Screenshots :.
F1 2009
Wii
Matt
25-11-2009
"Oooh, how arty."
"Brawn GP out in front again."
"Splitscreen is pretty good fun."
"Better hope that's not Piquet."
"F1 isn't this exciting!"
"Rain driving seperates the men from the boys."
It’s been a long time since us Formula One fans had a new console game to shout about, hasn’t it? Way back when the PS3 came out Studio Liverpool quietly released Formula One: Championship edition to reasonable acclaim and then sat back as Sony’s exclusivity rights on the sport lapsed. Codemasters picked up the baton at some point last year and have been busy beavering away on an all-swinging, all-dancing next-gen Formula One game for us in 2010, but in the meantime have chucked Wii and PSP owners a bone in the form of Formula One 2009, which is based upon this year’s will-he-won’t-he Jenson Button World Championship saga minus the politics, race-fixing scandals and Eddie Jordan’s sodding annoying television analysis.
Actually, mentioning Somerset’s finest export since Sheppy’s Cider up there is rather appropriate in a way, as much like with Jenson you are never actually quite sure how good you think Formula One 2009 actually is. There are times when you sit back and have an entertaining race or pull of a blinding overtaking move and things seem really quite rosy and fun, but equally there are moments where you would rather be the person ghost-writing Kimi Raikkonen’s autobiography* rather than sit another moment in front of the thing. It’s safe to say that it’s somewhat of a mixed bag, then.
See, the main thing that is always going to make a driving game on the Wii unique is the control scheme, and how good it feels to use it. Copies of the game ship with a plastic steering wheel accessory thing that could alternatively make a pretty wicked frisbee, but also manages to actually improve the way the game feels by giving you something rather more meaningful to hold onto than the edge of sideways Wii-mote.
The reason this is so important is apparent right from your first moments in the game. You’ll turn the Wii-mote sideways in anticipation of your first ever lap in an F1 car. You’ll feel a twinge of excitement as the game performs a rolling start to save you the bother of the outlap. You’ll then go veering wildly off the circuit when you realise that the cars handle like they are pivoting around a giant marble situated directly under the driver. The handling lies somewhere between curious and utterly horrid depending on your mood, and brings into focus again the one issue that has Formula One fans worried about Codemaster’s F1 games in general: the fact that every racing game they have done recently seems to simulate this invisible axis point in the middle of the car.
This brings to the boil a particular annoyance of mine that I can’t help but bring up in this review, as it’s appropriate. Just because a racing game is not a simulation doesn’t mean the cars need to handle like complete and utter arse. Take Mario Kart for example – it’s a fun arcade game where the handling is nice and simple and, most importantly, accessible to everyone. Take Ridge Racer, in which the handling, although simple, actually felt like the car was gripping on the four round black things on each corner. I have driven Formula One simulations on the PC that are easier and more instinctive than the handling of Formula One 2009 on the Wii, and that’s just wrong.
To be fair to them, a good chunk of their problem is that with just a Wii-mote you’re never, ever going to be able to feel an F1 car properly anyway. The complete lack of feedback save some modest rumble means you’ll be steering too much most of the time and lurching around the track as if completely drunk. Thankfully there are various control options on offer, and should you wish to give up the unequal struggle and rely on a good old nunchuck for steering then you can. Personal experience proved the moment I swapped from the former method to the latter to be the point where the game actually became quite fun.
The primary mode of interest is the Career, in which you initially are offered tests for BMW and Toro Rosso and, should you achieve a set laptime, be offered a contract from either. Failure to do so will see you getting signed by Force India where you’ll no doubt spend the entire season showing sporadic moments of pace in between searching for another accident to get yourself involved in. Oh, hang on, that is Adrian Sutil Simulator 2009 – my mistake.
You’re then chucked into the hurly burly of an F1 season, during which you must achieve a set number of points in order to impress enough people to get offers from bigger, better teams. It’s a nice little mode to absorb yourself in for a few hours at a time and, whilst not offering much in the way of detail of depth (the race reviews and previews that you are sent into your virtual inbox are really rather vague) it provides a much-needed sense of progression.
Something that it isn’t, mind, is particularly tricky if you are familiar with F1 games past. I slapped the game onto the hardest difficulty level with none of the driving aids enabled save for traction control and proceeded to put my Beemer on pole for my first race before finishing a strong third. Within moments my inbox was graced by an email from BMW suggesting they confidently expected me to cruise to an easy win in my second ever Grand Prix, and when this was achieved I had pretty much guaranteed myself a top seat within two races.
