Formula One Championship Edition
Sony is finally bringing things Stateside again.
Published: December 13, 2006
Call it properly embracing the whole worldwide nature of PlayStation 3 development and Sony's whole Worldwide Studios thing. Call it a tumbling of borders and regions and games getting released for everyone to play regardless of major geographical location. Or call it what it likely is: the last Sony-licensed Formula One game and a push to get it in as many homes as possible while people are still starved for PlayStation 3 titles. Whatever the reason, after a bit of a sabbatical, the Studio Liverpool-developed racer is bound for US shores.
This bodes well for folks looking for a) a new F1 racer and b) looking for something that elicits oohs and ahhs from lookers-on. We've gone hands-on with a fairly complete build of the upcoming PS3 racer and will now dispense with the horribly inexperienced run down. See, none of us in the office really watches Formula One races, much less plays the games or visits the events, so our experience with the games is limited, though that didn't really stop us from taking a bunch of notes and futzing our way through double-digit race numbers.
The whole Championship Edition moniker was likely thrown in there because a yearly title wouldn't make much sense given that the series is still very much being tested again for US release (that, and the license is running out), but rest assured that the full official FIA 2006 season has been replicated here. All the 18 tracks, season races, drivers and 11 teams will be here (and yes, superfans, that includes the new Japanese Super Aguri F1, Red Bull's Scuderia Torro Rosso, and Midland F1/Spyker MF1 Racing teams). Of the 22 racers that will swim up the stream of pavement 11 of them can be controlled by online buddies (locally, it's just two-player split-screen).
We sadly didn't get a chance to play the game online, nor did we delve especially deep into the single-player modes (hey, something has to be saved for the review, right?), but we did get to poke around the handful of standard race types; Quickplay, Weekend and Season were all here, and the first two options play exactly as you'd expect, offering a one-shot or slightly bulkier set of races to get the basics down.
It was the Career Mode that was most interesting, however, due in no small part to the fact that it actually graded you on your racing performance. The idea is fairly simple; race well and you'll stay on the team, botch races and you're out. Of course, before you can pick a team, you'll have to do a dry run with one of the three teams mentioned earlier. This time trial grades you individual lap times or cumulative double-digit lap runs, but they aren't terribly hard if you've got the assists on.
In fact, with them on, the game almost drives itself, preventing spin-outs and crashes by controlling your speed going into and out of corners, picking the right gear and effectively baby-stepping you through things. It all feels like it's on rails, but for newcomers (like, well, us), it was actually a nice way to learn the course. Flipping them off lets you drive however you'd like, but it's best to use the same sparing approach until you learn the best way to hit the corners. The game can be absolutely merciless if you play it like an arcade racer, and that's likely why the assists are there to begin with -- even if they were a little heavy-handed.
As you progress through the game, you'll have the opportunity to juggle multiple offers, yammer on with your agent and teammates and work as a cog in a greater machine throughout the season. It's all presented with a clean little PDA interface with a nice smattering of e-mail messages, though it's not really a fully-functional correspondence option (we're hoping that in-game messages during online play might at least sport the same basic look, though).
Peripheral support is impressive; Logitech's more popular wheels like the Driving Force Pro and even the newest G25 wheel are selectable (and can be tweaked in the options, though obviously we couldn't do that with just the SIXAXIS). Luckily, if you're not quite that hardcore as to sport the wheel rig, the PS3's default input system, the SIXAXIS, works surprisingly well. Much like MotorStorm (which we also happened to play at the same Sony event that introduced us to F1CE), you can hold the controller like a steering wheel and use the triggers for acceleration and braking, and the shoulders like race wheel paddles. It does feel weird at first, but because it's rather responsive, it didn't take us long to get the hang of it.
A dimly-lit louge is not the best environment to check out the sound quality of a racer, but even still, we were pleasantly surprised with the thickness of the audio being pumped out of Sony's gorgeous 1080p Bravia sets. The visuals didn't hurt either, and as anyone who's played the demo (you can grab it now from the PlayStation Store) will tell you, the game is something of a graphics showcase -- particularly if you turn on the rain. During clear weather, the ripple of heat waves, little blades of grass, bits of sand and dee-licious texture and reflection detail on the cars all make for one of the most gorgeous racers you'll ever see.
HDR lighting is subtle enough that it doesn't take over the game, but there are some absolutely gorgeous vistas if the sun is allowed to peek through cover, casting near-blinding shafts of thick, soupy light out onto the track. With rain, it's even prettier; voluminous clouds of mist rise from behind cars and raindrops trickle down and then peel away from the center of the screen at higher speeds. What's even cooler is that the game looks almost as impressive on a plain vanilla standard-def TV, making for something that can satisfy graphics whores at both ends of the spectrum.
