It was a pretty predictable thing that the first PS3 game I would make a grab for once we got our office machine nicely settled and cosy was the Formula One title. It may have annoyed Jay to the point of tears (well, perhaps not quite) that the first moments with our new console would be spent in the company of Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso and associates, but to me it was like being a 5-year-old in a sweet shop all over again.

That being said, I was a kid in a sweet shop expecting to be given some plain-Jane boiled sweets instead of sherbet lemons. I’m a stickler for detail in F1 games these days and my fascination with the PC mod scene that produces inch-perfect replicas of Renaults, Ferraris and McLarens for our use on various racing simulations has seen my standards level go impossibly high when it comes to treating console Formula One games. It’s thus with a twinge of surprise that I can report that Formula One: Championship Edition is yet another step in the right direct for Sony and developers Studio Liverpool.

At its core, Championship Edition is a very similar game to the Formula One 06 titles we got on PS2 and PSP last summer. There’s still the very same Quick Race, Time Trial, Grand Prix Weekend and Career modes available, and each is presented in exactly the same manner as before. The former two modes are exactly what you’d expect; their quick, pick-up-and-play nature absolutely perfect for lunchtime fun or pre-pub racing. The third option – Grand Prix Weekend – gives you the chance to simulate the normal happenings of a three-day Grand Prix event, with practice and the new Qualifying system all packed in.

It’s undoubtedly to Career mode that most will head, and its also where the most time will probably also be spent. Giving players the option to start with a lesser team and work their way up through hard-earned results to the big boys was always something that people had asked to be included in a Formula One game, and ever since its first appearance a few years ago Studio Liverpool have been tweaking away at the structure to make it as realistic and involving as possible.

Say, for example, you started off, passed your initial test for one of the first teams (Toro Rosso, Super Aguri and Midland) and then started popping in some great performances in the lower half of the top dozen or so. Pretty quickly you’ll have BMW and Honda sniffing around with contracts on offer, and by accepting you’ll have new performance targets that you need to hit in order to sustain your drive. On the flipside, if you start weaving around as if you were Yuji Ide mark 2 then it’s pretty likely that you’ll get demoted to test driver status and left to your own devices. It all works pretty much exactly as the previous iteration did.

Once out on circuit the changes are more immediately apparent. For one, the visuals are enormously impressive. The thing looks as darn close to the actual sport as anything on a console has managed yet, and it comes mightily close to matching some of the stuff that top-end PCs can churn out with the right software available. Each car is pretty close to their real-life counterpart, although small errors are dotted about for those eagle-eyed F1 anoraks like myself.

The detail carries over to the circuits too. Head across to Bahrain, for example, and you’ll be greeted by the dusty yellows, oranges and browns of the desert, with heat-hazes bubbling off the cars. Make your way to Monaco, however, and you’ll be met with mishmash of greys as the winding metal monster twists its way around the beautiful local scenery. Take into account that the PS3 handles all of this with all 22 cars on circuit without even seemingly breaking sweat and you have permission to be rather more excited about the console than perhaps you thought you would be.

It’s the neat little graphical touches that really add to the whole thing. The way trackside objects are reflected in real-time in the drivers’ visors, or the bits of spray that stream across the screen when you follow another driver in wet conditions. The whole thing exudes that warm, fuzzy next-gen feeling that anyone without a ninja PC has missed out on for the past few years.

It’s not all good news, though. Issues with the opposition AI continue, with dawdling opponents still depressingly slow off the line at times and more than happy to nurf you off the circuit at any given opportunity. Collision detection is still a hit-and-miss thing, with a few crashes seemingly triggered out of thin air rather than any actual contact. It makes running in close contact with other cars rather more nerve-wracking than it should be, especially if one of them happens to be Takuma Sato.

Control over the car seems to have been made heavier for the PS3 version too, which was something that took a reasonable while to get used to. This actually ends up giving a better feel to the driving and allows smoother, more realistic lines to be taken, but in initial stages the chances are that the majority of you will do exactly what I kept doing and creating your own unique racing lines off the tarmac on the exit of many of the turns.

Talking of control, Studio Liverpool have also chucked in the option to use the SIXAXIS as a makeshift steering wheel by tilting it left and right whenever you need to turn in said direction. Whilst in theory it sounds pretty exciting, the reality is that without a decent sense of feedback it is very difficult to stop unintentionally weaving around like an idiot and bouncing off other cars and walls. A nice idea certainly, but something that will be an occasional curiosity rather than a control scheme of choice in the long run.

One rather major minus point is that the game features no offline multiplayer mode whatsoever. Those of you happily imagining sitting down in your living room with a mate composing your own version of how the 2006 season actually went will be crushed to find that the only way you’re going to get some fun with real people is by hooking up your PS3 to the wonders of the internet and arranging a multiplayer session against seven other petrolheads. If anyone from Studio Liverpool happens upon this section of the review, perhaps you might be kind enough to reinstate some split screen goodness for Formula One 2007?

Still, as a launch title Formula One: Championship Edition does its job remarkably well. It shows off enough tweaks and touches graphically to show off the new hardware whilst keeping the solid base on which the current generation of Formula One games were built upon. A reason to pay £425 for a brand new machine it might not be, but for any F1 fans who happen to be picking up their brand new consoles this weekend it’s a very hard job not to recommend it.