This week it was announced that Austin, Texas will hold a GP in 2012, however I can't help feeling that this is another load of deciet and false promises by the american's involved, at the moment the only figures mentioned is a ballpark of $200m - £300m no i'm no expert but i'd be impressed if they managed to build a 3 Mile circut complete with pit paddocks and grand stands especially since the average pit paddock these days costs upwards of $80m and the recent addition to silverstone cost about £7.25m for 900 meters so it''s costing around $125m just to lay the track and paddock, and thats based on the cost for silverstone it could be a lot higher over there (it could also be lower).

As yet there is no news of any backers though and that is the worrying part as they have around two years to build the track, in that time they need the sale of land to go through, planning permissions and the consruction of the track, sale of land is likely to take around a month, planning permissions if they can rush it through 1 - 2 months (in reality upto 6 months) and construction from beginning to completion takes about 12 months so best case senario they will still be finishing the track at the start of the 2012 season in my guess.

The race in China was anything but simple which for fans was brilliant, for the strategists of formula one though it meant they definitely earned their money today.

The race started in conditions that to my eyes left only the choice between hard or soft tyres to start, even after lap three when the safety car came out and everyone piled in to change to intermediates to me the only sensible option was to stay out like Button, Kubica and a few other drivers did.

Those that changed tyres were only able to make them last for a few laps and then had to pile back into the pits to change again, as they came into the pits Vettel and Hamilton were side by side with Hamilton just getting the edge, as the two left the pits they were released at exactly the same time and proceeded to race down the pit lane with Hamilton very nearly in the pit boxes of the other teams. Vettel was able to get ahead oh Hamilton into the first corner though, the incident has since been investigated and as of this moment there is to be no punishment for either driver. In my opinion though the Mclaren lollypop man and Vettel were both to blame, the lollypop man for letting Hamilton go and Vettel for moving to the left slightly and pushing Hamilton over further than was necessary.

On lap 19 with badly degraded tyres Rosberg was struggling with the car and went off the track allowing Button now in second to close the gap at the start of the back straight, in all reality there was absolutely no way that Rosberg was ever going to fight him off due to lack of tyres as well as the Mclaren F duct and the headwind, the combination of which meant it was pretty much up to Button to decided when he would get passed him.

While all of this was going on Hamilton was starting to charge and hard. He passed Webber, Kovalainen, Sutil, Vettel and Schumacher. In his little charge Hamilton got caught behind Sutil and Vettel who were battling over track position and as the three came up to the hairpin Vettel went wide and was nearly collected by Sutil who looked like he might have had an easier time driving a truck than his Force India as he slid wide leaving the door open for Hamilton to pass both cars in the same corner. As they pulled away from the corner it looked like Vettel might get passed as well but the Mercedes powered Force India at the hands of Sutil in one of his better drives was a good match for the Red Bull.

Not long after Hamilton passed Schumacher though the rain started and pit stops came round again, Though in a lap or two of the pitstops the safety car was deployed as a Toro Rosso deposited part of it’s wing on the track and in the entrance to the pit lane, this bunched all the cars back up. As the safety car went in Button backed up the field a bit too much in the last corner and Hamilton and Webber touched causing the Red Bull driver off the track at the entrance to the first corner.

Hamilton was not put off by the contact and charged on again passing Schumacher before moving on to the Renaults of Petrov and Kubica but all this charging round had cost him grip and cost massive wear to his tyres forcing him to pit. Luckily for Hamilton Rosberg pitted the following lap and let Hamilton free to get on after Button, Lewis went straight back to charging round the track, however by now he was struggling to match Button’s lap times and the pair ended with a 1 – 2 only about 1 second apart.

Rosberg managed to hold of Alonso and got his Mercedes in third ahead of the Spaniard who had made the best of a bad race having been penalised for jumping the start. His team – mate Massa had a pretty mediocre race apart from his pass on old team – mate Schumacher which must have been very satisfying for the Brazillian. Though I wonder if it would have been as easy had Schumacher had some amount of traction.

