What’s amazing about the immediate response is that to be involved in the C.A.R.S. project costs money. People are paying up front not to buy a completed product but to be part of the development of a game which isn’t due to be completed until Autumn 2012. For thousands, upon thousands of sim racing fans C.A.R.S. represents a unique opportunity to be involved in and help fund a multi-million pound racing game for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

There are 5 levels of C.A.R.S. project membership available from the cheapest Junior level, costing just €10 to the top-tier senior manager level boasting an eye-watering €25,000 price tag.

All of the membership levels grant you access to the C.A.R.S. forum which is the main place for all the development updates and feedback/suggestions. Already it’s a thriving hub of activity. Members also get a share of the any profits from the game, depending on their level and how much cash the game makes.

Personally, I’ve signed up to be a team member costing €25. This means I can:

• Create new project-specific forum threads
• Read meeting minutes
• Play weekly builds

There are additional project specific perks associated with each level of membership which are outlined here. As a team member I get exclusive cars and an in-game opponent named after me. I’m also considering upgrading my membership to Senior so that I can get exclusive tracks and attend development team track days.

The latest weekly build which became available late on Friday afternoon included a raft of updates to the initial launch build. The 2 screenshots above were captured from this build running on my PC. Heading the list was the ability to race against up to 15 other AI opponents and a test track. Now, this isn’t your boring run of the mill test track either. No parked aircraft or runway in sight, instead you get a beautiful mesh of interconnected roads to test every aspect of a car’s handling and performance.

If you fancy testing your driving skills around this fantastic test track and being involved in the development of what could be the definitive driving simulator with tons of other racing fans, including Ben Collins (ex-Top Gear Stig) then sign up now.

Be part of the C.A.R.S. development now on the World of Mass Development website.

The Legend of Zelda:

Nintendo have announced that The Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary Symphony will be coming to the HMV Hammersmith Apollo in London on the 25th October 2011. Tickets will go on sale at 16:00 BST on the 8th Aug 2011 on the Zelda Symphony and Ticketmaster websites and cost £33.75 each. The concert will feature a 70-piece orchestra and choir performing some classic music tracks from The Legend of Zelda games.

Zelda Symphony - Hopefully minus Navi

Minecraft:

The first Mincecraft convention, called Minecon, will take place in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay hotel on the 18th-19th Nov 2011. Convention tickets along with the website to buy them from will go on sale next week. We should also get some more information about what’s going to actually take place during the convention at the same time. (via PC Gamer)

Forza Motorsport 4:

Check out this video showing how Turn 10 Studios created the beautiful Bernese Alps track in their upcoming Forza Motorsport 4 game. This game is really, really pretty. Fortunately the driving experience is spot on too as I got to play around with Forza Motorsport 4 back at E3 2011. Enjoy the video.

I delved straight into the multi level demo. What struck me right from the outset was how smooth and pretty the game was. The first level I played, which was a series of interconnecting underground tunnels, was packed full of gorgeous textures with innumerable crates, pipes and other items adorning the walls and floors. The inevitable downside of this clutter were numerous hiding places for the enemy (mutants).

Ooops! I made him explode. My bad.

As far as weapons are concerned, there are loads of them in the game but I only had time to play around with a small selection. The combat shotgun is especially awesome – this is an id game after all – and great for blowing the heads off mutants. The assault rifle is a good basic weapon and you have the authority rifle with its powerful zoom when you need something with a bit more range. I did take a shine to the striker crossbow with its electrified bolts which were brilliant for taking out whole groups of enemies in one shot. The new wingstick weapon, the triple-bladed boomerang of death, did make short work of killing mutants, but still wasn’t as fun to use as the shotgun or crossbow.

The first demo

I had actually seen the game before at last year’s Eurogamer Expo, where a live demo was played in front of an enthusiastic and appreciative audience. After watching the demo, I was more than a little disappointed. I thought the game looked rubbish. The graphics were not impressive as they looked very rough and incomplete. The mutant AI was almost non-existent and the driving sections felt like they were an afterthought. At least the developers had over a year to sort it all out before release.

