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I’ll admit that, between Forza Horizon and Forza Motorsport, I’m more of a Horizon player. I’m interested in driving and crashing beautiful cars in exotic locations, and occasionally entering a low-stakes race, rather than perfecting my times on professional tracks with top-tier equipment. Despite this predilection, I’ve had a lot of fun tinkering around in the first few hours of Forza Motorsport’s serious, car-obsessed world.

I played a near-final version of the new Builders Cup Intro Series, which features three tracks and three cars — a 2019 Subaru STI S209, 2018 Honda Civic Type R, and 2018 Ford Mustang GT. On top of the actual races, the Builders Cup career mode includes a robust vehicle-customization system and the Challenge the Grid betting module. Developers at Turn 10 Studios have discussed this section of the game at length, but the preview marks the first public playtest of these roads, cars and systems.

Put simply, they feel fantastic.

Turn 10 knows how to build a smooth, responsive racing game with dynamic vehicles and tracks. Forza Motorsport is the ultimate showcase of these skills. Each car in the intro series handles differently, but none of them feel unwieldy. The Ford can’t cut corners as sharply as the Subaru or Civic, but it’s a powerhouse on the straightaway; the Civic is more floaty than the Subaru; the Subaru can handle quick braking better than the other two. These unique features are baked into each vehicle, but the customization screen also allows for fine adjustments that truly affect the way they drive.

The beginning of Forza Motorsport is inviting in numerous ways. It offers a difficulty slider, three modes of play, a bounty of training and real-time assist options, and a rewind button (my absolute favorite feature). In Driving Assists, I turned the Global Presets down to light, set the Suggested Line on for braking only, and I kept ABS on, with automatic shifting. This configuration helped me feel in control on the tracks, and the customization made me comfortable experimenting with new angles and turn speeds in practice laps.

This is also where the rewind button became my best friend. If you’re new to Forza, rewind might seem like a silly feature for a game that takes racing so seriously, but it’s absolutely necessary for the pacing of practice rounds specifically. Rewind allows racers to mess up and quickly reset without leaving the track, and it encourages players to try, try again. It encourages play, and it’s a lovely feature — one you can turn off at any time, if you think gaming should be pure punishment.

One of the main reasons Forza Motorsport feels so great is its framerate. Motorsport runs at 60 fps on all platforms, including Xbox Series S, and I didn’t notice any dropped frames during my playthrough on that console. This is vital for a racing sim, but feels especially notable when many AAA games today are either locked at 30 fps or fail to hit 60 fps on Series S. Microsoft requires feature parity between the Xbox Series X — the most technically powerful console on the market — and the Series S, Microsoft’s less powerful, cheaper and most popular option this generation. In the case of games like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Redfall and Starfield, developers have prioritized high resolutions in big, dense worlds over framerate, often to the detriment of combat and animations on the cheaper console.

Responsiveness is paramount in a racing game, and Turn 10 clearly knows this. The studio prioritized the proper things in order to hit 1080p and 60 fps on Xbox Series S, and the result is a game that looks pretty, but plays beautifully. Ray-traced global illumination and dynamic lighting make the cars and roads sparkle, and the environments along the tracks are busy without being distracting. So far, Forza Motorsport offers a strangely serene, high-octane experience, and I’m eager to dive into the full game.

There was drama recently over some features that won’t be in Forza Motorsport at launch, namely spectator mode, AI racing in featured multiplayer, and splitscreen — and that last one is a sensitive topic for Xbox owners. In August, Baldur’s Gate III creator Larian Studios had to delay the game’s Xbox versions because they couldn’t make splitscreen work on Series S, despite it running fine on Series X. Larian eventually worked out a deal with Microsoft and it plans to release Baldur’s Gate III on Series S without the feature later this year, but Xbox players still remember that sting.

After playing Forza Motorsport‘s Builders Cup intro series, I’m finding it hard to be concerned about the missing features. Turn10 is crafting a solid racing sim that nails the basics of responsiveness, customization and accessibility. It’s a clean, polished foundation for years of DLC to come, and there’s already plenty to mess around with in the game’s first hours.