Another nice feature is the ability to race in splitscreen with a friend over an entire season, either working together as a team or against each other. I personally look forward to the day when I can challenge my Mercedes GP buddy to a season in the virtual Brawn that the virtual version of himself virtually helped design, and with a pretty reasonable frame rate it’s good fun if you can find an F1 fan such as this. There’s no online mode, though, and that is rather disappointing as it would have added a convenient multiplayer option for folks who haven’t got anyone who can play locally.
Probably the other main mode for folks to work their way through is the Challenge Mode, in which you are given 70 tasks to complete as your work your way through. These vary from simple things such as winning a race to rather more tricky affairs like the Touge events, where you must not tonk into your solo opponent during a two lap duel or you instantly fail. Thankfully the AI isn’t actually all that bad save the odd erratic braking moment, so these can be achieved with a bit of skill at the right moment. It perhaps would have been nice to have a few real-life scenarios from this season such as trying to avoid getting stuck behind Jarno Trulli in pretty much every race everywhere and trying not to be near Nelson Piquet Jr when he spun off every other lap, but never mind.
Visually, the game is rather… er… well let’s just say it ain’t gonna win any awards. Whilst you have to accept that it’s running on a Wii and that it’s also trying to run 20 cars at the same time as well as generate the circuits, it’s blurry, smudged and garishly coloured in places. Driving the Toro Rosso and Red Bull cars in the cockpit view gives you an idea of what it would look like to drive a Formula One car designed around a Toblerone packet, for example. The game also does a couple of odd things visually such as having the cars spew smoke out of the tyres at even the merest hint of understeer, which looks particularly peculiar when the entire field are doing it at the same time.
Generally, Formula One 2009 is reasonable enough. It was never going to be a simulation and it was never going to be an award-winning technological masterpiece and to some extents it ticks some of the boxes you’d want ticked, but at the same time you can’t help but feel disappointed at how it looks, and a bit miffed at the pretty awkward handling. As a stop-gap until next year it’ll probably tide a few fans over, but for the majority it’ll be a case of holding out and hoping against all hope that when Codies churn out their major effort next year that it bears little if any resemblance. Optimistic? Well…
* excerpt from Kimi Raikkonen: A Robot’s Tale: “I was born. It was good. I did things normal children do. My parents performed well. I went to school. It was okay. I did some karting. I liked it. I performed well. I became a Formula One driver. It was fun. I liked it. I performed well. I did things normal Formula One millionaires do. One day I fell off a boat. Abort. Retry. Fail”.
Actually, mentioning Somerset’s finest export since Sheppy’s Cider up there is rather appropriate in a way, as much like with Jenson you are never actually quite sure how good you think Formula One 2009 actually is. There are times when you sit back and have an entertaining race or pull of a blinding overtaking move and things seem really quite rosy and fun, but equally there are moments where you would rather be the person ghost-writing Kimi Raikkonen’s autobiography* rather than sit another moment in front of the thing. It’s safe to say that it’s somewhat of a mixed bag, then.
See, the main thing that is always going to make a driving game on the Wii unique is the control scheme, and how good it feels to use it. Copies of the game ship with a plastic steering wheel accessory thing that could alternatively make a pretty wicked frisbee, but also manages to actually improve the way the game feels by giving you something rather more meaningful to hold onto than the edge of sideways Wii-mote.
The reason this is so important is apparent right from your first moments in the game. You’ll turn the Wii-mote sideways in anticipation of your first ever lap in an F1 car. You’ll feel a twinge of excitement as the game performs a rolling start to save you the bother of the outlap. You’ll then go veering wildly off the circuit when you realise that the cars handle like they are pivoting around a giant marble situated directly under the driver. The handling lies somewhere between curious and utterly horrid depending on your mood, and brings into focus again the one issue that has Formula One fans worried about Codemaster’s F1 games in general: the fact that every racing game they have done recently seems to simulate this invisible axis point in the middle of the car.
This brings to the boil a particular annoyance of mine that I can’t help but bring up in this review, as it’s appropriate. Just because a racing game is not a simulation doesn’t mean the cars need to handle like complete and utter arse. Take Mario Kart for example – it’s a fun arcade game where the handling is nice and simple and, most importantly, accessible to everyone. Take Ridge Racer, in which the handling, although simple, actually felt like the car was gripping on the four round black things on each corner. I have driven Formula One simulations on the PC that are easier and more instinctive than the handling of Formula One 2009 on the Wii, and that’s just wrong.
