My controller has never been held so tightly!

First thing of note was the 'free-look' around the cars…a taster of what to expect in the Autovista mode. Simply stunning fidelity.

I play with the in car view and it looked and felt great. Some nice HDR lighting effects as light reflected off the dash.

One thing I noticed with the in car view is that the mirrors seemed to be running at a lower frame rate than the main view. It kinda made them look like little TV screens, but I guess they had to sacrifice something.

I did all three races – I was surprised to see that although it was the same environment, the track gets mixed up – showing the potential for numerous permutations of the tracks that may be on offer.

Handling was nice and tight, although I’ve yet to try it with all the assists turned off (apart from the braking line!) – I need to see how much that Cougar can really drift around the corners.

I had some initial issues with the ‘Rivals’ mode – seemed to want me to do all three default races first – but then I had a crack at them.

What great fun!

The Zonda time trial pitted me against someone on my friends list – took me about 10 laps to beat their time.

Next was the BMW point to point. Immense fun. Great idea about driving through slow moving traffic (thank fuck there was nothing coming the other way). Makes it much more of a challenge…I can see it being nicknamed the ‘Sunday Driver Time Trial’.

The vista’s are stunning – some really clever use of graphics.

On the subject of graphics, I’m looking forward to creating a bunch of Midlife Gamer decals for everyone to use. Might take some time, but I’ll get there.

*A tip for anyone doing art work on the cars*

If you can, print out your design on acetate sheet (overhead projector film) if you can. Then stick that to the screen and use it as a template.

Needless to say, I’ve now got this on pre order (£34.99 at Blockbuster), no exclusive DLC, but I’m ok with that.