Screenshots :.
Formula One 2005
PS2
Matt
03-04-2007
"An F1 driver's desk is a little more exciting."
"Hurrah, it's the Montster!"
"Given how F1 is, they'll be running like this for ages."
"Alonso behind a Minardi? It's a mad world."
Last July, I finally managed to get off my usually lazy arse and actually made the trip that to me is probably the equivalent of the pilgrimage to Mecca: a trip to the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. As I sat there in the grandstand on a sunny Sunday afternoon watching several laps of slightly dull racing, my mind wandered back to when I was a 10-year-old kid watching it all on television, dreaming of one day being out there on track myself against the best.
I’m 24 now, and to be frank if it hasn’t happened by now then it never will. A shortage of funds and quite honestly a shortage of the necessary talent stymied me and reduced me to racing my heart out on anything and everything that was released in the way of Formula One video games. As years went on and despite some excellent PC titles, ‘Big’ Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One’s control freak when it comes to marketing, contracts and the like, took it upon himself to sign a deal with Sony. From 2003 onwards, the world’s most expensive sport became a PlayStation exclusive.
Formula One 2005 is the third title to be released since then. Whilst the lack of competition is certainly by no means a good thing, it carries on the rapid improvements that Studio Liverpool have been throwing at their series with a few tweaks to some of the game modes and a satisfying, weighty new handling model. This all comes packaged with the 2005 cars, drivers and circuits, meaning you can now fight it out against messrs Alonso, Raikkonen and Schumacher from the comfort of your own living room beanbag.
Picking up the torch that last year’s title lit, 05 sees the main hub of the game once more set in a satisfying career mode. Starting off with a smaller team such as Minardi or Jordan, the aim is to work your way up the ladder to get to the bigger teams and score some wins and championships for yourself. To help you along, you are given an agent who will relay details of test and contract offers from various teams and also gives you a hint as to how you’re doing.
In my case, things started rather slowly. Having fluffed my first test for Red Bull (sob), I was left with the option of Minardi or Jordan. Despite a successful test and subsequent offer from the former, sense prevailed and I soon found myself as number two driver for the latter. Initial races saw me struggling to get anywhere near the pace and two pretty average drives into the midfield were about all I could manage.
Most of this was due to me struggling to get to grips with handling physics far in advance of anything that the series has managed before. Don’t get me wrong here; 05 is still a very forgiving game compared to some of the simulations that have been released down the years. It’s just not what you’d be expecting from a console Formula One title, and with the car’s weighting and a proper sense of inertia finally added into the mixing bowl it is finally possible to take smooth, proper racing lines and be rewarded for doing so. It’s rather refreshing to not need to take ridiculously unrealistic lines due to your car skittering all over the circuit like a crab on acid.
When I did get the handling to a tee after a couple of races, another problem presented itself. Despite having the game on the hardest difficulty settings and with no driving aids turned on, I managed to qualify my Jordan fourth on the grid for the San Marino Grand Prix. A dodgy race strategy prevented me from finishing any higher than 8th, but the fact remained that I had comprehensively seen off a couple of McLarens, a Renault and a Ferrari during the race. It wasn’t just a circuit-specific problem either; from then on I often finished in the top three and qualified well in the top two grid rows.
Unsurprisingly, I pretty quickly got a call from one of the big guns. McLaren wanted my name on a contract, and right there and then. Team leader, too. Within six races in a slow car the quickest team on the grid were hiring me to replace no less than Kimi Raikkonen, a move that is almost as unrealistic as Cambridge United winning the FA Cup. From there I never looked back, and strung together a chain of crushing victories that lasted for the rest of the season and took me to my first World Championship. Who was the last person to manage such a thing? Should something such as that even be possible?