My money's on the guys with the shield

To make the whole act of killing as entertaining as possible, your character can carry multiple guns, ammo types and engineering items like a super strong pack mule. The main screen was pleasingly clear of any clutter with only information about the currently equipped weapons and ammo supplies being permanently visible. Simple, informative and subtle,

Remote controlled fun

My favourite thing in the demo was the remote-controlled car bomb. I loved driving it around levels whilst being safely tucked away in some hiding spot. I drove it through little holes and down tunnels blowing up hidden generators to unlock power-sealed doors.

You couldn’t drive it too far though as you run out of signal strength eventually. One great feature is watching the mutants react when you drive up to them. Sometimes they’d spot my car and greet it with a hail of bullets, which required some creative on my part driving to keep the bomb intact. Then you would reach a point where the mutants stop shooting and start running and/or diving to get away.

The car packs a hefty amount of explosives too, producing some very impressive explosions. Fortunately, there were plenty of opportunities for me sneak up on enemies in my tiny car of death throughout the level. The sentry bots (think spider robots from Minority Report) were also fun to watch as they would wander off and kill anything that moved. They would even seek out any mutants who were hiding by climbing over, under or going around their cover. I was really glad they were on my side.

This is not Burnout

The driving levels were easily the most disappointing aspect of the whole demo. They felt not only unnecessary but also very crude in comparison to fully fledged racing games.

If only the driving was this exciting

Summary

RAGE is a seriously fun FPS that has improved significantly since first seeing it last year. Whilst the mentally-retarded mutant AI and the superfluous driving sections do their best to dampen your enjoyment, they can’t keep what is a massively enjoyable shooter down. Playing with the engineering items alone (remote-controlled car bomb, sentry bots) would have been enough to keep me happy. I thoroughly recommend checking this game out when it’s released.

RAGE is scheduled for release on the 7th Oct 2011 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

Read about Paul’s thoughts on victory laps, tyre degradation, racing against real F1 drivers in the game and having a virtual race control with other people acting as race stewards.

Lets start off with a few quick questions.

Paul Jeal: Ok.

Victory lap?

PJ: We have a few corners, but not a whole lap.

Podium ceremony?

PJ: Podium no. Parc fermé yes.

Pressure sensitivity for controller buttons?

PJ: Yeah, we’ve put a lot of work into controller support handling, input lag and various bit and pieces so that’s improved from last time.

With the tyre degradation in the game, are we going to see lots of marbles [bit of tyre] around the circuits?

PJ: That’s something we’ve had to dial down for this event today. It wasn’t until Turkey and we saw the state of turn 8 and thought, wow we really need to ramp it up this year. But then we put it on a bit too much and it was kinda like all over the place so we’ve dialled it down a little bit. But it will be fine tuned and it will be more visually there than last time.

Is it easier to burn out your wet tyres than in F1 2010?

PJ: Absolutely. A lot of focus has gone into tyres and not just in terms of options and primes, shelf-life and we talked about at E3 2011 the golden laps on the options and the fast drop off. With the primes you have to heat them up and then they will slowly go off. But if you get caught on the wrong tires in the wrong conditions this year you’re really going to know about it. Tip-toeing around when you’re on slicks in the wet. It will be much easier to overheat tyres.

Will you be able to heat your tyres and breaks?

PJ: Yes, that’s something we are looking at. The simulation system is all there. By rewriting the tyre model and the suspension model we are now able to have oversteer and understeer you can catch. You can attack curbs this year, you can feel the weight distribution of breaking through the corners. That’s also had an impact on the differences between the teams. Last year we had some good differences in handling characteristics. You were able easily to outperform in a Lotus than you would be normally because we had to do a couple of things to the tires just to be able to get over some of the curbs. But this year, now that we have the true suspension, really you could be 2 gears lower in a HRT through a corner than you would be in a Red Bull.

Have you made any changes to the TV cockpit cam?

PJ: We have tweaked the camera positions slightly. There are numerous requests on the forums about putting it [T-Cam] to the left hand side from where they would be in real life. We did some tests on that and I actually find it harder to race and we also did a little bit of focus testing too. The cockpit camera has changed a lot as people found it a little bit too hard last year. It was based on what they [F1 drivers] have in real life. I don’t know how they drive with that type of view, but it’s raised and a lot more usable this year.

