Hi there guys, Andy Tudor here once again from Slightly Mad Studios. I hope everyone had a great holiday and New Year! Normally the holidays are a welcome time to relax with friends and family, eat turkey, celebrate over a couple of drinks, and watch some movies but there’s no rest for the wicked unfortunately as we were hard at work getting Project CARS ready for launch in just a few short months!

Having made the decision to get players like yourselves involved in the creation of the game right from day one, you’re finally going to get your hands on what we believe is truly the most technically-advanced, beautiful, intense, and authentic racing game there’s ever been! YOU’ve tested it, YOU’ve guided its direction telling us what features, cars, tracks and much more to put in, and ultimately YOU’ve been approving it at every step of the way so that it’s truly the racing game of your dreams.

For those wondering still why they should get Project CARS, here’s a quick rundown of what to expect…

• It’s got a huge variety of motorsports on offer. Our team are based in over 18 different countries so cars and car culture all mean something different to us all. For me, it’s growing up in the 80s with the Formula 1 days of Nigel Mansell and Ayrton Senna. For others it’s modern-day NASCAR, the German Touring scene, or European Endurance racing. So with Project CARS we wanted to ensure the cars in the game represented truly global motorsports with each of their rules and formats intact - we hope there’s something for everyone here
  
• Project CARS has the largest track roster of any recent racing game: locations from all around the world from Australia to Dubai to Belgium, Japan, US West Coast, and the UK we’ve packed in over 250 miles of tarmac - the equivalent of driving from Times Square, New York to The White House in Washington
  
• We’re all racing fans at Slightly Mad Studios and we’ve played many many racing games throughout our professional careers and private lives. Equally, the world we live in nowadays distracts us more than ever with other things to do. How many times have we sat on the couch watching television whilst also scrolling through our phones or browsing the web? As such, we wanted to give players of all ages, lifestyles, and experience a way to play Project CARS career mode at your own pace. As such, for a start all cars and tracks are unlocked from day one - no need to grind endlessly to access them any more. Secondly, you can start wherever you want! If you’ve played a football or basketball game recently this should feel right at home to you - you can jump straight into the equivalent of a Premiership club without starting down in the lower divisions if you want. Where’s the progression you say then?! Don’t worry - there’s plenty of things to unlock, earn, and receive in the form of Accolades, Historic Goals, Endorsements, Invitations, Contract Offers, and of course - PlayStation Trophies ;) So if you want to start at the bottom in Karting and work your way up to the Le Mans 24 Hour then you can do that! If you instead want to jump into some fast-paced Formula championship to win the title repeatedly you can do that also! The choice is yours and we can’t wait to see the paths you take!
  
• Once you’ve got some confidence in Career or Solo play, you’ll want to head online and test your mettle against others! We’ve listened to how you like to play and we’ve put in a few key features that we think will really help get you into games fast and with the right people. For a start you can make Public games where anyone can join and these use a countdown in the lobby to ensure no one single driver has dominant control. Alternatively you can make Friends Only games where just you and your friends can play. Here, one person is the Host so you can decide amongst yourselves when the race starts without the pressure of a countdown timer. Finally, you can make a game Invitation Only. Want to run a competition and invite the winners into a special race? You can do that! And you can set every session up exactly how you want - with AI filling in the blank spaces or not, with pre-race sessions like Qualifying or Warmups or Practice, and at any time of day and any weather condition. Got a friend that’s running late? You can even start a pre-race session and they can join in whenever they come online! You’ve really helped us understand throughout making Project CARS how you like play racing games online so we hope these features (and more!) make for a great experience
  
• Talking about weather and time of day there quickly - we’ve also included pit stops. Since both are completely dynamic (it can start raining at any time and you can start racing as the sun rises and finish it as it sets!) it was important for us to include pit stops so that you can adapt to the ever-changing conditions - change your tires to slicks or fix damage (yes, we’ve got full damage on all our cars!) - and also fully replicate endurance events and refuel your car. You can even save Pit Strategies for various scenarios or events, as well as create Tuning Setups for different locations or groups of location
  
• The Driver Network is our commitment to continuing our collaborative work with our community. You all helped make Project CARS and through the Driver Network you can share your proudest moments with photos and replays via the Share button, play asynchronously against each other in Time Trial mode complete with downloadable Driver Network Ghosts, and even compete in regularly-scheduled Community Events - sometimes even for real-world prizes! We’ll be collating all the cool moments you create on our YouTube, Facebook, and Flickr accounts so go check them out - we’ve already started!
  
