No shooting, maiming, or blowing things to bits. No beating anything to death with a shoehorn and arms will not be used for bludgeoning.
Codemasters is releasing F1-2010 on 22-September for all the major platforms (PS3, XBox 360, PC, Wii, PSP, Mac) which is in itself notable coverage and must have taken forever to get working. While there have been mods for F1 in rFactor, this is the first major purely F1 branded product since EA in 2002 and it contains all the 2010 teams and drivers.
There are a gazillion demo clips on YouTube, frankly none of which are all that gripping but their work in Dirt 2 was solid and well received and given that product I would expect this one to be more simulation than arcade style although the exact balance remains to be seen. Modern F1 simulation is a difficult prospect for developers with realism being too hard for most people and arcade action being so far removed from reality as to be unconvincing. In any event, this should be a good thing for repeatedly cranking out the laps with no latent evil intent. My take is that a morning of F1 Zen goodness should just about balance out an afternoon of carpet bombing.
links:
http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2010/03/17/f1-2010-first-play/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F1_2010_%28video_game%29
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dirt-2
Email the author of this post at Helmut@tap-repeatedly.com.
I’m massively excited about this. I’m a big fan of both the Gran Turismo and Forza series’, but in terms of 3rd party racing games I think Codemasters have been at the top of the field for the last few years; particularly when it comes to integrating a proper career mode to flesh out the actual racing. F1 should be ripe for that, what with team and driver rivalries being an integral part of the sport.
Oh, and the racing itself looks spot on too. Day One purchase here.
Oh, and another thing.. do I get minus Karma points for ramming Alonso into a tire wall on the first corner?
Ram me into the wall in corner one and you’ll come back as a dung beetle. Ram Alonso into the wall at corner one and the world will beat a path to your door 🙂 Have you played Dirt or Dirt 2? I have RBR and I find it too hard to play although I’ve never gotten my wheel set up satisfactorily with it. I’d like this F1 experience to be hard enough to reward lots of hours of practice, but not so hard to the point of merit-less frustration.
I love a good F1 game, funny because me and Mat were only talking about it the other day.
Bagsy Red Bull!
Nnnnnnnneeeooooooooouuuuuuuuummmmmm!
I’m getting confused with all the four letter racing games out there. Pure, Dirt, Blur, Grid, Fuel – they all just er, blur into one. I’m just waiting for ‘Skid’ and ‘Burn’ to turn up. I played the Grid demo a while back but couldn’t overcome the handling which sort of reflects my experience with Formula 1 games. That’s a fair point as well regarding the “realism being too hard for most people and arcade action being so far removed from reality as to be unconvincing”. I’m a Ridge Racer kind of person and always saw Gran Turismo as a mightily impressive but quite po-faced racing simulator. I always had a “it’s not you, it’s me” type affair with it and ever since have gravitated around more arcade-y stuff.
Something I’ve always said about these realistic racing games though: they’ll achieve genuine photo (or video) realism way before any other genre; they just look incredible these days.
I’ll agree there’s a certain amount of brand exhaustion going on during this racing game genre resurgence. A lot of duplication of effort that does confuse the consumer. SimBin the maker of the GT-XXX series is very guilty of this, releasing basically the same game with graphical updates with officially incompatible track formats. Naturally modders have remedied this.
Arcade-like only refers to a generally accepted tolerance for on track collisions as fun elements along with more forgiving physics and the ability to somehow catch up if you fall behind. F1 cars are fragile in real life and it just doesn’t seem right to slam them around. And what with all that karma on the table, who wants to?