News

[icycalm]

http://gematsu.com/2013/08/playground-g ... -horizon-2

Playground Games likely working on Forza Horizon 2
Job listings and resumes point to potential sequel.

Playground Games, the studio behind last year’s Forza Horizon for Xbox 360, is likely developing a sequel for Xbox One, according to job listings and resumes spotted by internet sleuth Superannuation.

An agency job posting, since removed, for an unnamed Midlands-based racing developer, whose text matches much of that of an opening on Playground’s website, mentions the studio is “working on the next edition of their successful racing title.”

To follow, the LinkedIn profiles of Playground studio director Gavin Raeburn and creative director Ralph Fulton mention they’re “working on an exciting, unannounced project for Xbox One.” And the LinkedIn profile of vehicle tech artist Yibo Liu, according to this NeoGAF post, once read “working as the only technical artist in the vehicle art team for an undisclosed next-gen Forza project.” (It’s since traded “next-gen Forza project” for “Xbox One project.”)

Given the two-year gap between numbered Forza titles, and Forza Motorsport 5 being due out in November, it would make sense for a Forza Horizon 2 to arrive in 2014.

[movie]

http://www.vg247.com/2014/06/02/forza-h ... irmed-for/

Forza Horizon 2 has been officially confirmed by Turn10 and Playground Games for a Fall 2014 release.

The game was confirmed today for Xbox One and Xbox 360, along with news that the racer will include Forza Motorsport 5′s Drivatar technology. Its flagship car is the 2015 Lamborghini Huracán, which can be seen on the cover above, along with an all-new weather system.

Speaking with IGN, creative director Ralph Fulton said “[Turn 10 and Playground] share this belief that we can create a true home for racing fans on Xbox One.”

He told the site that Forza Horizon 2 will take place in Southern Europe, a setting Fulton says will lend the racer, “incredible diversity,” and, “amazing vistas.” It’s set around a big music festival, just like the first game.

http://www.allgamesbeta.com/2014/06/for ... reens.html

[Amor fati]

E3 trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63JNz7UZYwU
E3 demo footage (Lamborghini Huracan): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAzauwEtjz8
E3 demo footage (Corvette Stingray): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-j-kolMrIU
E3 demo footage (Nissan GT-R): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97_bW6ePquA

Graphics look better than the first game's but not a generational leap like DriveClub or Project CARS. Rain that affects the race is a good addition. There appears to be a greater degree of free roam with less barriers and more off-road sections which is likely to make some of the point to point races easier with wider routes in parts as seen in the demo. I just hope they have left some dedicated circuit-based racing in the game that is integrated into the map design like in the original as that was the most challenging.

[icycalm]

Graphics look better than the first game's but not a generational leap like DriveClub or Project CARS.

Nigga what? Every frame of that first trailer says "in-game footage". Maybe the other two games you mentioned are prettier, I haven't looked at them closely, but there's no way this could be remotely done on the previous gen. Aren't they just using the Forza 5 engine? That was certainly next-gen.

[icycalm]

Looked at some of the demo footage. The in-car view definitely makes it seem last-gen. Those hands could be from an Xbox 1 game. Maybe they are lying about the trailer being rendered with the engine.

[Amor fati]

http://www.xboxachievements.com/news/ne ... -2-Preview

Taking Forza Horizon 2 for a spin on the gloriously sun-dappled city streets of Nice in the Côte d'Azur region of southeast France, we're treated to a scenic jaunt through traffic at high speed, ploughing roughshod through restaurant tables and chairs, smashing through terracotta pots while drifting sideways like a lunatic.

“It's as important to drive stylishly as it is to drive well,” says Fulton, as points rack up on the screen in a fashion not all that dissimilar to PGR and its Kudos. Clearly, the Project Gotham legacy is strong in Forza Horizon 2, although the sense of freedom the game affords is unprecedented within the racing genre outside of games like Burnout Paradise or Test Drive Unlimited. Forza Horizon 2 pushes the open-world racing envelope further, with the entire city of Nice to explore, as well as Tuscany and the picturesque Amalfi Coast in Italy.

As you perform stylish driving feats, your multiplier will increase and you'll earn XP towards perks and rewards, such as new cars to purchase from the selection of 200+ that'll be available in the game. It's a system that not only owes a debt to PGR's Kudos, but Fulton also acknowledges that the Tony Hawk's series had a guiding hand in how the points rack up in Horizon 2. Nonetheless, it's Forza 5 that unsurprisingly casts the largest shadow over the game, with its Drivatar AI injecting the world with “personality” according to Fulton.

Smashing into a Drivatar racer exploring the world, you can still rewind and get back on track, which is useful, as other AI racers rushing around might not necessarily obey the rules of the road; not that there really are any. In Forza Horizon 2, you can do pretty much whatever you want, with a diverse selection of cars that include off-road monsters like the 2013 Dodge Ram Runner and 2014 Rally Fighter, and Euro-centric classics like the 1973 Ford Capri.

Playground estimates that there'll be at least 100 hours of gameplay in Forza Horizon 2, with an area that's three-times the size of the first game to explore. Filled with collectibles, photo challenges, bucket list challenges and over 700 events, including point-to-point racing, hill climbs, cross-country, off-road and street races, there's certainly going to be no shortage of things to do in the game. And that's before you even factor in the entire social experience, which enables players to get involved with up to 1000-person clubs.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/news ... 4dAF89fI0u

Forza Horizon 2 on Xbox 360 will be a "different game" to the Xbox One version and not a straight port, Playground Games has explained.

While the open-world sequel on previous generation hardware will have a different engine, developer and set of features, it is still "inspired by the same ideas" as the Xbox One version.