Away from the front runners Sutil managed only 11th after the early promise he showed and Kovalainen finished 14th despite running 6th at one point although I don’t think anyone really expected that to last. Another big round of applause goes to HRT for getting both cars to the finish something neither Lotus or Virgin managed to do.

Robert Culp
August 16, 1930 - March 24, 2010

Robert Culp died on March 24, 2010 after falling and hitting his head in a Los Angeles park, his publicist said. Culp came to gaming fame through Half-Life 2 and HL2: Episode 1, as Dr Breen where he wrestled headcrabs, and generally messed around with Gordon Freeman's life.

As well as appearing in Half-Life 2 and HL2: Episode 1 Robert Culp also appeared in many TV series and films including:

Diagnosis Murder
Everybody Loves Raymond
The Pelican Brief
and four episodes of Columbo to name but a few

This is indeed very sad news and my heart goes out to his family.

In this day and age F1 is all about how to make your car pass through the air as efficiently as possible, this came about when the FIA in all it's wisdom decided to ban engine development. in the late 90's early 00's front wings started to get little side wings, then there were wings for the front wing, i think it's now gotten to the point where the mini wings on a front wing are getting wings of thier own.

All of this helps the cars slip through the air, this is all amazingly brilliant if your the first car or there is a copule of seconds between you and the car in front, if however you get within about one second of a modern F1 car the air coming of the back of the leading car is so messed up that the following car may as well have no aerodynamics at all, for example if you take two pieces of string and lay them side by side the slide you figners between them you can move as quickly as you want, now take those piecces of string and mess them up, you can't really follow them as well as you could when they were straight.

All this adds up to drivers getting within about a second of a car and then being able to get no further, unless there is a massive speed difference, I therefore think that maybe the FIA should step in and change the rulings on Aerodynamics so that the front wings dont have wings and they tell the teams to remove most of thier Aerodynamics and maybe even restart engine development.

The only way to get the cars following each other again is to get rid of all the Aerodynamic gadgets, but to do this the FIA would have to step in and force the teams to do it, as was said in the build up to this weekend's GP the teams themselves had agreed to reduce it by 50% but because it meant they would lose thier competitive edge no one actually did it, partly in case the others didn't.

The FIA need to get thier act together on this one and make it happen.

I must admit that while this week's race was more interesting than Bahrain I still feel let down by the start to the season. I believe in the pre season we were promised as always more overtaking a wheel to wheel racing that would make this year the most exciting F1 season to date. while there was much more going on this weekend I feel that more needs to be done to aid overtaking.

The start of the race saw Button getting into the back of Alonso and pushing Schumacher down to last pre-retirement this would of spurred Schumacher into a heroic chase through the pack to probably still win the race, today however with all the new and in some cases stupid rules he didn't get much further.

There were few other incidents, apart from Hulkenburg, Buemi and Kobayashi's coming together which nearly saw the front tyre and tose taken off the Sauber. To make his season get off to a worse start Sebastian Vettle's Brake failure put him off just two corners from the pit lane entrance.

Lewis towards the end despite making two tyre stops for who knows what reason (he certainly didn't seem to know why) managed to catch Alonso at over a second per lap catching him with about 10 laps to go. Now this is what really gets me, in 90's his biggest problem would be getting past the Ferrari, he would of been all over the gearbox lap after lap until Alonso gave up or one of the drivers made a mistake, not now.

Due to the aerodynamics which have spoilt F1 especially in the last 5 years Lewis would of been lucky to have gotten to within 10 feet of his gearbox. this meant that the last few laps saw lewis sat anywhere between three tenths of a second to a full second behind Alonso. In the end Lewis got fed up and tried a move that was (from outside the car) obviously never going to work, this was compounded with MArk Webber following so closely that when things did go wrong he couldn't do anything but slide into the back of the Mclaren.