Have you thought about having a virtual race control, similar to the way that Microsoft Flight Simulator X has people acting as virtual air traffic controllers in the game? You could have people voting for who they’d like to be the virtual stewards for races.

PJ: We did look at that very, very early on. Some areas that we’ve got in this year like spectate, where you can jump aboard any car and find out what’s going on or if you’ve crashed out of session or joined one late. You’ve also got the race director where you can watch live timing information screen. You’ve also got a lot more information on fastest laps, type and state of tyres, fuel depletion rates. So I think there is a lot of mileage in that, probably too much for us to do for F1 2011.

I think there is a lot of stuff in terms of data comparison and how’s it’s perceived. Whether it’s fun enough to do a whole mode where you are the race engineer, I’m not so sure. The more we meet with engineers and strategists the more they expose what they do in real life. I think that will start coming to the fore when you’ve got a lot to do, the strategy elements becomes a much more difficult call. Historically its been about if you can stay out longer and preserve your tyres, then you do a couple of fastest laps you leap frog someone in the pits. That’s not the way it works this year. This year is if you pit early enough and you do a couple of golden laps in free air you’re going to leapfrog the guy in front. It’s the undertake. That’s something we are trying to get into the game now.

Are you planning to do any more events where you race F1 drivers in the game?

PJ: Yeah, we did a few events last year where Anthony [Davidson] raced a few people or at Gamescom where [Adrian] Sutil came and raced. I bumped into him [Sutil] in the press room when he was behind me for a 1.5 laps and Steve [Hood, chief game designer of F1 2010/11] managed to beat him and all of a sudden it was well you only beat me because you had a better car in a better grid position. Typical macho man things. [Laughs]

I think it’s fascinating to watch those guys even just to see them do time trial on their own and when you see Anthony drive round Monaco and how precise he is on the curbs and how close he is to the barriers and how fast he is the through the swimming pool section it defies belief really. You learn a lot from watching him.

Are you going to record an F1 driver playing the game and then release that to the community?

PJ: Yes, well in terms of releasing to the community that is the difficult part. There are some licensing issues where you would have to show a certain spread of cars to not show favouritism. But we would love in the game at some point to do an unlockable, or when you go to a new track you see a flying driver lap because I think it would be invaluable to the player. I think there are some really, really cool ideas that we’ve got for how you could watch your flying lap back and perhaps get some pointers. But that’s one that’s just at the idea stage really and something that we are looking to prototype in future titles. You look at the way Martin Brundle analyses the pole lap, that type of thing. That would be also useful for going back to the garage and analysing the telemetry. Wouldn’t it be good to upload a lap and then all of a sudden you get some feedback from the game that says, broke late into turn 1, wide in turn 3? You’re going to learn a lot more from that. That’s some of the ideas we have, I’m not quite sure how we are going to pull it off, certainly not for F1 2011. But that’s the kind of ambition we have.

What are the PC system specs like compared to F1 2011?

PJ: They still to be locked down yet but we’ve got our compliance guys doing it. If there’s any new hardware cards then we’ll have a look at them. I’d imagine it wouldn’t be a million miles away from F1 2010, but it might have bumped up a little bit.

Any impact of the banning of off throttle blown diffusers on the car models?

PJ: At the moment, no as our game is set specifically before the 2011 season. It’s quite funny actually, whenever teams get race wins they’re like, “Oh, can you update our stats?” Well, no we can’t. We know you’ve won this race but our game is set up before the season has started. That’s the way we go, but at the same time we try to get the accurate information so the DRS zones we are still fine tuning and as we get more tyre data we are able to fine tune that aspect too.

Any plans for a demo version?

PJ: At the moment, no. We would love to do a demo. I think the difficult thing is that you are really up against it with an annual series anyway. It’s not like in any way that we not want to do one. But what would you put on it? If you cut it down too much then that really doesn’t show people what the new features of the game are like, but if you put too much in then people want to dip their toes in it and not buy the game. So there are a lot of technical challenges with a demo, certainly pre-release.

