One Week With The Xbox One

So nine days have passed since me and a couple of lucky friends had VIP queue jump passes for the midnight launch of the Xbox One. It's amazing how quickly those days have passed and how and how long the beard has grown. 

After all the online hate the machine appeared to garner from its original announcement earlier in the year I must admit I did start to worry that Microsoft had dropped the ball so badly I may have to switch to a non preferred brand of console as Sony had seemed to hit the proverbial nail on the head when mapping out a future for us gamers. That being said I stuck to my guns on where my money would go first so a Xbox pre-order was placed.

Ok so like I said time has been flying by at a stupidly fast rate ever since the machine was ripped from its packaging at 1am on the morning of the 22nd. And after a very simple system setup I was staring at the new dash board that is not surprisingly very similar to Windows 8 and from my perspective very simple to navigate, granted a lot of things that had become common place on the 360 had been buried into various panels but with a few simple words spoken to my Kinect they thankfully appeared on screen. And yes you read it right my Kinect had no problem understanding my regional accent or any of my commands.

So next up was installing a game and of course for me that has to be without question Forza 5.

Allowing it to reach 13% seemed to take forever but I was reminded that there was 6GB day one patch needed to enjoy it at its fullest and saying I forgot to mention the chat function on the Xbox One has got a few gremlins in the system but nobody can take away from how clear the speech comes through.

When I finally got onto the track on Forza 5 I was very impressed by the graphics and I know people have said that there isn't much in it from the previous Forza game, but for me as a big Forza fan I could see a noticeable difference so much so it was day light before the idea of sleep seemed like a good idea.

Since then I have spent a ridiculous amount of hours on the track as well as on Battlefield 4 and from my opinion the most next gen game I own NBA 2K14, and all in all I'm happy with the large investment I had to pay to get my hit of that next gen feeling and so have my of many friends that made the day 1 leap as well. 

On closing, I am impressed with the Xbox One and the games I purchased but there is a epic wait in gaming time until the next must have title arrives (Titan Fall) so if you are on the fence about splashing the cash early in this new generation make sure you pace yourself on them games you buy as they have to be with you for the next 4 months until the spring releases hit.

Happy gaming folks.

David Birch (@Remedylive)