In the end it finished like this:

1 Jenson Button McLaren
2 Robert Kubica Renault
3 Felipe Massa Ferrari
4 Fernando Alonso Ferrari
5 Nico Rosberg Mercedes
6 Lewis Hamilton McLaren
7 Tonio Liuzzi Force India
8 Rubens Barrichello Williams
9 Mark Webber Red Bull
10 Michael Schumacher Mercedes
11 Jaime Alguersuari Toro Rosso
12 Pedro de la Rosa BMW Sauber
13 Heikki Kovalainen Lotus
14 Karun Chandhok HRT F1

lap 41 Timo Glock Virgin - "handling issues"
Lap 1 and lap 26 Lucas di Grassi Virgin - Hydraulic problems/overheating gearbox
Lap 25 Sebastian Vettel Red Bull - Brake Failure
Lap 9 Adrian Sutil Force India - Engine problems
Lap 9 Vitaly Petrov Renault - Spun
Lap 4 Bruno Senna HRT - Hydraulics
Lap 1 Sébastien Buemi Toro Rosso - Kobayashi
Lap 1 Nico Hülkenberg Williams - Kobayashi
Lap 1 Kamui Kobayashi BMW Sauber - Accident
Did Not Start Jarno Trulli Lotus - Hydraulics

A hearty round of applause to Karun Chandhok for completing HRT's first race, well done to HRT for completing a race before Virgin Racing did.

The race that took place last weekend was a shambles, there was very little overtaking and nothing really outstanding happened. The FIA and his royal Berniness need to realise that while pit stops can be quite dangerous they were the best part of F1.

It is my opinion that maybe they should not freeze the engines at all, I know and understand in the past that there have been parts of the car that they have outlawed and I think that is ok, but what they need to look at is being able to get the cars to follow easier. How is that supposed to happen if they don’t do something about aerodynamics and engine power?

I know it’s a step backward but looking at how close racing was in the late 80’s early 90’s maybe they should change the rules back to what was in force then? After watching the classic GP’s on TV I really believe that it could actually be the best step forward.

Anyway on to the race I think that HRT should be the proudest team in the paddock at the moment as 1 month ago they didn’t really have anything and their can ran for the first time about 1 week ago and yet they had better in race reliability than Virgin, now I know by the other teams standards that is nothing but for them it is nothing short of a miracle, and I really hope they can keep it up through the season. On the other hand though Chandhok did have an accident on lap two so who knows what might have happened if he hadn’t , but even that performance was pretty amazing since his first ever F1 lap was completed in session 1 of qualifying.

Michael Schumacher’s return to the sport pretty much went unnoticed having done very little in the race, but given the current regulations that is pretty understandable, however I was surprised that he was out qualified my team mate Nico Rosberg, a man I believe could be world champion in a future season.

I think that the three new teams have a lot of work to do by Australia in 9 days time but I do expect them to only improve throughout the season, hopefully with a regulation change which nearly everyone has asked for I may get more to write about in the coming races.

This week while representing Gamercast I had the opportunity for a hands-on experience with the first Formula One title to hit the HD market. In short, we were very impressed, read on for the specifics of how Codemasters have succeded in what looks to be the most impressive Formula One game of all time.

From what I've seen and heard, F1 2010 has the potential to be the best and most difficult F1 game to date, set to include the full 13 team grid and all 26 drivers, pit stops are included but without refuelling, there will however be an emphasis of getting the speed of the car down to an appropriate level when entering the pit lane, failure to do so will result in running into your mechanics; something that we haven't seen since '97 if I remember correctly.

With the sub title of “Be the Driver, Live the Life”, Codemasters have decided to give players a chance to get behind the scenes of the F1 world, this includes carrying out press conferences and interviews, which become more frequent as your reputation increases.

