Uniform weather conditions is a factor here, but it's also the case that there's far less traffic on the road on the last-gen version, making the task of moving from point A to point B easier on a more general level. The general sense of discovery in the open world remains, but the feeling of danger when driving on the edge isn't quite so pronounced. The off-roading driving options of the Xbox One version remain, but it's very often a more barren experience on 360. There are far more repeating textures and incidental detail takes the heaviest hit of all. To its credit, Sumo has recreated the same open world in much more constrained conditions - to the point where like-for-like GPS queries produce identical routing cross-platform - but the overall detail level is significantly pared back. Microsoft's new console has over 10 times the available RAM of the old 360, and it shows. The gradual shift of the time of day is included, however, but time-lapse comparisons in like-for-like spots demonstrate that Xbox One is a world apart from its last-gen counterpart. Similarly, the remarkable simulation of varying weather conditions has not made its way across to Xbox 360 - weather in the last-gen world is uniformly sunny up against varying conditions on Xbox One from bright skies to lashing storms, incorporating often stunning atmospheric rendering. The beautiful physically based rendering of Playground Games' version is gone, replaced with a plainer, more flat representation of in-game lighting. Certainly in terms of overall technology, that would have been a fool's errand - in pure technical terms, the 360 version cannot hope to compete. Sumo Digital hasn't gone out to slavishly trace out the Xbox One blueprint.
What we have here are two versions that share assets, environments, concepts and themes - but in execution each release is to all intents and purposes a completely different game, and that's actually a very good thing. However, once the Forza Horizon festival begins proper, parity becomes a thing of the past: Playground Games goes one way on Xbox One, while Sumo Digital veers off in its own radically different direction on Xbox 360. Pulling up at the festival tent and choosing your first car via two different takes on the car selection screen, we also see that the high-end vehicle modelling utilised by each version of the game is also very close to like-for-like.
XBOX 360 FORZA 5 CODE
But could the Xbox 360 version stand up to Digital Foundry scrutiny? Loading up the Xbox 360 code and replicating that initial road trip to the Horizon festival in the Lamborghini Huracan shows Sumo Digital's work at its best - the initial blast through the coastal town of Castelletto reveals clear compromise, but the spirit of the experience is uncannily similar to the Xbox One title. When pre-release video eventually emerged on YouTube last week, initial impressions looked positive - against all odds, UK-based Sumo Digital appeared to have handed in a phenomenally close conversion. Could this remarkable achievement really translate across to the vintage 2005 Xbox 360 hardware? Forza Horizon 2 on Xbox One is a highlight of the new console era: a phenomenal package of state-of-the-art rendering technology, open-world gameplay and a brilliant driving simulation melded into an outstanding arcade-style racer. Now this is the last-gen conversion - or HD demaster, if you like - that we wanted to see.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and its audiobook, and The Earthborn Trilogy, also on audiobook.
XBOX 360 FORZA 5 FREE
Subscribe to my free weekly content round-up newsletter, God Rolls. Again, this is not “new,” and yet I do think this upcoming era of much higher profile day one releases on Game Pass is really going to change the narrative here, and I do wonder how long Xbox’s competition can ignore this format.įollow me on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.
So it creates a situation where you have the weigh the pros and cons of a Sony $70 exclusive every time one comes out, or with Xbox, you simply…already have the game. And given what Game Pass offers, it seems kind of hard to have an Xbox and not also more or less automatically sign up for Game Pass as well. It’s hard to explain, but it does feel free, however, once you already have that subscription rolling. So that’s the cost of 2-3 new games year.
XBOX 360 FORZA 5 PC
At a baseline of $10 a month, that’s $120 a year just for Game Pass, separate from XBL or Game Pass for PC options.