F1 2009 Test Drive

BAFTA – we’ve all seen the awards show with the odd looking face masks – you know the one with the missing eye – but I had the distinct pleasure of visiting BAFTA the other day to take part in Codemasters’ F1 2009 Test Drive event (do you see what they did there? It’s a driving reference!)

It’s been 3 years since there was an official Formula 1 title release, that being F1 2006 for the PS3 only, so seeing the franchise brought to our consoles once again has got to be a good thing. F1 2009 will be available on 30th November for the Wii and PSP and we were advised during the briefing for the game that the Codemasters team in Birmingham are working full tilt on F1 2010 which will be released next year for the Xbox 360 and PS3 so F1 fans with the 3rd generation consoles will have to wait a little while longer I’m afraid.

The timing could not have been more fortuitous though could it? Mr. Jenson Button clinches the World Chamionship and a brand new game featuring Jenson, Lewis and the Brawn team, as well as the new night time races hits the market place. Codemasters must be grinning like Cheshire cats. In fact they are, they were there at the event along with Anthony Davidson, the Brawn GP test driver and David Croft, Radio 5Live’s F1 commentator, who gave a quick 2-player demonstration of the game on the Wii.

I would hope that by now you, dear readers, will know that I’m not one to overly gild the lilly. If something is good, I’ll say it’s good and if it’s not so good, that’s pretty much the message which comes over too. The Wii is not a high-resolution graphics processor and for me, the experience of watching F1 2009 being demonstrated on this platform was something akin to stepping back a good few years to my PC gaming days and early F1 titles. There are pixels on display and the overall vision is a little grainy – but I’ll also admit that this was being projected onto a screen 6 feet high and correspondingly wide, so I’m going to have to forgive it a little, but it’s not what I’m used to.

But I must also remember and point out that the message behind the game is that “F1 Dads and F1 Lads” – yes that’s a quotation – will watch the racing together on the telly on a Sunday afternoon and then crank up the Wii to give the same track a hammering. So this is not a game targeted at the race simulator market space, it’s for fun. But under the skin there’s also a bit of simulator lurking and I’m guessing this is because the same engine is going to be the base for the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions next year.

It’s possible to tune the performance and handling of your car in the same way as the Pros do it but you don’t need to be an engineer to work this out. In the Tuning section there’s a ‘Simple’ view which provides a set of sliders for things like downforce – higher for twisty tracks, lower for high speed tracks, speed – the gear ratios – and that kind of thing married to hints given by the game for each of the tracks you visit. But then you can get into the specifics of spring weights, wing angles, gear ratios, brake bias and all of the other serious sim-like settings if you really want to. Or, you can do nothing, simply take the default settings, turn on all of the driver assists and blat around the track having fun and it’s this arena where I believe F1 2009 on the Wii sits.

It’s worth taking a minute too, to talk about the controls as there are four ways of handling the car through the F1 season:

1. The WiiMote and Nunchuk – the analogue stick provides steering here
2. The F1 2009 wheel accessory for the Wii-Mote – plug in the WiiMote and let the motion sensing work for you
3. The Classic controller – adds analogue throttle and braking to analogue stick steering
4. The Logitech Speed Force Wireless wheel – adds force feedback but no analogue throttle and brake

Anthony and David demo’d the game using the F1 2009 wheel accessory which is part of the combo retail pack and I was actually really surprised at the level of control which seemed possible. Mr. Davidson was, of course, a little more au-fait with the track and handling but I guess this also shows that there is a decent level of realism built into the game too.

“All I can say is that, from a commentators perspective, I’m really pleased they’ve brought out a game with all of the new tracks in it. It makes such a difference when you’re talking about a circuit, if you’ve actually had some experience of going round it,” said David “I still use F1 2006 to refresh my memory of the older venues but this is great for the new ones!” Anthony said that David was still a rubbish driver and needed all of the practice he could get!

It’s said that we all carry around on our back a bundle of things which we believe and feel – they’re called prejudices – and that we use these to temper our view of the world around us. My prejudice is that I like my racing games to look good. I’m used to Xbox 360 graphics and my Wii is not used for this kind of game. So having placed my view out in the open air, I’m going to say that if you are a Dad with a Lad and you’re F1 fans with a Wii then this is probably going to give you a lot of fun on a Sunday afternoon, and maybe it’ll even promote a growth to the higher resolution siblings when they’re released next year. I’ll be waiting until then but that’s just me.