The answer is no. The game’s difficulty level is one of its major issues. The fact that I was 4th in the championship before I left Jordan tells you all you need to know. Anyone with a bit of knowledge of the circuits will quite quickly settle into a groove and buzz through the career mode with barely a problem. The fact that you can very possibly win the title with the slowest team on the grid means that progression is tainted by the fact that it is all generally unnecessary unless you fancy driving for your own favourite team or just fancy a change of colour now and again.
Then there’re the minor niggles. Firstly, the game was set into production shortly before a major qualifying rule change took place, meaning that you still have to persist with the wretched aggregate time system that the governing body tried to ruin the sport with. Of equal annoyance is the opposition AI, which although improved still resorts to chugging around in little trains more often than not and will still ram into you at the smallest opportunity. It does a lot to spoil the illusion of realism that the handling goes a long way to providing.
Perhaps the biggest offender of the whole lot though is the ruddy penalty system that sees your car getting a time-limited rev penalty. Whilst this is an annoyance by itself as it is due to being completely unrealistic, the next time you spin backwards across the inside of a corner due to getting rammed by a cretinous AI opponent you’ll find yourself getting penalised for that too. It’s a horrid system which overreacts to even the slightest of grassy moments, and whilst in one way you can almost understand it if it keeps people from cheating, the fact that the AI keep shoving you into these situations means that you often get penalised twice by the computer.
Thankfully, the other main mode of the game – Time Trial – does away with the AI completely and challenges you to beat bronze, silver and gold medal times on each of the 2005 circuits. Doing so will eventually unlock classic cars such as the 1982 Williams, and completing them all on gold will get you a pretty tasty reward too. No spoilers here though, so you’ll just have to knuckle down and find out what it is for yourself.
In terms of looks, the game continues the general improvement that you’d expect as the native hardware comes of age. Cars now look more solid, thanks in no small part to some reasonably attractive lighting effects that have been employed. Circuits themselves all have appropriate scenery and some authentic camera angles, although Studio Liverpool have still littered a load of the annoying ‘fly-by’ cameras into proceedings.
So, does Formula One 2005 represent a step in the right direction for the series? Yes, but a small one. The career mode is heading the right direction, and the handling has been improved no end. Sadly, the lack of difficulty and the silly AI are like a shard of carbon fibre on a Michelin front left tyre, seriously deflating the sense of realism. There are seeds here that could bear fruit if the developer can latch onto them and take full advantage; whether they are allowed enough time before next year’s inevitable version is another question.
I’m 24 now, and to be frank if it hasn’t happened by now then it never will. A shortage of funds and quite honestly a shortage of the necessary talent stymied me and reduced me to racing my heart out on anything and everything that was released in the way of Formula One video games. As years went on and despite some excellent PC titles, ‘Big’ Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One’s control freak when it comes to marketing, contracts and the like, took it upon himself to sign a deal with Sony. From 2003 onwards, the world’s most expensive sport became a PlayStation exclusive.
Formula One 2005 is the third title to be released since then. Whilst the lack of competition is certainly by no means a good thing, it carries on the rapid improvements that Studio Liverpool have been throwing at their series with a few tweaks to some of the game modes and a satisfying, weighty new handling model. This all comes packaged with the 2005 cars, drivers and circuits, meaning you can now fight it out against messrs Alonso, Raikkonen and Schumacher from the comfort of your own living room beanbag.
Picking up the torch that last year’s title lit, 05 sees the main hub of the game once more set in a satisfying career mode. Starting off with a smaller team such as Minardi or Jordan, the aim is to work your way up the ladder to get to the bigger teams and score some wins and championships for yourself. To help you along, you are given an agent who will relay details of test and contract offers from various teams and also gives you a hint as to how you’re doing.
In my case, things started rather slowly. Having fluffed my first test for Red Bull (sob), I was left with the option of Minardi or Jordan. Despite a successful test and subsequent offer from the former, sense prevailed and I soon found myself as number two driver for the latter. Initial races saw me struggling to get anywhere near the pace and two pretty average drives into the midfield were about all I could manage.
