http://www.xbox360only.nl/screenshot.php?image=ala...

Wow, what interesting tires.

I've seen you being pretty hard on this one before too--but I honestly think that the overall look and direction is great. Did you see that Core 2 Quad demo they ran a while back?

What did I say negative about it before that was unfair?

Anyhow, yeah I saw the Kentsfield demo. AW has some neat stuff going on, but the physics were not extremely exciting after seeing an X1600 in a booth last year running many, many more interactive eliments. And while I am sure the game will hum right along with 2 cores, what they demoed on 4 cores at 3GHz+ was not impressive based on the potential in the box. It was overkill and didn't seem impressive considering a sub $150 GPU has already demonstrated far more. (note: although I think multi-CPU will take the biggest chunk of realestate in terms of developer support for physics in games... not dissing the CPUs, only that the demostration didn't wow me much).

Graphically the game can look very good, but the 2005 media looks much better than the recent shots. It seems to me as a console title--or trying to get the game done sooner than later--they are cutting elements down.

Looking at the below shot, can you honestly tell me that the nearly octogonal shaped tire doesn't stick out like a soar thumb and seem quite out of place for a next gen title of any calibur, let alone an Exclusive that many have praised for its graphics?

http://www.xbox360only.nl/screenshot.php?image=ala...

PR shot issues aside (we already know no one at MS can take a good PR shot), I find it kind of shocking a top tier game has tires where I can count the polygons on the tire :|

The huge worlds and day/night cycles and insta-storms are all very, very cool. Adding a few... or hundred... polygons to the squarish tire isn't much in my book. The problem though is they are probably using stencil shadows for some of the dynamic shadows and high poly counts kill performance ala D3.

Anyhow, it is an eyesore and it was the first screenshot I loaded. Many games get the Console beatdown/down quality treatment. Even if it does it does have some nice technology and has a nice dev behind it. What was I just saying, oh, yeah... square tires. Hurt eyes. Environments pretty. Good story? Very likely. Night Night ;) As in working all day has me too tired to even make sense!