I bought this game a few weeks ago, and having finished one
full year of career mode, the season challenge and most other modes I think I
know enough to write a full review.
I've played half-distance Career races at the first 3 (of 4)
difficulty levels, and found them to be set at very good intervals. The lowest
level, amateur, ceases to be a challenge after a few races, but intermediate
was a bit trickier for a while. I'm up to professional now, and find that to be
rather more serious, without being so tough I feel like I'm always on the back foot.
The tyres work extremely well. When tyres are grassy or get
gravel on them it does rob them of grip temporarily, and trying a wet tyre on a
dry track or vice versa is not a good idea. If you look after your tyres then
after losing time to someone who's gone charging off you can make yours last
longer, make up the time as they post slower laps and then pass them during the
pit stops.
Weather was a key, and great, feature of F1 2010 and the
same applies to F1 2012. Sometimes it can rain on one part of the track but not
another, and differing parts dry out at different rates too. Rain can be very
light or extremely heavy, and this can make tyre choices difficult and very
important, and the AI drivers can get it wrong too.
Crashing is always fun, but damage is limited in terms of
the bits flying off the car. I think this is due to the FIA not wanting the
game showing cars being smashed to little bits. The effect is that losing a
front wing (entirely or just a little bit) looks great but a full blown crash
will do more limited damage than might be expected (you can lose wheels).
Happily, the drivers aren't entirely realistic, as Maldonado
and Grosjean don't crash all the damned time. AI seems to be significantly
better than F1 2010 but could still be improved. Cars are generally good at
getting out of the way when you're lapping them and the starts seem a bit less
crash-prone.
The penalty system (on the default light-touch setting) is
much improved. It's not perfect (I once got hit from behind and then got
penalised for 'causing a collision') but the instances of undeserved penalties
are far fewer, and you can sometimes get away with deliberately damaging
another car (not that I would ever do that). The biggest problem with it
coincides with the AI. When you get blue-flagged (meaning you have to move
aside to let a car about to lap you past) if you don't do it very quickly you
get a penalty. However, the other lapped cars know exactly how to do this and
then pass you immediately, because they know exactly how many cars are lapping,
where they are and so on.
Graphics
The graphics are very nice. This shows up most especially
when there's wet or changeable weather. Following a car in heavy rain now means
you get spattered with the rooster tail (the spray of water behind an F1 car in
the wet) which reduces visibility almost to zero.
The cars, of course, look very nice and the tracks likewise.
Effects such as the dipping sun in Abu Dhabi
or the floodlights reflecting on the cars in Singapore
work very nicely.
Sound
Maybe I'm going mad, but I do think there's a difference
between the engines of different cars. And this is a good thing.
The engineer, whilst often telling me what happened 3
seconds ago, has a decent, clear voice. David Croft excitedly explaining
certain scenarios (in Season Challenge, for example) didn't do much for me, but
I very much enjoyed Anthony Davison's track guides.
Longevity/replay value
Hard to assess without sinking hundreds of hours into a
game, but I'd say there's quite a lot. There are variable modes and numerous
difficulty options, and the full season offers a great, and lengthy, challenge.
I would say that there's strong replay value. As well as
bumping up the difficulty for the second year of a season there are quite a lot
of different options.
Bugs and other issues
The frame rate is an issue. I did not think it was before,
but in Suzuka (Japan)
it slowed down significantly. Not enough to make the game unplayable but enough
to dilute my enjoyment of it. It also slows down elsewhere, but usually it's
not very serious.
The extreme speed of the sport also means that the race
engineer (who I decided ought to be called Jeremy, as he was noisier than he
was useful) often said things that were out of date. Not a serious issue, but
it does jar slightly.
So, if I were to give it a score, it'd be 8.5/10.
Thaddeus
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