Car porn (Forza 2)

[Lockdown]

Fine, you bastards.

Fine.

Going into the city to pick up the 360 Elite today, and a copy of Forza 2.  I hope you're all happy.  I'll be online tonight; KeySJU if any of you suckers have forgotten my Live gamertag in the long, dark absence of a working console in my possession.

That was YOU?  No shit!?  I just deleted that tag from my friends list, thinking, "who the hell is this?  Whoever it is, I haven't seen him in forever.  He's outta' here!"

Too funny.

[Devil]

Delete mine.

[Clanwolfer]

Fine, you bastards.

Fine.

Going into the city to pick up the 360 Elite today, and a copy of Forza 2.  I hope you're all happy.  I'll be online tonight; KeySJU if any of you suckers have forgotten my Live gamertag in the long, dark absence of a working console in my possession.

That was YOU?  No shit!?  I just deleted that tag from my friends list, thinking, "who the hell is this?  Whoever it is, I haven't seen him in forever.  He's outta' here!"

Too funny.

Yeah, my 360 died months ago, and as I was in the midst of a big senior push to graduate summa, I figured I didn't need the extra distraction.  Then it just became an issue of being busy, and then just not feeling like mailing my console out and waiting for it to come back.  So I sold the broken one to someone who felt like going through that, and now I'm getting back in the game.

Add me again or face freshly unleashed wrath.  Or at least me cutting you off and braking suddenly.

[Arkon]

Let me just say, it is very dangerous when Lockdown and I get on the track together.

[Devil]

I challenge you both to finish behind me.

[shon]

I hope to get on tonight as well.  I got my playseat in today and set it up during lunch only got to race once but what a blast.

Forza2 with wheel and seat Awesome!!!

[Lockdown]

Speaking of which... I would REALLY appreciate some of you guys who have or are getting wheels soon to start posting some impressions of it with Forza2.  Cause I am [this close] to pulling the trigger on one of those.

[coopasonic]

I hope to get on tonight as well.  I got my playseat in today and set it up during lunch only got to race once but what a blast.

Forza2 with wheel and seat Awesome!!!

What seat?

Speaking of which... I would REALLY appreciate some of you guys who have or are getting wheels soon to start posting some impressions of it with Forza2.  Cause I am [this close] to pulling the trigger on one of those.

It's on my front stoop right now... impressions after the weekend and no, I'm not going to tell you where I live.

[Devil]

OK, so now I'm getting a seat and a wheel...other than hanging fuzzy dice and a pine cone air freshener from my ceiling, what else am I going to need?

[Arkon]

OK, so now I'm getting a seat and a wheel...other than hanging fuzzy dice and a pine cone air freshener from my ceiling, what else am I going to need?

some actuall skillz??





 

[Devil]

Can I order them somewhere? 

[Farscry]

Can I order them somewhere? 

Hey, just watch the new reality TV show, "Fast Cars and Superstars", it'll be a great training program!

*hides*

[Lockdown]

He already does!  Next suggestion?   

[USMC Kato]

Sweet! I'm back from training down south and I have a lot of time to catch up on my gaming!
Forza 2 is fantastic so far and I hope to see you all online one way or another!

/gang sign "Honda Fo' Life!!!" /gang sign

[DonD]

I raced a bit with some folks from the friends list.  Having just opened the shrink-wrap, my default car seemed like it was running at least 30% slower than the rest of the field.  Which, on normal tracks, equated to roughly 20 seconds per lap.  True, I messed up now and again, but even with my best efforts, I didn't manage to finish a single race before the timer expired.  Wait..there was one.  But coming in last, I didn't get any credits anyway.

I think I need to get some single player action in first so I can upgrade a bit, then jump back into multi.  Or race with some other brand newbies.

[Devil]

Don and I were in the back of the pack all night with the default cars.

Not like I'd be much better but 100 yards after the start it was like we were racing alone.

Time to step it up with my CR-X and get a wheel!

[Clanwolfer]

I was doing pretty well for most of the night, once I switched to the stock Focus ST.  That thing really rewards careful driving (as my 2-lap Nurburgring victory showed).  And that one win alone netted me 20K, which made the whole night of multiplayer racing worth it.  Now I've got tomorrow morning to test and tweak a great D-class car for extended 'Ring races.

[Lockdown]

This just keeps getting more fun the more people that join us.  Tonight showcased the racing "talents" of Harkonis, Loomi, Ike, Clanwolfer, Don, Devil, Skystride, myself, and a couple others who I'm probably forgetting... (and probably more after I logged off).

For those who don't have the game yet and are thinking of joining us - even after a few days of playing, I would say we stick to 'D' and 'C' class cars 90% of the time (at least when I am playing we do) - so it takes very little time to do a few races in Career and tweak your starter car to join us, if you want to play that way.  I think playing with a car from Career is more fun, so I try to do that when I can.