Forza Motorsport is made to be replayed. After 18 years and seven installments, 2023’s Motorsport is the final game that Turn 10 plans to release in the series, and it’ll serve as the foundation of a live-service system. The goal is for Motorsport to be a hub for regular content drops (new maps, vehicles and challenges) over the coming years, with social and sharing features built into the experience. It makes a lot of sense for the franchise.

In the game’s introductory stages, Motorsport strikes a compelling balance between customization and complexity, making each track bingeable off the bat. The game’s forgiveness stems from its malleability; nearly every setting is customizable, from vehicle upgrades, to AI difficulty, accessibility options and actual driving mechanics. This means that, when something goes wrong during a race, it doesn’t feel like the game’s fault. Forza Motorsport offers a true, repeatable test of player skill. Plus, it’s really pretty, even on Xbox Series S.

Forza Motorsport is scheduled to hit Xbox Series X/S and PC on October 10.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/forza-motorsport-preview-a-warm-welcome-for-casual-racing-fans-160010843.html?src=rss 

I’m fully aware that spending $650 on a self-cleaning litter box is ridiculous, especially when low-tech competitors (aka plastic boxes) cost $20. I’m not the sort of person who would’ve even entertained the thought (the economy and all) until James the cat entered my life. Now I’m glad I made the leap to Smarty Pear Leo’s Loo Too litter box.

Before James, it was just me and my calico BFF Cinnamon, and we were fine with traditional litter boxes. “Let them have their spinning motors and smartphone apps,” I’d grumble while scooping litter. Cleaning up after one cat is no big deal, but things change when a second or third feisty feline enters the mix. One day, in a lapse of sanity, I opened my home to a second cat, James, the aforementioned black-and-white terror.

(By the way, if you’re thinking, “Who names a cat James?” I certainly didn’t. It’s a long story, but the foster assured me that the second-most renowned cat psychic in the state had met one-on-one with James and he told her it was his preferred name, or telekinetically meowed it at her or something.)

Now James is a growing boy. He has literally doubled in size in just a few months, dwarfing poor Cinnamon. He eats like a racehorse and poops like one, too. I couldn’t keep up and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’d scoop the three household litter boxes (one for each cat plus an extra, Jackson-Galaxy style) seemingly every few hours, only to find more “presents” waiting for me a few minutes later. I couldn’t tell who was using which litter box (important because Cinnamon is susceptible to UTIs.) The house smelled; I was at my wit’s end.

So I went looking at so-called smart litter boxes. They all seemed similar feature-wise, but the Loo Too hooked me due to its pleasing design and companion app. The latter lets me know when a cat uses the litter box and distinguishes each feline by weight. I know exactly when Cinnamon uses it, sparing me the anxiety of wondering if she’s experiencing a UTI flare-up.

As for the litter box itself, it’s a reliable self-cleaning marvel. It’s pretty quiet and the waste drawer takes a month to fill up, after which it requires manual disposal. A whole month! I was scooping multiple times a day before I got this. The setup was simple enough and it ships fully built. Once I set it up and powered it on, it was only a few minutes before James (of course) did his dirty business. Cinnamon followed suit later that night.

Now it’s their preferred litter box and my remaining boxes are near-empty when I go to scoop. The Loo Too automatically separates litter from waste and waits a few minutes before engaging the motor, giving the cat some time to exit the vicinity. It not only cleans the litter, depositing waste in a detachable lower box, but it boasts fancy UV technology to clean itself. I’m no scientist and so I can’t speak to the efficacy of these UV rays, but I can say that this thing never, ever smells. The app lets you set the cleaning schedule and make a whole lot of other adjustments. It also integrates with Alexa and other assistants, but asking a speaker to clean poop seems beneath our AI overlords.

There are some downsides, of course. The power cord is cat-proof, but it’s also extremely short — only two or three feet. Most people put litter boxes out of the way, to mitigate odors and messes. I put the Loo Too in my room, but it was far from any outlet, so I had to buy an extension cord and electrical tape to run the cord around the closet, along the wall and finally to a surge protector. There’s also the matter of cost. This thing is $650, so it’s like the Apple Vision Pro of litter boxes. Even though I love it, that’s pretty steep. It’s worth it to me, though, because it saves me plenty of time and I get data regarding the bathroom habits of my precious mouse mutilators.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/what-we-bought-the-self-emptying-litter-box-thatll-also-empty-your-bank-account-140022098.html?src=rss