So, I was that one guy who bought the Xbox One

It was delivered to my house this morning, a bona fide Day One edition with Forza 5 as the free game and Battlefield 4.

First impressions? It's a big beast, looking like some kind of hyper-advanced VHS cassette player, but it feels very solid and is clearly made of better quality plastic than either 360 or my fat PS3. Fire it up, and you have to run through the set up procedure. This take a while, especially with a 500mb update at the end. Still, even with my glacial internet speed, it only took around half an hour or forty minutes.

Game on. You get to run through some nice tutorials to navigate the new UI - it's actually genuinely impressive how easy it is to flick between stuff with a simple voice command - and start playing. Forza 5, here we come. My Day One edition comes with a card containing a QR code (remember them?) that the Kinect sensor reads (again, actually quite quickly and without much fuss) and starts the download. All 35gb of it. Bugger. Might take a while.

Fine, I'll look around the store see what's up for grabs this early. Killer Instinct is free? I loved the SNES game (I've still got the CD soundtrack) and it's been generally well received by critics, so I'll gave that a go. 3.5gb? Bugger. Never mind, I'll boot up Battlefield 4, that's a physical disk, there's no way... update required? 1.5gb? Hmm.

Anyway, turned it off and had some dinner, then went back and much like the 360 could, the One will carry on downloading even whilst it's off, so Killer Instinct was ready to go, ha a quick blast at that and it's really quite good. It feels very much like Street Fighter 4 in places, and while the graphics in all honesty don't scream next-gen, there are some great effects; rain running off fighters bodies, particle explosions, dust clouds rolling over the battlefield.

I've not yet tried Forza 5 or Battlefield yet, the former still downloading and the latter I'll save until tomorrow, but I'm relatively impressed so far; the new UI ia far better than the cluttered 360 dash, the new Kinect is genuinely massively improved, the new pad is sheer perfection and it runs so, so quietly you wouldn't even know it was on. I'll update tomorrow once I've had a spin at Forza and BF4.

I wasn't going to buy it anyway, but the release was postponed to spring 2014 here because I guess MS hated the fact that they had complete market dominance here.

Are you proud of supporting a company who has made it extremely clear that they want to take away what little rights you have left and charge you extra for the privilege?

How well utilised is Kinect? Can you, for instance, shout obscenities at the ref in FIFA and have him react?

How can your taste be so bad?

It's set up to interpret a few key phrases to control the system ie: "Xbox Open Skype", and they all work quite well, but when you step outside all the built in programs you start to encounter problems.

That seems pretty much like what I thought it would be, that is to say something that might be amusing initially but would get old fast and really isn't more efficient than pressing a button. I do wonder how well it works with non-American accents. I can imagine someone from Glasgow or York getting on poorly if it hasn't been optimised.

I witnessed the launch event last night and Rev 3 Games basically shat all over the damn thing and it was absolutely hilarious. They were trying so hard to be optimistic, but literally every game that wasn't Zoo Tycoon they had trouble finding a lot of good things to say about.

Sessler really liked Forza 5..

the reviews of Ryse are hilarious across the board though.

This is like hearing Dragonall GT is getting a sequel.

... Im kinda surprised anyone bought it at all
there might be some still problems with it aside from the spying

Skipio wrote:

How well utilised is Kinect? Can you, for instance, shout obscenities at the ref in FIFA and have him react?

 
I know this was said in jest, but you know what? Yes, actually.  Allegedly if you swear at the ref enough, you get a letter from the PFA in-game warning you about your future conduct.
 
Anyway, I'll ignore the rather obvious attempts to troll what was supposed to be a sensible and honest topic, and give my feedback on some of the other games.  I'll start with Forza 5.  It's great.  it really is.  However, you can see where corners where cut to get it ready for release; there's no night/day cycle, no weather effects and some of the background effects (trees and crowd typically) are just 2d sprites.  Whilst playing the game you don't notice at all, but it's clearly apparent during the replays and it does take some of the visual polish off the game.  
 
