game with a good conscience to anyone unless there are nude HIN videos hidden in the final game. Shame on THQ for putting this game out into the world.
Ok I got a chance to play around with the DIRT Demo for the Xbox 360 and one word jumped out of my mouth… Impressive! I like the damage engine for the car, but more impressive is the environment damage. When you drive your car offroad you can tear up the dirt and get it all over your car and when you drive into a rail it gets damaged as well as your car.
I also liked the fact you can actually view where you have taken damage, i.e. your exhaust, body, engine, etc. in the menus as percentages. You can also see all the dings and damage on your car, I wrecked my Audi and took the bumper off, cracked the windshield, good old bumper car fun.
DIRT definitely takes some getting used to from a handling perspective and is very different from Forza, so expect to play a couple of games where you spin out a bit. The demo did make me want to grab the game though, worth checking out.
If you haven’t had a chance to check out the latest Xbox 360 demos on Xbox Marketplace, shame on you, we here at Loot Ninja highly reccomend you do. With the new ability to download while playing games and leave your system on overnight while downloading there shoudl be no excuse, unless you filled your HDD with music. There are some quality demos available like:
* Tenchu Z (Some stealth ninja action for ya)
* Forza Motorsport 2 (A bit of racing to get your engine going)
* Shadowrun (Elves and dwarves killing in the name of…)
* Overlord (Just added today, get your evil villain on)
* GRAW 2 (If you liked GRAW one, take a look)
* Command & Conquer 3 (RTS + bombs = Nice)
* Winning Eleven Pro Evolution Soccer 2007 (GOOOOOOOOOAL)
That is a decent lineup for demos this month, many of which just came out this week, so if you were on the fence about grabbing a title, take it out for a spin and feel it up first. Each demo is around 800 Mb to 1 Gb in size and retails for 0 rubles, my favorite sum of cash.
After watching this and hearing about this game, I want to take a crack at it badly. Too bad Gamefly.com didn’t send it to me, instead I got Forza and Metal Slug Anthology (it’s just as good, hehe). Maybe I will go out and buy this one unless someone over at Microsoft wants to make a donation to the Loot Ninja staff, ::wink wink::.
I recently picked up a couple of video game magazines and came across the new advertisement for Forza. It is a pretty cool ad that pokes fun at the advertisements for colgnes in GQ, Cosmo, etc. that have fold out inserts that are scented with the latest craze. The Forza page is similar in that it also has a fold out, but instead of some Polo or Ck scent, it smells like tire burn out! Well played fellas, but I do warn you that if you sniff too long you will get a headache!
Ok let me start off by saying that this update was way overhyped for what it brought to the table. It has some nice features, mainly the downloading functionality has improved, which is real nice. You can now download demos and things while playing games, I was playing MLB 2k7 and downloading the Forza Demo. There is also a new blade for the market place, which should shave a few seconds from finding it the old way.
The other main feature that everyone was waiting for was the messaging feature and let me say that I am thoroughly underwhelmed. I see no point in this feature other than leaving messages for people while they are playing games, but you could already do that. I tried the messenger funciton out last night and it is a bit of a pain to set up, and typing with the soft keyboard stinks! I guess this is negligible if you have a USB keyboard, but I think people will much prefer to use the new Microsoft TID device (mini blackberry on your controller).
What I really want to see for the next update would be group voice chats. That would be a real nice feature to have since sometimes you want to talk to some buddies in a group instead of flipping back and forth from private chats. Come on MS hook a brother up!
All three of these games look beautiful. There’s no denying that. But how do they stack up head to head? A user sent us this image to show the differences between these 3 games with cars they have in common.
Personally, I think GT HD has better car detail than both of the others. What do you think?
We're like Spaceballs... we're making Loot Ninja everything. Coming soon we'll have hats, shirts, hoodies, possibly banana hammocks if one Editor has his way...
Check out the shirt prototypes here and the hats here
Ok I got a chance to play around with the DIRT Demo for the Xbox 360 and one word jumped out of my mouth… Impressive! I like the damage engine for the car, but more impressive is the environment damage. When you drive your car offroad you can tear up the dirt and get it all over your car and when you drive into a rail it gets damaged as well as your car. 
If you haven’t had a chance to check out the latest Xbox 360 demos on Xbox Marketplace, shame on you, we here at Loot Ninja highly reccomend you do. With the new ability to download while playing games and leave your system on overnight while downloading there shoudl be no excuse, unless you filled your HDD with music. There are some quality demos available like:
I recently picked up a couple of video game magazines and came across the new advertisement for Forza. It is a pretty cool ad that pokes fun at the advertisements for colgnes in GQ, Cosmo, etc. that have fold out inserts that are scented with the latest craze. The Forza page is similar in that it also has a fold out, but instead of some Polo or Ck scent, it smells like tire burn out! Well played fellas, but I do warn you that if you sniff too long you will get a headache!
Ok let me start off by saying that this update was way overhyped for what it brought to the table. It has some nice features, mainly the downloading functionality has improved, which is real nice. You can now download demos and things while playing games, I was playing MLB 2k7 and downloading the Forza Demo. There is also a new blade for the market place, which should shave a few seconds from finding it the old way.
