A small rectification - I complained earlier about the car shaders being bad in the shadows, but I checked my display settings and noticed that my RGB settings were on 'Intermediate' instead of Expanded. I've been testing and comparing Forza and Prologue on my LCD screen, which is a PC screen and therefore should be on Full RGB, or in other words, Expanded. This actually made quite a big difference. The old Ferrari in the Lancer Evo X race still looks a bit crappy under some angles, but overall the cars look very good.
Ironically I'm now reaching a point where I like the car graphics better, and the environment a little bit less. The longer you look at the environment, the more clearly it stands out that it's not actually that good (at least I think so), but after readjusting your expectations coming from the photomode shots (Che at least was clear about that always - he should just have made sure that some direct feed shots got out as well) the cars still look decent enough. Of course, there should have been 16 cars
but other than that the game is pretty good and enjoyable.
I'm hotlapping now, getting some pretty decent times (you can check me, I'm ArwinGT4) and the hotlapping holds up pretty well - the rule systems are pretty good (you have to stay within the two white lines with at least one pair of wheels, no hitting the sides, etc.) and although the grass is weird and extremely grippy, it does help making going off track slower in general (still would have liked it more realistic though).
The AI on the other hand is still pretty crappy in most ways - occasionally it surprises me by not hitting me, but more often than not they still take me out where they really, really shouldn't
. But all in all I'm quite happy and I think if I spend most of my time playing this online with competitive others, the track won't feel empty and the AI will be replaced with real people that drive fast. Considering that with all cars there are always at least 200 people faster than me (I drive with all assists off, as you can see - Xbox Live ID = ArwinGT4
), it should be possible to find good competition online most of the time.