• Lastly but by no means least, we’ve ensured that Project CARS is accessible, customisable, and tailored to each and everyone’s comfort and skill level with a huge amount of personalisation options: Project CARS supports a number of Thrustmaster wheels on PlayStation 4 as well as Remote Play. You can dial the handling to anything from a complete sim experience to something more casual. You can completely adjust the visual aesthetic of the game, toggling such things as camera shake at high speed, onscreen guides, HUD item positioning, sun flare and much much more. With Project CARS you’ll truly be able to make it your own
  

But enough of me talking - check out our new trailer below to see what gamers like yourselves have been making over the last few years and why we’re all excited here for you to get your hands on it…

Andy

Here are the games I'm most looking forward to in 2015...

Did I miss one? Shout it out below!

Err, Andy, what about Bioshock Infinite or Metro: Last Light, or Fire Emblem or Legend Of Zelda: Wind Waker HD.

Well you're absolutely right, those games are great too. And similarly there are some like Super Mario 3D World and Device 6 that I just haven't got around to unfortunately, and some like Tekken Tag Tournament 2 that technically came out last year but I still keep playing to this day. Either way though, 2013 has proven that there's been no slowdown in the number of great games being released regardless of the anticipation around the release of the next-generation consoles, and that mobile and indie games continue to innovate with both beautiful art styles and unique gameplay.

Roll on gaming in 2014!

UNBOXING
Similar to the delightful unboxing experience of an Apple product, unboxing the Xbox One was a joy also... everything on both the packaging and hardware either a gloss or matte black, a large vivid photo, or a subtle Windows 8-style icon and all together these work in perfect harmony (more so than Windows 8 or the Surface) to create an elegant, and premium whole.

HARDWARE
Whilst there are comparison images of the console size online, stick it next to your amplifier, Sky box, PS3, and telly and the Xbox One not only looks perfectly in proportion but the square form factor allows it to sit pleasantly alongside your other living room boxes.

A minor concern would be that the diagonal slants on the top are going to be a dust haven but that's all ;-)

On the back it has the usual range of ports (minus any archaic display options like Component Out) and a HDMI In. Use this to plug your Sky box or your Xbox 360 into for a seamless experience (we'll get to that later).

The Kinect 2.0 is quite chunky and some may find it difficult to sit on top of their slimline TV but the new controller on the other hand looks way more streamlined (despite being around the same size).

SETUP
Before you get your Xbox One you should probably detach your old consoles and rip up your old cables. If, like me, you've owned your Xbox 360 for over six years then this may take a while(!) and considering the HDMI-only connections you may want to re-wire your setup so it's ready for the next six years ;-)

Once this is done, the actual process of setting the console up was super-simple... There was an initial patch to download and install (took around 5 mins) and then a tutorial of sorts to introduce you to the new interface (which is extremely similar to Windows 8 if you've used that).

There was no need to 'recover my Gamertag' like on the Xbox 360, and my entire profile was present and correct immediately (friends list, achievements, avatar etc..)

MULTIPLE APPS
So I can't stress how good it is plugging your TV into the HDMI In port of the Xbox One. By simply saying "Xbox Watch TV" you can instantly switch to watching television as if it were an app. And by switching I mean Alt-Tabbing like on a PC since you can now have multiple simultaneous items running that can be swapped between freely or even put together on the same screen (known as 'snapping').

So even after a week of living with this seamless integration, it's still a joy to be able to simply say "Go to Call Of Duty" or "Go to Netflix" or "Watch TV" and whatever you were doing gets suspended and the console switches to the new thing immediately with no delay. Once you're done, simply switch back to whatever you were doing and it's where you left off.

And being able to snap multiple items on the same screen is fantastic. How about watching TV and seeing your Friend Activity on the right-hand side so you can wait for a friend to get to a certain point in a game before jumping in with them? Or playing a game with a website FAQ on the right-hand side to help you through a tough section? Or play a game whilst your other half watches a film? THIS IS WHAT MAKES XBOX ONE A GAME CHANGER.

TALKING TO YOUR CONSOLE
Who wants to talk to their devices, right? Siri gets it wrong a lot of the time so how would Kinect be any better? Well it just is. Interface design should be about providing the clearest and most ergonomic road to accessing features and Kinect 2.0 is just that. To switch between the apps above I would have to do this via the gamepad...

1. Press the Xbox One Guide button
   
2. Wait for the One Guide to appear
   
3. Tap down to access my recently-used apps
   
4. Tap multiple times more if the app I was after wasn't in my recently-used list
   
5. Press the A button to open it
   
6. Wait for the app to open

Or, I could just say four words using my voice and whatever I'm doing gets Alt-Tabbed to the new thing. Now I don't particularly have an accent I don't think so am maybe fairing better than others in it's success rate but so far it's delivering on what it was designed to do.

