For all of you who were let down by GP2, prepare yourselves for World
Championship Formula 1 from Psygnosis for the Playstation. No slow
frame rates, no MASSIVE cpu requirements, all you need is a $199
Playstation and a $69.95 Mad Katz Steering Wheel/Pedal Combo unit and
you're all set for the best F1 Sim coming real soon... I can't wait !!
Read this from Bizarre Creations' July issue:
Sim Racing News - Product Update
- F1 (Bizarre Creations / Psygnosis)
Every year when Formula One goes to Monaco, we revel in the sight of
some of the world's best drivers fighting 700hp
through the tight, slippery streets. For me, Monaco, and F1 in
general, is summed up by the oft shown images of Ayrton
Senna hurling his McLaren into and out of the swimming pool complex,
scant millimetres from the armcos. A wonderful sight,
and the one I always use to test any F1 game - how does it feel when
taking that complex flat out? It's an incredibly difficult
section to do quickly, but it is immensely immensely rewarding in
terms of lap times and in the satisfaction of something
achieved when you get it "just right". F1GP captured that feel
perfectly, and enormous satisfaction is gained from getting a
good lap and threading the car between the armcos - how about Bizarre
Creations F1?
Well I'm happy to say it succeeds - and then some. Balancing the
car on the throttle before dashing through the left, right
- right, left of the swimming pool is as satisfying as ever, and
the car "feels" right. That is an incredibly difficult thing to
get right, or indeed to explain, the "feel" of a driving sim, but it
is immediately obvious to a driver when it is wrong. F1 responds
as you expect, catching oversteer with throttle or wheel, balancing
the car through corners, the feedback that lets you know
when the car is just about to go into a spin. Like most racers I can't
describe exactly how it is you know these things, but
whatever it is F1 is giving the right feedback for driving. Take that
Arcade label outside and shoot it, this has real sim
aspirations.
On the other hand, get that arcade label back in here, let's not shoot
it just yet. Essentially that is what F1 is, a sim racer in the
clothes of an arcade game. What it lacks in the setup department, it
makes up for in the driving model, so if you enjoy driving
but find the garage something of a mystery, you will love F1. If you
enjoy spending hours tinkering with tyre pressures,
cambers and the like, for you F1 will be rather sparse in that
respect. A difficult game to categorise, more sim than arcade, and
yet more arcade than the sims.
Setup
Actual car setup covers only the major areas such as the adjustment of
wings and brake balance, rather similar to F1GP. In
terms of race strategy, you can choose how many fuel stops to run, and
adjustments can be made while you pit, changing
tyres, taking on fuel and repairing any damage you've sustained. You
can also switch to wets should it start to rain (more on
that later).
The Tracks (or, "Who the heck left THAT there?!")
For those drivers like me who have played F1GP to death, F1 will come
as somewhat of a rude awakening - you may be in
for a shock on your first lap around some circuits. Powering down the
S/F straight toward Ste. Devote on my first lap around
Monaco, I was caught unawares by that bit of barrier that juts out
from the left - you can see it on TV, and you can crash into
it in F1 (unless of course you're a better driver than I am). The
reason for this is that the actual tracks have been recreated with
incredible precision, so many features which were not included in
F1GP, will be found here.
This attention to detail and unerring accuracy is a theme which runs
through every track in F1. We all know that little hump in
the road leading down from Casino square to Mirabeau - some drivers go
over it, some drive around it, and thats a choice you
also must now make because it too is in F1. Such is the case with
every track, and if I could tell you the extraordinary trouble
Bizarre went to in order to ensure the tracks were utterly accurate,
you would be as amazed as I was. I can't stress how much
fun that was, every little detail that you see on TV is found on the
track here.
More Tracks
The time I spent at Bizarre Creations was full of incredible first
impressions - the top-notch graphics of the game, the driving
model, the incredible intro sequence, the mechanics underlying the
game, the cordon bleu talents of Betty Butty (don't ask!),
the inflatable aeroplane fights, I could go on for ages (who said
"yes, and you usually do"?!). The track designer however, is
possibly my favourite feature. This is an absolutely incredible piece
of work, allowing total control over a track. With a little
work and some help files, even Sarah will be able to work it (although
I'm not going to be rushing down to Ladbrokes on that
one). This will be an invaluable add-on, and worth the price of the
game by itself.