Most of this was due to me struggling to get to grips with handling physics far in advance of anything that the series has managed before. Don’t get me wrong here; 05 is still a very forgiving game compared to some of the simulations that have been released down the years. It’s just not what you’d be expecting from a console Formula One title, and with the car’s weighting and a proper sense of inertia finally added into the mixing bowl it is finally possible to take smooth, proper racing lines and be rewarded for doing so. It’s rather refreshing to not need to take ridiculously unrealistic lines due to your car skittering all over the circuit like a crab on acid.
When I did get the handling to a tee after a couple of races, another problem presented itself. Despite having the game on the hardest difficulty settings and with no driving aids turned on, I managed to qualify my Jordan fourth on the grid for the San Marino Grand Prix. A dodgy race strategy prevented me from finishing any higher than 8th, but the fact remained that I had comprehensively seen off a couple of McLarens, a Renault and a Ferrari during the race. It wasn’t just a circuit-specific problem either; from then on I often finished in the top three and qualified well in the top two grid rows.
Unsurprisingly, I pretty quickly got a call from one of the big guns. McLaren wanted my name on a contract, and right there and then. Team leader, too. Within six races in a slow car the quickest team on the grid were hiring me to replace no less than Kimi Raikkonen, a move that is almost as unrealistic as Cambridge United winning the FA Cup. From there I never looked back, and strung together a chain of crushing victories that lasted for the rest of the season and took me to my first World Championship. Who was the last person to manage such a thing? Should something such as that even be possible?
The answer is no. The game’s difficulty level is one of its major issues. The fact that I was 4th in the championship before I left Jordan tells you all you need to know. Anyone with a bit of knowledge of the circuits will quite quickly settle into a groove and buzz through the career mode with barely a problem. The fact that you can very possibly win the title with the slowest team on the grid means that progression is tainted by the fact that it is all generally unnecessary unless you fancy driving for your own favourite team or just fancy a change of colour now and again.
Then there’re the minor niggles. Firstly, the game was set into production shortly before a major qualifying rule change took place, meaning that you still have to persist with the wretched aggregate time system that the governing body tried to ruin the sport with. Of equal annoyance is the opposition AI, which although improved still resorts to chugging around in little trains more often than not and will still ram into you at the smallest opportunity. It does a lot to spoil the illusion of realism that the handling goes a long way to providing.
Perhaps the biggest offender of the whole lot though is the ruddy penalty system that sees your car getting a time-limited rev penalty. Whilst this is an annoyance by itself as it is due to being completely unrealistic, the next time you spin backwards across the inside of a corner due to getting rammed by a cretinous AI opponent you’ll find yourself getting penalised for that too. It’s a horrid system which overreacts to even the slightest of grassy moments, and whilst in one way you can almost understand it if it keeps people from cheating, the fact that the AI keep shoving you into these situations means that you often get penalised twice by the computer.
Thankfully, the other main mode of the game – Time Trial – does away with the AI completely and challenges you to beat bronze, silver and gold medal times on each of the 2005 circuits. Doing so will eventually unlock classic cars such as the 1982 Williams, and completing them all on gold will get you a pretty tasty reward too. No spoilers here though, so you’ll just have to knuckle down and find out what it is for yourself.
In terms of looks, the game continues the general improvement that you’d expect as the native hardware comes of age. Cars now look more solid, thanks in no small part to some reasonably attractive lighting effects that have been employed. Circuits themselves all have appropriate scenery and some authentic camera angles, although Studio Liverpool have still littered a load of the annoying ‘fly-by’ cameras into proceedings.
So, does Formula One 2005 represent a step in the right direction for the series? Yes, but a small one. The career mode is heading the right direction, and the handling has been improved no end. Sadly, the lack of difficulty and the silly AI are like a shard of carbon fibre on a Michelin front left tyre, seriously deflating the sense of realism. There are seeds here that could bear fruit if the developer can latch onto them and take full advantage; whether they are allowed enough time before next year’s inevitable version is another question.
6/10