Another new addition is the “Drivers room”; where your agent sits, who informs you of teams interested in you, and how you are fairing in the season; so basically she is the replacement for the cold emails and text messages you got in F106. Each room is themed around the team you drive for, we caught a glimpse of the Force India room; having the logo across the doors and the colour scheme on various objects, which adds a nice touch, and its the closest most of us will get to these trailers.

Codemasters have decided to bring F1 to a more realistic level of play; there is a lot more emphasis of experiencing play through the driver rather than the car. For instance in previous games there was a speed difference between each team but no real difference between drivers, this year, all that should change with their new AI system. If a driver is known to be good at a certain circuit there will be a noticeable change in his performance at that track, all cars are also promised to be much more reactive to the players presence and will try to block passing manoeuvres.

The new weather system is extremley dynamic; focusing on the condition on individual 30cm pieces of track instead of 'it’s this wet all the way around', this will allow for a constantly evolving track, which will also bring strategies such as cooling down your tyres in puddles of water if needed.

As well as the wet tyre there will of course be prime and option tyres for all races and these are promised to suffer realistic tyre degradation, first by getting blisters and marbles, then delaminating and finally failing altogether. There will also be the addition of having to look after your engine during a race, although, as you are limited through the FIA's 8 engine rule, you will be unable to run your engine on full tilt, therefore boosting your engine too much during the season will have a negative effect. The possibility of changing engine settings and wing setting from the steering wheel was also mentioned, although sounds slightly technical for most gamers to be worrying about.

Another feature will be that you can now take on car upgrades and carry out Research and Development, while this was only touched upon it was revealed that how you did in a season would affect the amount of upgrades available to you during the winter, what wasn’t explained was if this would be affecting your current team or roll over onto prospective teams if you are to move after a season. From the amount of new features Codemasters hope to add to the game which differ so greatly from any previous Formula One title, they seem to have taken over the license with fantastic enthusiasm, this is not your average F1 game, this is the future of Formula One games.

I was lucky enough to get a hands-on with a 3 lap race around Monza in Mark Webber’s Red Bull from 2009, unfortunately everything we saw featured only from the 2009 season, however 2010 drivers and cars will be featured in the final game.

The first thing that was apparent, -apart from the fact that everyone was really bad at the game- was the damage; in previous incarnations damage would have your car lose the whole front wings, in F1 2010 if you lose a front wing and it gets hit there will be bits of carbon fibre flying everywhere, this debris will even hang around, however in some cases people were having collisions with very little visible damage however the game is still at an early stage.

For my final lap of the three I turned on a heavy downpour, this was brilliant, the spray looked extremley realstic and because the other drivers were unable to instantly change tyres -like I did- the AI were suddenley unable to stay on the road. At the moment the game is a bit too real, and I locked up the brakes into nearly every corner I went into, constantly pulling off 360 spins, I think I would of preferred it however if I had been given a joypad to play it with rather than a steering wheel and some pedals.

The graphics are polished, every detail in the cars and drivers are perfect, the weather effects are beautiful, and the game plays very realistically. The game that we got to experience was just the tip-of-the-iceburg, and it looks extremley promising for racing and Formula One fans, I cannot wait to get my hands on the finished product this September!

Many months ago I was shown a trailer of a WiiWare title that was soon to be coming out, and a couple of days ago I bought it, and that game was Tomena Sanner.

I had honestly forgotten about it, as it was so long ago, but I was browsing the Wii Shopping Channel and came across it. Firstly I would like to point out the price, it's only 500 Nintendo/Wii points, which as long as you buy your points off the channel itself is only £3.50 (If you purchased a Nintendo points card from a retail shop, it would be costing you £5.00)

Take control of business man Hitoshi Susumu who is behind schedule and won't stop running until he gets to his ultimate dance party!

As the quote from Nintendo Europe's website states, you play Hitoshi Susumu, and you must get to his ultimate dance party, which sadly he is running late to. This helps establish the knowledge that you are aiming to be as fast as possible, which of course is the ultimate goal. The real simplicity however is that there is only one button press needed while playing, which is the A button. The player must simply press A just as they are about to run into a person/animal/object/whatever that's in your way. Dependant on timing you get different results, which results in either a miss/good/great.