Thanks for your time Paul.

Formula 1 2011 is due for release on the 23rd Sept 2011 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. PS Vita and 3DS versions are also in development.

I’ll be meeting the F1 2011 team again next week to get some hands-on time with the game. So if you’ve any questions you’d like me to ask then leave them in the comments.

What’s your history with F1 games?

PJ: My first job in the games industry was on Geoff Crammond’s Grand Prix 3. I was a quality assurance tester. I just remember walking into the studio for the first time and seeing all the guys on the steering wheels and thinking to myself, “man I’ve got to be involved in this.” I then worked at Pivotal Games on some shooters and as soon as I heard that Codemasters had got the F1 licence I thought I’ve got to get back in as I’ve been a massive fan of F1 since about the mid-80s. I thought I can do great things if I can get in there. Luckily enough I got the job and here I am.

To start off with Geoff Crammond, that’s pretty impressive.

PJ: I know, I know. For me that’s still the barometer in terms of driving experience and the consistency of laps. It was very, very different to any other racing game where they are all about winning and those all-out qualifying laps, where as in Geoff Crammond it’s all about reeling in the guy in front and you know you’re on a bit of a roll. That’s very much the feeling that we’ve got in F1 2011.

How closely did you work with the F1 drivers?

PJ: We work amazingly close actually. I’ve personally met them all, which is a dream come true, I have to say. We work more on a consultancy basis with test drivers Garry Paffett, McLaren test driver and Anthony Davidson, Mercedes test driver. Those guys, because they do a lot of simulator work anyway and with their engineers just to get a basic set up, they are naturally better placed to help us do the same thing and move our model forward. But I know that drivers like Bruno Senna, Adrian Sutil and Sébastien Buemi have all played F1 2010 and indeed a few of them used it to learn Korea. We are expecting all of them to buy it this year to learn India [laughs].

With DRS (Drag Reduction System) and KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems) the steering wheels are a lot more complicated this year. With the drivers themselves complaining about being too busy whilst driving, are players going to have too much to do as well?

PJ: I think so. I can talk from personal experience because in my first 6 months in multiplayer races I was getting used to the car handling and I was getting used to a new steering wheel as well. I was gaining on the guys in front and then about half way through the race I realised that I hadn’t used KERS, so I thought “man, I’m going to gain on them even more if I use KERS.” So the first time I tried to use it coming out of a corner I smashed it into the wall and my race was over.

It really is a case of that you have a lot to do now. It probably will take a period of 5,6 or 7 laps to get used to the car. Then you have a number of things at your disposal like DRS which has a massive impact on the stability of the car, so you can’t use it too early in a corner. KERS is obviously the turbo boost and it’s really and trial and error as to where the best places are to use it are unless obviously you’re going for an overtake or a defensive manoeuvre. Also there’s a lot more playing around with the fuel mixture this year. You can adjust the fuel mix up and down and see it in a digital readout and you may need to save fuel later on. You can also move the break balance around several times a lap if you wish, just like Michael Schumacher. But that’s a little bit of a step too far even for me and I’ve been hands on with the game for 7 or 8 months now!

How are you dealing with jump starts [i.e. a car moves before the 5 red start lights go out]?

PJ: We looked at race starts for probably the first 5 or 6 months of the game. We tried 3 or 4 different things and they weren’t quite right so we are not implementing a jump start monitoring for F1 2011. That’s very much the way we do development. We look at a particular feature and we think if we can do it justice. There’s almost like a stage 1, 2 and 3 delivery plans. Only if stage 1 is going to eventually get you to stage 2 or 3 do we go with it. If it’s a kind of stage 1 and you need to go back a re-write it then we put it back for future iterations. That’s what has happened with the race starts this year.

What approaches have you used with the competitor drivers as they were a little erratic at times in F1 2010?

PJ: Yeah, absolutely. We are totally re-writing the penalty system at the moment and also driving assists as well. You’ve got this initial period where all drivers are allowed to use driving assists and there aren’t any penalties for doing so, but as soon as you go over a certain driving length you then get weight penalties on the car. One of the criticisms, and rightly so, was the fastest ultimate lap you could do was with the driving aids on and the guys who had them all off felt pretty hard done by that.

