During last night’s closing party at Tech.Ed Australia, attendees were treated to something pretty special. Two hotly anticipated upcoming games, Forza 4 and Star Wars Kinect were actually playable at the event. Forza 4 is due for release on the 11th of October and Star Wars Kinect was recently postponed till early 2012 release.
Forza 4 showed off some stunning visuals including tweaks to the lighting system to increase realism. Its understood that previous generations required hard coded brightness / exposure levels in certain locations because the engine wasn’t able to accurately display how the car should look.
One of the biggest questions and concerns hard-core racing sim and Forza fans have is the integration or use of Kinect in Forza 4. The good news is that Forza 4 uses Kinect in a very subtle and optional way as developers Turn10 were conscious of not dumbing it down just to appeal to entry-level gamers. Forza 4 is a driving game that uses Kinect, rather than a Kinect Game.
Star Wars Kinect was also enjoyed by attendees, allowing for the childhood lightsaber-wielding fantasies to come true. One of the biggest concerns with the game is input lag. After early builds were shown to be laggy, developers worked hard on updates to solve the issue. Its difficult to say which build was on display last night, but there was still a small lag between players movements and the Kinect interpretation translating to on-screen movement. Given the game is delayed now, this may be a problem they need some more time to solve to get the experience right before unleashing it on the public. That aside, the attendees that did play, were having a bunch of fun.
Update
Star Wars Kinect on display last night was the same build from E3 earlier this year.
Those non-gaming attendees were treated to a variety of other entertainment during the closing party. Go-Karts in the underground car park, comedy and music performances in the main arena and an array of sporting events on the show floor.