To be fair to them, a good chunk of their problem is that with just a Wii-mote you’re never, ever going to be able to feel an F1 car properly anyway. The complete lack of feedback save some modest rumble means you’ll be steering too much most of the time and lurching around the track as if completely drunk. Thankfully there are various control options on offer, and should you wish to give up the unequal struggle and rely on a good old nunchuck for steering then you can. Personal experience proved the moment I swapped from the former method to the latter to be the point where the game actually became quite fun.
The primary mode of interest is the Career, in which you initially are offered tests for BMW and Toro Rosso and, should you achieve a set laptime, be offered a contract from either. Failure to do so will see you getting signed by Force India where you’ll no doubt spend the entire season showing sporadic moments of pace in between searching for another accident to get yourself involved in. Oh, hang on, that is Adrian Sutil Simulator 2009 – my mistake.
You’re then chucked into the hurly burly of an F1 season, during which you must achieve a set number of points in order to impress enough people to get offers from bigger, better teams. It’s a nice little mode to absorb yourself in for a few hours at a time and, whilst not offering much in the way of detail of depth (the race reviews and previews that you are sent into your virtual inbox are really rather vague) it provides a much-needed sense of progression.
Something that it isn’t, mind, is particularly tricky if you are familiar with F1 games past. I slapped the game onto the hardest difficulty level with none of the driving aids enabled save for traction control and proceeded to put my Beemer on pole for my first race before finishing a strong third. Within moments my inbox was graced by an email from BMW suggesting they confidently expected me to cruise to an easy win in my second ever Grand Prix, and when this was achieved I had pretty much guaranteed myself a top seat within two races.
Another nice feature is the ability to race in splitscreen with a friend over an entire season, either working together as a team or against each other. I personally look forward to the day when I can challenge my Mercedes GP buddy to a season in the virtual Brawn that the virtual version of himself virtually helped design, and with a pretty reasonable frame rate it’s good fun if you can find an F1 fan such as this. There’s no online mode, though, and that is rather disappointing as it would have added a convenient multiplayer option for folks who haven’t got anyone who can play locally.
Probably the other main mode for folks to work their way through is the Challenge Mode, in which you are given 70 tasks to complete as your work your way through. These vary from simple things such as winning a race to rather more tricky affairs like the Touge events, where you must not tonk into your solo opponent during a two lap duel or you instantly fail. Thankfully the AI isn’t actually all that bad save the odd erratic braking moment, so these can be achieved with a bit of skill at the right moment. It perhaps would have been nice to have a few real-life scenarios from this season such as trying to avoid getting stuck behind Jarno Trulli in pretty much every race everywhere and trying not to be near Nelson Piquet Jr when he spun off every other lap, but never mind.
Visually, the game is rather… er… well let’s just say it ain’t gonna win any awards. Whilst you have to accept that it’s running on a Wii and that it’s also trying to run 20 cars at the same time as well as generate the circuits, it’s blurry, smudged and garishly coloured in places. Driving the Toro Rosso and Red Bull cars in the cockpit view gives you an idea of what it would look like to drive a Formula One car designed around a Toblerone packet, for example. The game also does a couple of odd things visually such as having the cars spew smoke out of the tyres at even the merest hint of understeer, which looks particularly peculiar when the entire field are doing it at the same time.
Generally, Formula One 2009 is reasonable enough. It was never going to be a simulation and it was never going to be an award-winning technological masterpiece and to some extents it ticks some of the boxes you’d want ticked, but at the same time you can’t help but feel disappointed at how it looks, and a bit miffed at the pretty awkward handling. As a stop-gap until next year it’ll probably tide a few fans over, but for the majority it’ll be a case of holding out and hoping against all hope that when Codies churn out their major effort next year that it bears little if any resemblance. Optimistic? Well…
* excerpt from Kimi Raikkonen: A Robot’s Tale: “I was born. It was good. I did things normal children do. My parents performed well. I went to school. It was okay. I did some karting. I liked it. I performed well. I became a Formula One driver. It was fun. I liked it. I performed well. I did things normal Formula One millionaires do. One day I fell off a boat. Abort. Retry. Fail”.
6/10