That's actually true of the whole game. Despite being obviously aimed at Formula One fans (we didn't even delve into any of the tweaking options, sorry gearheads), the whole experience was surprisingly friendly to complete racing buffoons like us. It looked absolutely stunning and allowed for enough depth that we actually started to care about doing a full career, and we're dying to see how the online play works out. It may be that Americans are ready for another F1 experience, and if nothing else, the PS3 version is going to make it that much harder to resist. We'll have fresh updates as soon as we're able to dig a little deeper.
This bodes well for folks looking for a) a new F1 racer and b) looking for something that elicits oohs and ahhs from lookers-on. We've gone hands-on with a fairly complete build of the upcoming PS3 racer and will now dispense with the horribly inexperienced run down. See, none of us in the office really watches Formula One races, much less plays the games or visits the events, so our experience with the games is limited, though that didn't really stop us from taking a bunch of notes and futzing our way through double-digit race numbers.
The whole Championship Edition moniker was likely thrown in there because a yearly title wouldn't make much sense given that the series is still very much being tested again for US release (that, and the license is running out), but rest assured that the full official FIA 2006 season has been replicated here. All the 18 tracks, season races, drivers and 11 teams will be here (and yes, superfans, that includes the new Japanese Super Aguri F1, Red Bull's Scuderia Torro Rosso, and Midland F1/Spyker MF1 Racing teams). Of the 22 racers that will swim up the stream of pavement 11 of them can be controlled by online buddies (locally, it's just two-player split-screen).
We sadly didn't get a chance to play the game online, nor did we delve especially deep into the single-player modes (hey, something has to be saved for the review, right?), but we did get to poke around the handful of standard race types; Quickplay, Weekend and Season were all here, and the first two options play exactly as you'd expect, offering a one-shot or slightly bulkier set of races to get the basics down.
It was the Career Mode that was most interesting, however, due in no small part to the fact that it actually graded you on your racing performance. The idea is fairly simple; race well and you'll stay on the team, botch races and you're out. Of course, before you can pick a team, you'll have to do a dry run with one of the three teams mentioned earlier. This time trial grades you individual lap times or cumulative double-digit lap runs, but they aren't terribly hard if you've got the assists on.
In fact, with them on, the game almost drives itself, preventing spin-outs and crashes by controlling your speed going into and out of corners, picking the right gear and effectively baby-stepping you through things. It all feels like it's on rails, but for newcomers (like, well, us), it was actually a nice way to learn the course. Flipping them off lets you drive however you'd like, but it's best to use the same sparing approach until you learn the best way to hit the corners. The game can be absolutely merciless if you play it like an arcade racer, and that's likely why the assists are there to begin with -- even if they were a little heavy-handed.
As you progress through the game, you'll have the opportunity to juggle multiple offers, yammer on with your agent and teammates and work as a cog in a greater machine throughout the season. It's all presented with a clean little PDA interface with a nice smattering of e-mail messages, though it's not really a fully-functional correspondence option (we're hoping that in-game messages during online play might at least sport the same basic look, though).
Peripheral support is impressive; Logitech's more popular wheels like the Driving Force Pro and even the newest G25 wheel are selectable (and can be tweaked in the options, though obviously we couldn't do that with just the SIXAXIS). Luckily, if you're not quite that hardcore as to sport the wheel rig, the PS3's default input system, the SIXAXIS, works surprisingly well. Much like MotorStorm (which we also happened to play at the same Sony event that introduced us to F1CE), you can hold the controller like a steering wheel and use the triggers for acceleration and braking, and the shoulders like race wheel paddles. It does feel weird at first, but because it's rather responsive, it didn't take us long to get the hang of it.
A dimly-lit louge is not the best environment to check out the sound quality of a racer, but even still, we were pleasantly surprised with the thickness of the audio being pumped out of Sony's gorgeous 1080p Bravia sets. The visuals didn't hurt either, and as anyone who's played the demo (you can grab it now from the PlayStation Store) will tell you, the game is something of a graphics showcase -- particularly if you turn on the rain. During clear weather, the ripple of heat waves, little blades of grass, bits of sand and dee-licious texture and reflection detail on the cars all make for one of the most gorgeous racers you'll ever see.
HDR lighting is subtle enough that it doesn't take over the game, but there are some absolutely gorgeous vistas if the sun is allowed to peek through cover, casting near-blinding shafts of thick, soupy light out onto the track. With rain, it's even prettier; voluminous clouds of mist rise from behind cars and raindrops trickle down and then peel away from the center of the screen at higher speeds. What's even cooler is that the game looks almost as impressive on a plain vanilla standard-def TV, making for something that can satisfy graphics whores at both ends of the spectrum.
That's actually true of the whole game. Despite being obviously aimed at Formula One fans (we didn't even delve into any of the tweaking options, sorry gearheads), the whole experience was surprisingly friendly to complete racing buffoons like us. It looked absolutely stunning and allowed for enough depth that we actually started to care about doing a full career, and we're dying to see how the online play works out. It may be that Americans are ready for another F1 experience, and if nothing else, the PS3 version is going to make it that much harder to resist. We'll have fresh updates as soon as we're able to dig a little deeper.