This year, the ultimate lap will be done by someone without driving assists because it doesn’t carry any of those penalties. Now we are taking all that back into the feedback mechanism. It is really, really difficult. With the high speed impacts [incidents] within the sport itself they’ve got 3 stewards, and if you ask another 3 [stewards] they’ll give a different opinion on the incident, but I think last year maybe some of the time we were a little bit too strict in certain scenarios and not strict enough in others. That’s really an area we are looking to address this year.

F1 2010 was quite harsh on hot laps when you went slightly off the track and it penalised you. It was almost like Gran Turismo Grand Prix!

PJ: Absolutely. We were talking about that earlier [at E3] on in terms of time trial. Just two wheels off and sometimes it would penalise that lap. Another one, if you did it in the last sector on tracks like Montreal [Canada] you can get such an advantage by bypassing the chicane that it invalidates the next lap, so that’s massively frustrating. We are perhaps looking into making those laps kind of count but they would automatically go below a lap where was no gain from going off the track. Or just doing an incremental penalty so that lap still counts but maybe you lose two tenths for your wheels going off the track. Those are 2 areas that we are looking to prototype at the moment. I’m not sure which one will make it in, if either, but all the feedback that we get we do act upon and try to see if we can improve on it.

Presumably the 107% rule to qualify for the Sunday race is in?

PJ: Yeah, after the first race of the season we weren’t sure if we were going to need it and then obviously the HRT turned up [and failed to qualify for a race] and we were like, aw man. One of the guys asked me if all the cars were grey would you know the difference between them. Absolutely you would especially with the bottom tier 3 cars. I would probably know the difference between the rest as they have different handling traits which players will learn. But yeah, physically you’ll drive the nuts off an HRT (Hispania Racing F1 Team) and you’re still 6 seconds off the pace.

Do driver personalities influence their driving styles in F1 2011?

PJ: Yeah. Last year we took the AI behaviours from DIRT and from GRID. In slower series it works pretty well because the drivers are just making a key decision at any point in time. In F1 it doesn’t work as there is so much going on around you and because you are going so fast and things change so often. Now we’ve almost got an AI driver with 6 brains. One’s just looking at deploying KERS or DRS, the other one is thinking about overtaking, one about slipstreaming and one’s thinking about blocking the guy behind. All of that ties into so the driver knows where the best place is to position his car on the track.

We had driver personalities last year but we’ve moved on so drivers like Hamilton and Alonso look for smaller gaps on the track, smaller little spots, so you can really begin to notice them. In the latest build at the moment, it’s still the early stages, so they are all really, really fast and they are all super aggressive. They are always looking to deploy their KERS and to get through but we can refine that back now.

Will you be able to race against the real drivers using live GPS feeds from F1 races?

PJ: There is technology in development. Basically it takes the accurate GPS that’s coming in and in theory you should be able to take the place of another driver on the track. I think it could work quite well in the dry if it was totally consistent and you had your tyre model right. The obvious worry is that the F1 guys are so consistent and so fast that they just disappear off into the sunset. That wouldn’t be too fun. But as soon as you introduce variability like the weather. How wet is wet? How would you even be able to simulate it? Obviously if I crash into Alonso in my game and no one crashes into him in real life it blends between different algorithms. I think the concept of it is amazing but the execution is really, really difficult to get right.

There was a sort of solution that you could go through cars rather than crash into them.

PJ: Yeah, the latest one that I saw was that you would knock them off but then over the duration of the next 10 laps they would artificially speed them up to regain their true race position. I think there are areas that might make more sense, like downloading just the grid positions and I’ll do my story in the race and if I drove as Hamilton. That’s much more achievable but actually racing the guys as they appear in real life is massively challenging.

Who is your F1 2011 World Champion based on your AI?

[Laughs] With our AI, Sebastian Vettel is still doing exceedingly well, even in our game, I must admit.

So you haven’t run a full season to see how it turns out?