"Rather than thinking of them as the same game on different platforms, they are different games inspired by the same ideas."

Forza Horizon 2 on Xbox One will use the same technology as Forza Motorsport 5, while the Xbox 360 edition - developed by Sumo Digital - will run on the same engine as the original Forza Horizon.

While Microsoft will talk more specifically about the Xbox 360 edition later this year, Fulton confirmed the weather system and Drivatars are only possible on Xbox One.

"There are things we are doing in Forza Horizon 2 on Xbox One that honestly couldn't be done on any other console," he said.

Fulton recently confirmed that Forza Horizon 2 will launch without the franchise's micro-transaction 'token' system.

Forza Horizon 2 will be released on September 30.

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Preview footage with developer commentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1Q02SZkVCM

Looks like it should be decent like the first albeit more bloated going by the estimate of 100 hours to fully complete the game. It will be interesting to see how the 360 version compares seeing as it is a different game by a different developer.

[Amor fati]

New screens:

Launch trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQFiWpp5Y5w

Impressive trailer with small glimpses of the showcase events; just got to hope they are not as flawed as the original's were with rubber banding AI.

[Amor fati]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... 2-face-off

Now this is the last-gen conversion - or HD demaster, if you like - that we wanted to see. 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. Could this remarkable achievement really translate across to the vintage 2005 Xbox 360 hardware?

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. 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.

Once the initial car selection is complete, the Horizon festival road trip begins - and the journey through the game is almost entirely different to the Xbox One experience. There is commonality in the structure of the game world and the cars you'll drive through it, but the differences between the two games stack up very quickly. Events and circuits in each location are entirely unique to each version, while supplementary 'side quests' - such as the bucket list tests that see you take a new car on loan for a single challenge - are also different from one game to the next. Even the showcase events, where your car takes on various alternative land- and air-based vehicles, are also shaken up with unique content.

The overall impression is that Sumo hasn't exactly ported Forza Horizon 2 from Xbox One to the 360, but rather that it has produced its own companion piece that is better suited to the hardware limitations of the older console. There's also the sense that it has sought to extract the best possible results from the existing Xbox 360 engine created for the original Horizon, as opposed to tackling the nigh-on impossible task of scaling down the Xbox One codebase. Generally speaking, the approach works, even though one of the most satisfying experiences of the new game feels a little lacking on Xbox 360.

Off-road racing is a core component of Forza Horizon 2, and on Xbox One, the sensation of ploughing cross-country, blasting through detail-rich, thick foliage is one experience that feels new and exciting, helping to give the game the feeling that the title is a true next-gen pioneer in the racing genre. There's nothing to stop you driving off-road on Xbox 360, but the events structure to make the most of it is lacking - you leave the tarmac in many events, but the emphasis remains on circuit racing.

You can ratchet up difficulty in Horizon 2 on 360, but you never quite shake the sense that you're battling an algorithm - the human mind detects patterns, forges strategies to beat them and eventually prevails. On Xbox One, there is the sense that Playground has refined the Drivatar formula - the dangerous ineptitude often witnessed in Forza Motorsport 5 doesn't seem to be as much of an issue now, and while you're still battling an algorithm, there is the sense that a human element of sorts has been added that adds spice to the gameplay. It's also interesting to note that there is a correlation between the real-life user and the effectiveness of the driver AI - when a Drivatar based on a real-life racing game developer makes an appearance in our game, the challenge level gears up significantly.

We went into this article looking to produce a Face-Off similar to the Titanfall on Xbox 360 analysis. Based on those initial YouTube vids, we thought it would be great to compare the two version of Forza Horizon 2 with the same degree of like-for-like scrutiny that we employed back then, and with Sumo Digital on coding duties we had high hopes for the result. As it happens, that simply wasn't possible - and the story is arguably more interesting as a result.

Forza Horizon 2 represents something of a full-stop for the franchise on the Xbox 360. Sumo took on the excellent Playground/Turn 10 codebase but there's the feeling that it couldn't push the level of technical achievement further, resulting in a revised game design that made the most of the technologies and assets available, in the final analysis producing a very different game to the Xbox One showcase. It's a fine title worthy of the hardware it is running on and the pedigree of the studios involved - but it is perhaps more of a sideways step than a full-blown sequel. That game does exist, however - and it is spectacular - but it does remain exclusive to Xbox One.

Footage comparison: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oJOEbsXiLk

Looks like a notable generational difference overall particularly between the environments.

[Amor fati]

http://www.forzamotorsport.net/en-us/news/ff_launch

The latest Forza experience has arrived! Starting today you can download Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious for both Xbox One and Xbox 360. The standalone expansion doesn’t require any previous Forza game to play – you simply find it in the Xbox Store, download it, and you’re off to explore the amazing cars and action-packed challenges that make Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious such a one-of-a-kind experience. Best of all, this standalone expansion is available for FREE until April 10. So get in on the action now at no additional cost!

In Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious, you’re recruited by the Fast & Furious’ Tej Parker (voiced in the game by Christopher “Ludacris” Bridges) to help him acquire ten special cars for his Fast & Furious crew – the same cars you see in the film Furious 7. Your goal is to acquire each of these cars by taking part in a series of automotive challenges inspired by the Fast & Furious films. From the 900-hp 1970 Dodge Charger to an armored 2013 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited and more, each of the cars in the Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious standalone expansion is both stunningly accurate and amazingly fun to drive.

Check out the launch trailer and don’t miss out on this action-packed expansion to Forza Horizon 2.

Launch trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YZgwjqpUl0