Along with tweaking cars, you can take pictures and do all sorts of effects with them.  Pretty neat stuff.  Here is one (extremely poor) example of one of the new cars I'm working on improving (some 1970 Porsche that you unlock pretty early in career if memory serves); with a sepia tone to it.



I saved a few replays and such, so I will try to get a few good pictures posted from tonight's events if I get a chance.  There were some classic moments for sure.  TOTALLY great multiplayer game! 

Come join us!  There's really only one rule, and from what I can tell, it's pretty subjective - so it's very casual and laid back.  We're pretty good at spamming invites, so if you're on someone's friends' list - expect it.

Super fun game!

[DonD]

Once I switched over from my career mode car to the available stock multiplayer cars I had much better luck, and at least felt competitive.  At that point, it was my own suckiness that kept me back.  But it was much more fun.

Great fun last night.  I was on for like 5 hours.  It's been a long, long time since I've done that.

[Lockdown]

OK... some visual memories of last night's activities for you all:  (Ike/Harkonis/Loomi/Don/Sparhawk/LD/Devil)

The start of a race at Maple Valley, one of our favorite courses to run.  This is before the race started, when everyone's cars are looking pretty, and we're all nice a friendly with each other.  Noone's "being a dick" at this point.   





.  .  .  .  .

This one is of Loomi getting ready to pass Ike on the outside of this turn.  This was pretty fun to watch from a replay perspective.  Ike skidded throught the turn just a bit, while Loomi kept his traction the entire time... zooming right on by.  Don't even ASK what Don is doing in the background of this picture.  Maybe he's practicing powersliding.   



.  .  .  .  .

Here is Sparhawk giving me a nice visual marker of where the track is.  He's using the smoke addon that only "activates" if you crash hard enough to warrant your engine creating the effect.   



.  .  .  .  .

And last (and definately least) is Nancy and I racing on a track so he can show me his wicked fast CRX.  Earlier in the race he smashed me into a wall, so I'm giving him a love-tap here to say thanks.

[Arclight]

You guys should get hired by Microsoft. I'm so close to getting a Gold membership with my 360.
Yet to play on line with it, haven't had a game I wanted to.

Might wait for DiRT dunno.......but yeah, you guys sure make it sound like fun.

[Calvin]

Well, I promised Ike I would rent the game if I could find it, and lo and behold there was a copy in BB that the guy held for me (my local BB is actually not a total waste of space which is nice). So anyways, I rented it, let it sit for awhile while I blew through most of GH2 on easy. Then I started to play. As expected (because I am utterly woeful at realistic racers), I sucked ass. Because everyone here was picking Euro and I wanted to be able to get Corvettes early as they are my favorite cars, I went American. No problem right-but I decided against picking the expensive, fast car first and went with the Pontiac Solstice for the handling and nice design. Oh, mistake, thy name is Calvin. After three failures on the first race (intermediate difficulty) I tried to restart my career. Couldnt figure out how to.

Finally I ground out a victory against the dreaded Chevy Cobalt SS (that car is fast!). Then the second race, with tons of turns took a while, but finally I learned HOW to turn, and the Cobalt fell again. The third race was touch and go, with a different car beating me the first time. The second attempt fared better, as I passed the same car (a yellow Dodge I think) on the first sharp turn with some stupid ass Calvin-only attempt to drift and turn. I held the lead for 2 more laps before I almost spun out on a corner and was behind. Coming into the final turn I had one chance-go as fast as I could through the inside of the turn, slam the breaks, and try to slide into the Dodge and spin him out. It worked. I recovered with enough speed to get through the turn, the Dodge spun out-I won. It was awesome.

I won a swank old Camaro, but couldn't use it-I briefly entertained buying a Cobalt at this point, but instead toughed it out through the first of the next 3 races on my first try. Then came the upgrades to the Solstice. I didn't want to spend big bucks on a starter car, so I went with first tier upgrades-improving the intercooler, adding turbo, changing some engine piston thingies, and one other thing. About 3000 credits later, the Solstice actually was a decent car. I tore through the next two races and won another car, and then sadly retired to bed with my woman badgering me to sleep so I could wake up to come work for 10 hours.

So. I hated the demo of this game. I am still not sure that I like it enough to go out and purchase (though I may very well do that), but so far the full version is 100x more impressive than the demo. It is so much better than I know I will have a good racer to tide me over until DiRT comes out, and I am happy with that.

[Sparhawk]

  @ Lockdown's post!

I had a blast last night too and it was a shame that I had to go to bed. Stupid work.