PJ: No, I’ve not run a full season yet. The AI guys are running them at the different tracks. All the guys are so aggressive at the moment; we need to dial that back a little. They’ve all kind of got the instincts of a Schumacher, Hamilton or Alonso. Never give up their position or they defend my position to the last. It’s difficult because not only do we have the driver personalities but we have the team tiers.

Red Bull is fundamentally the best car, although personally for my driving style it’s not my favourite. I prefer the Ferrari, which is a bit more tail happy and I’m able to control the car a bit more. Or a mid-range team such as a Lotus Renault, that’s a good all rounder. Almost like the Mario Kart style with no threes, but solid two’s all the way down. It’s a good car to get used to as well. So you’ve got the driver traits in addition to the car behaviours. But I think it’s the performance of the Red Bull that is having the biggest impact at the moment.

Thanks for your time Paul.

Formula 1 2011 is due for release on the 23rd Sept 2011 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. PS Vita and 3DS versions are also in development.

Get all the details about the Need For Speed Hot Pursuit demo which is available now on Xbox 360.

Need For Speed Hot Pursuit is released on the 19th Nov 2010 on Xbox 360, Wii, PC and PlayStation 3.

Episode One – The Intro

Alan Wake is an experience that wears its influences on its sleeve like a corsage that’s not only bright and eye catching, but that the wearer points to every five minutes and says, “Have you seen this?!” The first two words of the admittedly excellent voice work from Matthew Porretta are “Stephen King”, and the game continues with this level of referential subtlety for the next twelve hours or so.

Despite this minor gripe, Alan Wake delivers atmosphere in droves. From the off you’re treated to a fully realised and fleshed out world that is eerie in the extreme. The game certainly looks spectacular, though it’s worth noting that it looks markedly better during cut scenes than gameplay. Whilst this is not such a bad thing in most games, the sheer amount of cut scenes in the opening sections of Alan Wake casts a stark light *snigger* over the rest of the game and breaks from the immersion that it tries so hard to build.

Episode Two – The Tireless Narrator

Previously in Tom’s review of Alan Wake… Tom talked about the somewhat overzealous references littered throughout Alan Wake and implied that the visual quality of the cut scenes makes the rest of the game feel a bit cheap and unrealistic by comparison.

Alan Wake has been billed as a cinematic experience and it certainly follows through on this promise; from the episodic layout of the plot to the narration between major set pieces throughout the game. The game’s narrative style is novel to begin with, but quickly becomes tiresome as you begin to realise you’ve been watching the game about as much as you’ve played it. This certainly isn’t Metal Gear Solid IV (a 30 hour movie with interactive sections) but neither does it feel like you’re really getting your gaming fix from what is already a relatively short-lived title.

Alan Wake’s success rests on the gamers’ ability to allow themselves to become immersed and follow the carefully planned path the developers have laid out for them. This is a fine concept, but this carefully laid out path teeters on a knife edge. Ultimately, the fact that you’re playing a game means it’s often easy to step outside this path, breaking the immersion. Even trying to play as I thought the developers wanted me to, there were a few instances where I was pulled out of the experience with the jarring realisation that what I was experiencing was just a game.

Episode Three – A Micromachine in the Darkness

Previously in Tom’s review of Alan Wake… We talked about overusing cut scenes and how easily an immersive experience can be broken.

The driving sections of the Alan Wake were woefully misjudged and come as a jarring departure from the standard gameplay. Every time Alan sidles up to a vehicle you get that sinking feeling as you realise you’re going to have to trundle around in what feels like the offspring of a bumper car and a Micro Machine until you reach a bottleneck in the road: the game’s less than subtle way of drawing each driving section to a close. I can’t help but feel that the game could have been improved immensely by having another cut scene rather than forcing me to suffer through the primitive driving mechanics.

The combat of Alan Wake requires you to use various light emitting devises, such as a torch or flare, to strip away the darkness shrouding the zombie-like “Taken” in order to pump them full of lead until they fizzle into nothingness. This is an intriguing take on a mechanic that has been tried again and again; however the resulting gunplay is unfortunately functional rather than genuinely enjoyable.