Tomena Sanner has some of the most addictive and upbeat soundtracks I've heard in a game recently, this could be on the basis that I left it playing to itself while I was doing work around the house, or it could be that the main theme reminds me of the Rocky Theme, either way the game features very short pieces of music but it was great for motivation, which suits the game perfectly, it's all about speed, movement and motivation.

The animation and visual style are very polished and appealing to look at, I did notice when scanning the credits they used mo-cap, which I'm sure really helped with the fluid movements of the characters dancing and moving around.

The first time I played it I found it a little hard as I wasn't used to the way the game plays. I felt this was slightly because I've played a fairly similar game in the past which is Rhyme Rider Kerorican. The game plays almost identically (bar different button presses), the only real difference being that with Kerorican there are cues in the audio to when you should press the needed button. As it's a rhythm action game, so the dodging of obstacles/enemies goes to the beat.

Unfortunately nothing in Tomena Sanner goes to a beat, but still I'm just comparing it to another game, it isn't necessarily a bad thing, just I do enjoy games that move to a certain rhythm, after a while of playing I will have my timing spot on.

I did manage to finish the normal mode in one sitting, however this was after various failures of some levels (I found level 1-2 the hardest). The difficulty really comes from judging when the button should be pressed, as with some items it's hard to judge where the point of button press is. Turbo mode however is a lot harder, as the game gets quite fast in the normal setting. I have yet to finish the first level on turbo.

You may also notice from the images I've posted up that while you’re playing the game and you interact with the characters/things a sentence of writing scrolls across the screen, this adds more to the pure craziness of the game, and I recommend having another person in the room to read them out, as when playing you don't have the time to enjoy reading.

My only real nag is I would have liked the opportunity to start from level 1-1 and then when it finishes and you get your score etc it could then go straight into 1-2, instead of having to select 1-2. I understand why this may have been done, for many reasons to help the developer in some problems they may have faced. Of course there is the endless play mode that you can unlock, but that's a whole different mode altogether.

I'm going to Tomena Sanner a 5/5 because it is an extremely polished game that I'm going to play again and again until I can have a better high score (that darn Izzy at the top of the boards, I will beat you one day!). It is definitely worth the 500 points (£3.50) that they're charging for it.

Mass Effect 2 is the sequel to the 2007 BioWare title Mass Effect, set in the far off future the mass effect series is an action RPG, with echoes of BioWare's previous hits as Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire.

You play as Commander Shepherd (of no fixed gender or race)you are a hero of space conflict, and it falls upon your shoulders to save the galaxy… again. Except a couple of year ago something big happened and Mass Effect 2 sees you working under the hand of Cerberus; an organisation clouded with bad press and extremist ideas

The first game saw Commander Shepherd and the galaxy pitted against an ancient threat called the Reapers, who every billion or so years wipe out a civilisation as they reach a certain peak. In Mass Effect you successfully repeal the reaper threat by destroying the mass relay that was bring them to into citadel space. However the fleet are still waiting to wipe out the various races of the galaxy, and it seems they have a different plan up their sleeve.

If you think after playing Mass Effect this would be exactly the same you would be terribly wrong, BioWare have striped Mass Effect down to the core essentials that made it a solid game and got rid of all of the random mechanics that were unnecessary. Gone is your inventory, gone is random planet exploration, gone are the many different skill specialisations. I couldn’t believe when playing Mass Effect 2 (after getting round to finishing Mass Effect) just how much had changed, not to mention how much more I ended up enjoying it.

If anything this game is close to perfection, its good points overflow from its very start.
The combat is far more attuned then the original, there are no more clunky controls, you are taking place in real combat, not clumsy firing; a headshot can take down a foe, and shots at legs topple your enemies, the more realist approach to combat achieves far more than its predecessor, making it far more challenging and engaging.