I sat and watched as a track was literally created in front of my eyes
in a few minutes - when I consider what some people,
myself included, went through trying to create tracks for ICR2, this
is a revelation. Firstly the track laid down, widths adjusted,
rumble strips added, heights for each point set, the camber of the
track set at any point you want to adjust - all of this with just
a few mouse clicks. A total dream. Consider this a bit like the WAD
designers for DOOM - it is simple to knock up a track
with little effort, but a real classic will take some time adding and
perfecting textures, graphics etc. AI performance and racing
lines can be put in and manipulated, and the end result is basically
any track you want to create. Utterly fabulous, but
unfortunately it only works on the PC. Not so good for the Playstation
owners, but if our pleas are heard and a PC version
does get the go-ahead, there is the potential for designing any track
imaginable. Anyone fancy a modem race around the
Nordschleife?!!
Driving Model
Being written for the Playstation, F1 has inevitably been tagged with
that arcade image by racers, and it is true there are one or
two aspects of it which do come under this heading. However, the
driving model certainly isn't one of them. Dont let the fact
that it has an arcade setting lull you into any false impressions, it
may not have the complex driving physics of GP2 or ICR2,
but it is a million miles away from arcade games like Need for Speed
and Screamer.
As a long time sim-racer, I confidently hopped into the driving seat
and won only my second race........ Yes I did, I won! Oh
okay, it was in arcade mode......yes, I was driving a
Williams........right OKAY, it was also on the easy setting - happy
now?!
Having achieved this, I immediately went into Overconfident-R-Us mode
and headed for Grand Prix mode, on hard setting
with no driver aids. First stop, Monza (easy track!).......So there I
am sitting on the grass at the Rettifilio, facing the wrong way
- wow, what happened?! Several hundred yards out of the pits and I was
pirouetting straight through the chicanes having put
two wheels on the grass under braking. As you would expect, the car
went into a spin and there ended my first outing. I was
told that the tires are cold when you leave the pits and need time to
come up to full racing temperature - I knew there had to
be a reason why I crashed!
Over the next couple of hours I tried Monza, Silverstone, Aida and
Monaco, getting the hang of the controls and the circuits,
and at the end I was very impressed. The controls felt great in Grand
Prix mode, especially when using analogue brake and
throttle, and that all important feel was definitely there allowing
the car to be driven on (or in my case over!) the edge. In the
fast uphill sweeps of Aida, the car could be balanced well, and
over/under steer caught and controlled on either the gas/brake
or the steering as you would expect. It's NOT easy to drive, far more
like Indycar 2 than F1GP with an excellent steering
model in Grand Prix mode. Having said that, I wasn't very happy with
the way the brakes reacted, either being too strong or
too weak. From later chats with Bizarre Creations, this has been
worked upon, and I look forward to testing the
improvements on the final version.
In fact the only thing which we found to be a problem (and something
which has been noted on the newsgroups) was that at
the time of our test there was no actual "in car" view to race from.
Instead there is a "dynamic camera" which you can move
around and place anywhere you want on the car. This is fine and would
allow in car views if you positioned it in the cockpit,
but we begged and pleaded with them to include an in-car view....and
they did! (Thanks!). The newly implemented in-car
driving view shows the view down over the front wheels and wing, and
can be static or can move with the motion of the car
(when you bounce over the kerbs, your head bounces too).
AI Performance
While wandering around the Bizarre Creations office, I chanced upon a
copy of The Bible!!! - Ayrton Senna's book
"Principles of race driving" (if you havent read it, why not!?!?!?).
As it turned out, this book was used to fine-tune the
racing tactics and line of the AI, so be very careful going into the
first corner at Suzuka, and never enter your player name as
Alain Prost .
Actually the performance of the AI was one of the most difficult
things to evaluate, partly because it is still being worked on at
the moment, especially the close quarters racing, and partly because I
never saw them! I wasn't quick enough to keep up and
race wheel to wheel. The most I managed was three laps of
wheel-to-wheel dicing around Aida in Grand Prix mode, and I
found the AI to be excellent (then I touched the grass and spun off,
never seeing the AI again until I was lapped!).
Along with the driving model, AI is probably the most important thing
in a game, and I cant really endorse it on the basis of
only a few laps
...
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