For all its flaws, there are a few things that Alan Wake does very well indeed. As I’ve mentioned, the voice acting is superb. Not only does Matthew Porretta’s protagonist convey every emotion you’d expect from a man going through such a harrowing experience, but Alan Wake as the narrator evokes a satisfying blend of apathy, pretentiousness and arrogance. Whether this is intentional or otherwise, I thought it was a nice touch; after all, we’re listening to a man who is quite literally wrapped up in his own writing.

Episode four – A Fitting End

Previously in Tom’s review of Alan Wake… Yes alright I’ll stop this now, but you get my point. Every episode begins with a summary of what happened previously. Notably, this is skippable, but the annoyance is still there. It seems as if the game actually invites you to put down your controller at the end of every episode. This only adds to the overwhelming feeling that Alan Wake would have made a much more enjoyable TV show than it does a game.

For every enjoyable element of this game there are a handful of downright broken ones. Whilst the game’s premise is bold and engaging, it seems a shame that the developers haven’t managed to produce a more interesting end product. Despite its flaws however, Alan Wake remains worth a look, if only because the lack of a lengthy storyline means the game will end only shortly after your interest does.

Also see Tom’s review of the downloadable chapter Alan Wake: The Signal.

Screenshots:

Dead Space 2

Oooh, this was a beautifully gory game to play. This was my first taste of Dead Space, having missed out on playing the first game (Tikipod loves it). Dead Space 2 looks stunning and features totally disgusting looking aliens, who interestingly look much better with all their limbs blown off. I may have got a few looks from the people watching as I knocked an alien head around on the floor like a football and played with some amputated alien limbs for a while.

After being entertained by this alien anatomy play, probably for longer than is healthy, Dead Space 2 offered up a great mix of survival horror, violence, space, gore and beautiful graphics. I’ve been impressed by the Dead Space 2 trailers which show off other aspects to the game, like flying around outside in space. One to look out for when it’s released in Jan 2011.

Motorstorm: Apocalypse 3D

Motorstorm was one of the first games I played on my shiny new PlayStation 3 all the way back in 2007. After playing it to death, I’d largely ignored the Motorstorm franchise until I played this little beauty, in 3D of course. The best way to describe this game is imagine blending Burnout, Split Second: Velocity and the Fallout 3 universe. Eh viola, post-apocalyptic driving carnage.

Motorstorm: Apocalypse is all out action, pure and simple. Cars explode, buildings explode, cars and builds explode at the same time, people get splatted (in a nice way, with all their limbs intact, but with a hint of death) and the world looks like it is ending. It’s a Michael Bay wet dream. It is almost like someone at Evolution Studios started using the Michael Bayifier on their own games. Add in some seriously fast graphics and a bit of 3D and you’ve got quite a mix. I loved it. After playing this and GT5 3D, I kinda wanted a 3D TV. The only thing that worries me is how long I’d be able to play Motorstorm: Apocalypse, as I can see it getting hard to concentrate after a few hours of gametime. I’ve had enough of 3D films after about 90 mins and for most of those I’m not even concentrating (e.g. Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D film).

Tomorrow I’ll be talking about Halo: Reach and Killzone 3 3D.

Check out the sexy looking trailer, with lots and lots of car pr0n ;-)

Criterion Games are planning to release a Need For Speed Hot Pursuit demo on the 26th Oct 2010. More news about this demo when we get it.

Need For Speed Hot Pursuit is released on the 19th Nov 2010 on PC, Xbox 360, Wii and PlayStation 3.

Rather than just post a load of screenshots and/or a video from Formula 1 2010, I thought I’d share my experiences of Formula 1 games since I started gaming back in 1984, so you can see just how much they’ve changed and finally wrapping up with a look at Formula 1 2010.

Grand Prix Construction Set (1987):

This was the first Formula 1 game that I played on a home computer. I had played played Pole Position in the arcades a number of years before, but that wasn’t a Formula 1 game. Grand Prix Construction Set on the BBC Model B Microcomputer featured 18 Grand Prix tracks as well as a track editor, which when released in 1987, was a unique selling point. I spent many hours creating and driving my own tracks. All in all it was a very basic game, but in 1987, it was amazing.