[Bullwinkle]

I tried to join you guys last night, thanks to Ike's invite, but I couldn't get into the race.  It was nice watching you, though.  Worked out for the best, because I had just switched cars in my garage for a race and couldn't get to my very slightly souped VW.  Also, with the fan on, my mike is nothing but an irritant for others, so I had it off.  Not sure why I logged on, actually...

I did race some kids in another online race the other night, and was spanked pretty badly.  I have a hunch I'll be sticking with SP on this one.

I wasn't sure I was liking it at all, but I sat down for a couple of races last night and wound up finishing Proving Grounds  and doing the first set of races on the next level (amateur?).  It was going to be one or two races, and it turned into two and a half hours.

[Thin_J]

Yeah I tried to join an invite from Ike later on Thursday night and it just said could not join game or something. I took it as a sign. I finished the car design I was working on and went to bed.

[DonD]

That's just a cheap shot, LD.  That little Toyota was a bitch to drive.

The Acura I used later was much more forgiving.

[Harkonis]

there have been a few issues with being told that you failed to join, I've found rebooting and keep trying usually gets you in eventually.  Seems to be a problem with their matchmaking servers and the problem didn't exist before the masses got their game.

I think Bull got in the game during our 3 race series which unfortunatly means that for 3 races nobody else can join. sorry

[kathode]

I had trouble joining games until I changed my NAT.  This is a little known thing about Xbox Live that unfortunately causes big issues when joining games.  Go to your System blade and go to network settings and then run the Xbox Live connection test.  The last test that it does is the NAT test.  If it says anything other than "Open" (strict and moderate are the other options) then you are going to have trouble connecting to games.  Changing it from either of the others to Open is a mystical process involving port forwarding, IP assignment, UPnP settings, tea leaves, goat entrails, and acapella singing.  Google is your best bet.  Mine was stuck on moderate and I had to switch to a 3rd party firmware for my router to get it to Open.

BTW, this also drastically improved the time it takes to get into a Halo 3 game for me.  I think it's why it sometimes takes forever to get into a game with a big party - most likely someone in the party has a misconfigured NAT setting.

[Destructor]

And keep in mind that in order to get a non-strict NAT reading, you need ports opened to your 360, and you need to have a static IP address for your 360. It makes playing 360 games a pain in the ass somedays, but it's needed.

I know that Purge has put out a post somewhat recently that shows exactly what you need to do to get the 360 working perfectly. I think it should be stickied, IMHO.

[Thin_J]

My NAT setting is Open to start with. Is and has always been, but I still got the "Failed to connect" error multiple times today.

[Arkon]

My NAT setting is Open to start with. Is and has always been, but I still got the "Failed to connect" error multiple times today.

You can get this error if you are connecting to a lobby with someone in it that doesn't have an Open NAT setting.

and for those who need it:

http://live.tommccann.net/

[kathode]

Yeah I doubt NAT is the only thing that can cause a bad connection but I think it's one of the big things that quite a few people don't know about.

Ok here's my funny story for the night.  I was playing a ranked match with D-class cars on Sebring International Raceway.  I took out a tricked out Audi TT that I have that's not too shabby.  Another guy fields a tricked out Eagle Talon with a nice "Stewie" themed paint job.  Even a "What the deuce?" on the hood.  So his has a smidge better acceleration than mine and he gets ahead of me off the bat, but throughout the race we're pretty much even.  There's basically no way I can overtake him.  On the last lap of the race, the very last turn before the finish line he goes way too wide for some reason, and I zip inside and blow past him.  My thoughts from the point go like this -

"Yes!  I'm going to take first!"
"Hmmm, what's that pillar up ahead?  Oh well, I'll just go to the right."
"What the...???  NOOO!"

Yeah I turned into the pit lane by accident right at the end    In my defense, the pit lane at Sebring is not an offshoot.  The road is very wide and then suddenly there's a divider.  But still, everyone laughed.  I ended up coasting in to third place.  Sigh.

[EngineNo9]

Well, I broke down and bought this today.  I think it was mostly Lockdown's picture thread that pushed me over the edge.    So far I'm enjoying it more than the demo. 

The silly thing is that I'm not much of a multiplayer type guy for games like this.  I'm not very good at sim racers and I'm far too used to being able to nudge the AI cars or take sloppy turns without being chastised by uptight players.  Oh, well.  I'm sure I will have some fun running through the career mode on my own. 

One question: I picked Europe as my home region, but I want to get the classic American muscle cars, too.  I know you are supposed to be able to buy any vehicle from all regions, but for something like that is it only really late in the career mode?  It looks like you start unlocking classic cars right away, and it might annoy me to not be able to buy those for a long time. 

[EngineNo9]

I decided that I wanted the unlockable muscle cars so I just went ahead and deleted my saved game and started a North American region career.  I'm doing pretty well with this Cobalt SS so far and have unlocked and won a couple muscle cars already. 