Killer Instinct has been a very pleasant surprise.  Graphically it's a little "meh", looking like a fairly pretty 360 or PS3 fighter with extra background particle and weather effects rather than a bona fide next-gen title, but it's a whole heap of fun to play and the combo system has just as much depth as SFIV.  The business model is a little peculiar though; the game is free (with a single playable character) and you pay to unlock additional fighters, either 3.99 each or fifteen quid for all eight (six now, with two to follow next year).  It's easily worth fifteen quid, even if there seems to be an unnecessary delay in matchmaking.
 
Battlefield 4 is awesome.  The single player is solid but forgettable enough, yet multiplayer is a sheer riot; up to 64 players on hugely destructible maps, and it still runs at a solid 60fps. The biggest problem is that I'm simply not very good at it, and tend to die a lot.

If anyone has any genuine questions or queries rather than snide or asinine remarks, then feel free to ask.

didn't they cut out a lot of tracks from Forza 5 too? there's only like 15-20 or so? which is like half of the previous game.. and same for the cars I think, with some dodgy stuff going on that some of the cooler cars are DLC or need to be bought with real money. that seemed to be like the biggest gripe from reviews I've seen.


have you tried the DVR function and is it good?

Forza 5 is basically a full price F2P game by all accounts.

Eevil-Psycho wrote:

didn't they cut out a lot of tracks from Forza 5 too?  there's only like 15-20 or so? which is like half of the previous game.. and same for the cars I think, with some dodgy stuff going on that some of the cooler cars are DLC or need to be bought with real money. that seemed to be like the biggest gripe from reviews I've seen.

Allegedly they cut out some of the older tracks because the scans were out of date and suffering from inconsistencies that stood out a mile in the new engine. Still, there are multiple variations on the tracks that are present, so it doesn't feel like you're simply going over the same ground all the time. At least not yet. There are fewer cars too, but again, there is the trade-off that the cars that are present look amazing; you can walk around them, pop the bonnet, open the doors, get inside and see the interior fully modelled as well. That kind of detail must have taken a hell of a lot of work and man hours, so by Forza 7 we should have the full complement back again! In all seriousness, the dropping of some cars isn't a huge issue, for me at least; typically, I buy the cars I own / have owned, tune them to hell and back, then go back to buying the Ferrari's, Nissan GTRs, Veyrons etc. This just means that you simply can't buy your own car unless you drive something pretty special to start with.

Quote :

have you tried the DVR function and is it good?

Not yet!

I personally prefer arcadey racers. The fact the game has a season pass + a free 2 play model, on top of actually being a retail game at the same ime as dropping tracks, because it was rushed out to be a launch title, is pretty shoddy by all counts.

I think this pretty much shows why polyphony digital stuck with PS3. I just hope they don't use the buy money for in game stuff to the ridiculous level that Forza is using it. DLC cars are fine, but don't toy with two different business models at the same time.

Apparently Simian wasn't the only British to buy Xbox One, as it sold 150k units in its first week in UK.
PS4 sold 250k, outselling Wii U's lifetime UK sales.

Poor Wii U.

The UK has always been a loyal X-Bot country.

Fuck the British

Simian isn't representative of the british. I think I drink more tea then Simian and Moose. They don't even eat crumpets daily, thats my breakfast man. Also when i'm old enough to getaway with a top hat and sword cane i will carry those.

Now crumpets I do like.

Honestly, buying a next gen console when there's nothing out I really couldn't justify it. Spending £80 more on a console which is not showing anything above and beyond the competition. That on top of the Playstation plus programme which has already got me two games on the PS4. I'm never buying an Xbone. There's literally more chance of me buying a Wii U, and I seriously doubt that, unless I'm super desperate to play the next Zelda game, bayonetta 2 or Wonderful 101.

The fact that the Xbone has already outsold the WiiU in this country is really sad. I didn't realise the WiiU was doing that bad. Makes me want to buy one purely out of pity.

Superbuu3 wrote:

Simian isn't representative of the british.  I think I drink more tea then Simian and Moose.  They don't even eat crumpets daily, thats my breakfast man. Also when i'm old enough to getaway with a top hat and sword cane i will carry those.

Class doesn't have an age restriction man.

A_Nonny_Moose wrote:

The fact that the Xbone has already outsold the WiiU in this country is really sad. I didn't realise the WiiU was doing that bad. Makes me want to buy one purely out of pity.

The Wii U also has more good games than the Xbone's none.