Geoff Crammon’s Formula 1 Grand Prix (1992):

This game was a defining moment in the Formula 1 game genre. Geoff Crammond had almost single handedly created a masterpiece of a game, which for the first time recreated the sights, sounds and the world of Formula 1. You could drive round all the Formula 1 tracks featured in the 1991 season from a drivers point of view. Driving around Monaco was just a revelation of pure awesomeness! You simply weren’t used to that level of detail on and around the tracks. Everything looked pretty much how it did on TV. You could also choose from a selection of driving aids (automatic gears or braking) to help you drive the notoriously unforgiving Formula 1 cars. I remember the first time I turned off auto breaking. Yep, a huge crash soon followed as I careered into the back of one of the McLaren’s. Oooops! As the game wasn’t officially licensed from the FIA, you had to edit the drivers names yourself, but as the car designs and liveries were intact it was a minor chore updating the game to feel like you were racing real-life Formula 1 drivers.

I loved this game. I really did. My jaw dropped when I first saw Formula 1 Grand Prix running on an Amiga 500. At that time there was just nothing like it on any of the home computers. As it came on 4 disks, you had to be reasonably patient as it wasn’t the quickest to load, but it was huge amounts of fun to drive.

This game coupled with Stunt Car Racer proved that Geoff Crammmond was indeed a driving game genius. The only problem with Formula 1 Grand Prix was that it suffered from major frame rate issues. When there were a lot of cars on the screen (e.g. at the start) the game really struggled to cope and the frame rate dropped alarmingly. What made this situation even worse were the multi car pileups. Especially the ones with debris flying everywhere. This made the game a little difficult to play, but given how polished the rest of the game was, it was something I was prepared to forgive.

Formula 1 ’97:

In 1997 Bizarre Creations released Formula 1 ’97 on the original PlayStation. Tapping into the PlayStation’s graphical horsepower this game looked fantastic and included a previously largely overlooked feature, weather. You could now experience what it was like to drive in torrential rain with all the water spraying from behind each car. This really spiced up the racing, and certainly contributed to a few of my accidental crashes. I admit, it did spend a lot of time driving as Damon Hill making sure that Michael Schumacher’s car didn’t finish any of the races. Not a single one. I like to think of it as payback for when he took Damon Hill out in the 1994 Adelaide Grand Prix.

As far as the game was concerned, it did all the basics well and as I mentioned before it looked really good. However, as it was on a PlayStation it did feel like an arcade racer at times (like Sega’s Virtua racing), and a bit basic in terms of car configuration. F1 ’97 was more about getting in the car and driving than anything else (e.g. engine or aerodynamic tweaks).

I then dabbled with a few F1 games for many years, like Grand Prix 4 which is shockingly the last F1 game that Geoff Crammond has released and Formula 1 04 from Studio Liverpool on the PlayStation 2.

Formula 1 2010:

Which brings me right up to date and to Formula 1 2010. To see just how stunning this game looks, take a look at the launch trailer shown below.

In particular, I’m really impressed by the weather effects in the game. I know the developers – Codemasters – have been talking a lot about the weather effects and on this evidence I can see why. I can’t wait to drive around the Singapore track during a tropical rainstorm. That is going to be epic.

Certainly the game looks very authentic, with amazing levels of detail on both the cars and the tracks. Having walked around large parts of the Singapore Marina Bay street circuit, the Formula 1 2010 game really looks the part. You can see a comparison of a shot of turn 17 that I took in 2009 on the left against the Formula 1 2010 shot showing turn 20 on the right. Yeah, turn 17 is the corner where Nelson Piquet “crashed” his car to help Fernando Alonso win the race in 2009. Ok, it’s not a great comparison but I didn’t take any shots of turn 20 that I could match up. You get the drift anyway, it looks pretty accurate!

Formula 1 games certainly have come along way since 1987, especially in terms of graphical capability. I think the only thing missing from Formula 1 2010 is a track designer :-) How about adding one Codemasters?

Formula 1 2010 is out now on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.