MISCELLANEOUS
In no particular order - here were some other items that caught my attention...

Upload Studio - Whenever you think you did something cool in a game you can say "Xbox Record That!" and it'll record the last 30 seconds of what you were doing. You can then use Upload Studio to trim it, and add other 'broadcast/commentary' options to it and then save it to your SkyDrive.

SkyDrive - I had this already from Windows 8 but SkyDrive is your cloud-based storage for all your Microsoft things. Get it, it's free, and it means you can access your Xbox One user-generated content on your PC (and then it can go anywhere)

Achievements - Nice to see the Achievement system got a bit of an improvement... it now orders your achievements in the order of how close you are to completing them and there are new achievement-like things to strive for in the form of time-based Challenges. There are even achievements for using apps!

Blu-Ray - Finally! As with other apps like Xbox Music, Xbox Video, YouTube, simply install the Blu-Ray Player and you can sit and enjoy your collection

So on to the games, and whilst I don't think it appropriate to comment on the merits and downfalls of each game individually I will say the following in general...

I wasn't wow'ed by any one particular game's visuals. Nothing I've seen so far screams "This is the next gen!". Some of that will be down to being spoiled by PC gaming, and some of it is down to the jump between current-gen and next-gen not being quite as clear cut as it was going from 2D to 3D. We've enjoyed HD gaming for a while now, so only the eagle-eyed would spot the increased draw distance on a terrain, or the increased number of particles onscreen, or the slighlty-higher resolution of textures. Once exclusives and next-gen-only titles like Titanfall, The Division, and Metal Gear Solid V start coming out that's when the increase in graphical fidelity will become apparent.

Definitely maybe!

• The seamless integration between TV, games, and apps is worth it alone since it changes the way you interact with your TV. You'll never go back once you've experienced it.
  
• It's your Xbox 360, streamlined. Everything you love about your existing console is there and has been given a lick of paint and is twice as fast to access (especially via voice or SmartGlass).
• The games are solid. Even if they don't quite hit your preconceived expectations of what 'next-gen gaming' should look like, the launch lineup is strong with two great shooters, two great racing games, a number of sports titles, a number of action or adventure games, and some stuff for the kids

But depending on your finances and your preference for some of the launch titles of course you may want to wait a few months for some of the above titles to become available. Especially since there are some bits that could either do with being improved or are missing currently (eg.. live streaming, improved media centre functionality, beacons).

For me though, the future starts now.

Here's a list of stories and things I'd like to see from future Marvel movies...

Iron Man vs Hulk!

Hulkbuster armour, a friendship we saw budding in the Avengers movie turned sour somehow... let's SMASH STUFF!

Civil War!

A devastating superhero-caused disaster forces the Government to call for all superheroes to register and reveal their secret identities.

Captain America is on one side, Tony Stark is on the other. Brings back all the dislike for each other we saw initially in the Avengers movie.

Iron Skull!

Red Skull returns and causes chaos in a Tesseract-powered Iron Man suit!

Doom vs Stark!

The two most famous men in armour fighting each other - game on!

Secret Invasion!

An alien race called the Skrulls have been secretly disguising themselves as our favorite heroes. Who is real? Who is Skrull?!

Ultron!

The best and most natural way to introduce Ultron in the movies would be to evolve the Jarvis AI we saw at the end of Iron Man 3 into this robotic killing machine.

The Vision!

Obviously to be introduced after the first Ant-Man movie, this would tell the story of Hank Pym's creation of the Vision, likely using some Stark AI technology like we've seen in Jarvis.

M.O.D.O.K.

Continuing AIM's penchant for fiddling with human biology, the next logical step would be to introduce M.O.D.O.K.

Despite his stupid appearance, he could find a place in the 'magical' Phase 3 with Dr Strange and Captain Marvel.

Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet!

The Infinity Gauntlet was in the first Thor movie. There's a reason... it's awesome.

Destroyer Armor!

Iron Man goes to Thor's world and gets his armor imbued with Asgardian technology! Now, go fight something, Tony!

Tony... in... space!

Let's just hope there's a cameo in the upcoming movie!

Before the next generation arrives, there's a ton of new games to play in 2013.

Here's my top picks for each month until Xmas...

Here's the list of games I'm looking forward to at E3 this year...

Since I reached level cap in Star Trek Online and attained the various Omega/MACO gear and highest Tiers of Romulan and Borg reputation my interest in the game faded - there just wasn't enough new stuff to keep me coming back to the game.

With the release of The Legacy Of Romulus though, that has all changed! Here's a very quick run-down therefore of the things I'm up to in the game now...