The dialogue is stupendous, not only has it become more mature, but each character has its own mannerisms that come across in their speech, shining examples like Mordin, Tali and Thane come to mind, rivalling Henpecked-Hou, Black Whirlwind, or even the great HK-47 from KOTOR. Each member of your team has interesting aspects that take them away from the ridiculous stereotypes that most games create.

One of the big let downs in Mass Effect was that it effectively had only one real city; The Citadel. However Mass Effect 2 has made up for this, including more than 4 city sprawls, each individually different from the slums of Omega to the busy shopping districts of the Citadel. Even the wastelands of Tuchanka make an interesting addition to Mass Effect’s worlds, the galaxy has more of a spirit, it’s just a shame there were no more inhabited or explorable planets.
Although the game is utterly amazing it does of course have its bad points.

Combat is far too predictable, you know you’re in for a fight when you see hideable cover. Another downfall is the animations can get very repetitive and somewhat annoying, there is only so many times you can see someone shake their fist, their head or look down at their feet.

However these are just little issues and don't hurt the games playability much at all, the real gripe with Mass Effect is you are light-years ahead in the future, with the pinnacle of space travel at your fingertips, but you can only explore a few minor planets. Really, I think I am missing the Mako from the original; at least exploring planets that were not inhabited could have been kept.

On top of all of this Mass Effect takes all the best ‘effects’ from Science Fiction films of the last 40 years, you’ve got the great reveal at the very start, working with questionable people, lush environments, exotic races, a galaxy in peril, and a killer ending – who can deny a game where all of your crew can die in the last hour dependant on the choices you make as a leader and player throughout the game.

At one point whilst playing Mass Effect 2 I did consider knocking Deus Ex off the top spot of best Science Fiction games, however with the few minor grievances I determined Deus Ex is still up there, however Mass Effect is still a great contender and definitely one of the best games of the year. I cannot wait to see what BioWare do with the third game. No matter what, the Trilogy will hopefully be remembered as one of the great space opera’s something that very few games can accomplish.

Although I do hope it will not spawn a host of poorly thought out space games.

Relic/THQ Blurb:

In Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising you will take command of the Blood Ravens and defend the sector against the Chaos Space Marines of the Black Legion. Purge the chaos filth and hold the chapter together as traitorous forces work from within to try bring down the Blood Ravens.

Upgrade your squads with new legendary wargear and unlock new special abilities, as your squads advance to level 30. Will you remain steadfast to the Emperor or risk heresy to gain new dark and destructive powers?

In multiplayer swear loyalty to the Chaos Gods and pit your bloodthirsty warband of Chaos Space Marines against the new units and reinforced armies of the Space Marines, Orks, Eldar, and Tyranids.

What you are looking at:
In the exspansion as previous Dawn of War games there will be new units for each race, most people seem to think this will be new heroes, which is gaurenteed for Space Marines as there is a picture of the librarian up on the official website however i'd be surprised if this was all.

Along with this there will be a Chaos and Tyranid character added to last stand. Alot of people are on about players with the original DoW2 having an advantage of players with just DoW2:CR, as with the old DoW series i believ it might be tough luck, in the old series if you only had Dark Crusade you could only use Tau and Necrons, anyway why would people just buy DoW2:CR? if you enjoy it you'll buy DoW2 soon anyway and if you think you'll like the series you probably already have DoW2.

The most noticeable of things from the trailers is the inclusion of what looks to be a Chaos lord on Juggernaught of Khorne and Nurgle so it seems it's a bit more apparent that Relic/ThQ are going for Chaos undivided rather than the usual Khorne Chaos that was added in DoW1.

From the trailer graphics haven't been fiddled with too much same as DoW and it's add-ons, and hopefully they have got them well balanced, nothing like balancing issues especially when they have to nerf them later on and everyone that played them has a bit whinge.