[Thin_J]

Other than a mostly great run of the Nurburgring against Harkonis and you lot this afternoon I only really remember one moment of true victory and that was my first race where you all picked S class cars and I went with my maxed out Nissan Silvia S15. I remember seeing people had picked the Mclaren F1 and some other crazy high end cars and I assumed my poor little Silvia would be worthless.

Then the race started.



That's like what, three seconds in? Crazy, crazy car. I mean I'd driven it before in singleplayer races against cars that weren't even close to the same level... but I didn't think it was any better than the McLaren and those other cars. That's just nuts.

I really dug the run on the Nurburgring. I love that track. We need to do it more often.

The rest of the afternoon I felt like I was perpetually stuck in second place, usually behind Hark and sometimes Loomi

[disarm]

i haven't caved to the point of buying this one yet, but i did rent it this evening and played for way too many hours considering that i have to work tomorrow.  truth be told, i'm enjoying it a lot more than i expected...and i haven't even tried racing online yet.  although i have a thing for european sports cars, i started a career with north america because i thought it appropriate to run the early races in my real-life car, an Acura RSX.  after kicking some ass for a while in my RSX, it was time for a shiny new car...the Porsche Cayman S.  i've now run enough races to reach level 15, i've upgraded my Cayman to an A836 rating, and i'm hooked.  i really think it's the career that has drawn me in this time...earning credits, buying new cars, upgrading old ones, then taking them out on the track and realizing just how differently they all feel seems to be thing things that are keeping me interested right now.

i have no doubt that i'll be playing the hell out of FM2 over the next week, but it remains to be seen if it will have its hooks in me enough to earn a purchase when i have to take the rental back...

[Zinfan]

I posted the following on OO earlier today so I just cut and pasted it below.  One thing about setting up the wheel, the instructions tell you to insert the included disc first for driver updates to support the wheel but my disc just started PGR3(also included in the package) and I never saw an update.  Turns out an earlier system update to the console had already added support for the wheel and all I needed to do was power on the console and the wheel and then press the connect button on each, it worked fine after that. So here is my ramblings about the wheel;


My troubles getting my wheel connected were self-inflicted.  After I tried once again last night I noticed the ring of lights in the middle of the wheel weren't spinning like the ones on the console so I held down the connect button a bit longer.  This did the trick as the wheel started searching for the console and found it right away. :oops: .  Ahh it works now.

I like the wheel quite a bit and just as knob says while I may be faster with the controller, I'm having more fun with the wheel.  I've turned all assists off except for the braking line and automatic transmission resulting in some pretty lurid slides while trying to drive my 1961 Jaguar E-type around but with a little patience and planning I can get some good laps in.  I am going to keep using the wheel and see how the faster cars handle with it, so far I'm still using D class autos (VW GTI mk5, the Jag and a Miata) and control is on the knife edge with a minor slip-up really setting me back on track.  I can really feel the difference between the Jag and VW (RWD vs FWD) on track and I'm always trying to keep the Jag's rear end behind the front as they want to swap ends all the time.

The force feedback is really good but my wheel has a click sometimes during a race, it doesn't affect the performance of the wheel but is noticable.  I played a bit of PGR3 as well as DiRT  using the wheel and found that the FF effects in PGR3 are too muted compared to Forza while DiRT's FF was stout but perhaps too stout with the wheel jerking hard side to side as might be expected when racing on dirt but this seemed off in some undefineable way.  I'll try it some more this weekend.  Using my lap to hold the wheel didn't work out very well, it seems comfortable there before the race starts but the FF can really move it around and I found it distracting.  Since I don't have a desk nearby to attach it to I got my ironing board out and pressed ( ) it into service as a stand.  Worked out really well since I could adjust the height to my prefered location and it can be stored away quickly once I'm done racing.  I did have to put a thin book between the clamp and the bottom of the ironing board because the tightening screw on the clamp couldn't get enough grip on the thin surface of the board.

[Lockdown]

Since I don't have a desk nearby to attach it to I got my ironing board out and pressed ( ) it into service as a stand.  Worked out really well since I could adjust the height to my prefered location and it can be stored away quickly once I'm done racing.  I did have to put a thin book between the clamp and the bottom of the ironing board because the tightening screw on the clamp couldn't get enough grip on the thin surface of the board.

BRILLIANT! 

[Zinfan]

Played around in the paint shop, take a look at my leet skllz

on the grid awaiting the start


Hey you might not get to see the back of my car in a race so here is a picture!


Another look at my GT logo attempt.


Fun stuff to play with.

[Sparhawk]

My plans are to take my mother and sister out for an early dinner after work today and then hop on and play the crap outta Forza 2 when I get home. YOU ALL BETTER BE ON OR I'LL SPANK MONKEYS UNTIL THEY CRY!