F1 Career Challenge

Raw driving detail. I can almost see the fear in the guy ahead of me as I prepare to ram, sorry, overtake him.

There has been a lot of racing action in the games scene recently, and more specifically, on Boomtown recently. We’ve had a Midnight Club 2 review, then the tournament event, a review of Le Tour De France, and now you’re about to get a review of F1 Career Challenge on both PS2 and PC formats. Now I’ve never considered myself a particularly stunning racing gamer, at least until the Midnight Club 2 tournament (never fail an excuse to plug that one), so brimming with confidence, I went into F1 Career Challenge with high expectations of being able to master it pretty quickly, but that is certainly not the case, at least not with the PS2 version.

On starting the game, you are naturally treated to an FMV intro (as seems to be with all PS2 games now, probably taking advantage of the DVD format), and although it means very little, it seemed a little dull, with a definite lack of driving action, but that’s one thing we can easily overlook. Following that, an applauding pit crew welcomes you to your vehicle for a bit of option menu action.

Chrash and burn

Beautiful replays... just beautiful.

The menu, split between three screens is straightforward to navigate around, but looks a lot more complex than it should. During the races, and more specifically the replays it feels like you’re watching it on TV, naturally with you having been in control. If there’s any immediate problem with the game though, it’s the controls.

With a Dual Shock pad, it only requires the slightest touch to send your F1 car off into the side of the road, and potentially crashing into all manner of obstacles, perhaps damaging your car, or making you lose a wheel (although all I could manage, even when going out to crash was a single lost wheel, which is replicable when you next pit in – the sooner the better). It seems to me that it’s the kind of game that really deserves and almost requires a steering wheel add-on to get the most out of the game.

What is an interactive pit stop?

This pit stop is interactive, but that doesn't stop your crewmen moving fast enough to appear as a blur.

A new feature to the realm of F1 games seems to be the interactive pit stop that actually feels a lot like a test of reactions. Although it all looks nice, pitting in involves driving to the correct lane, and once you’ve driven into the pit, you lose all controls and are left with waiting until the onscreen instructions tell you to do something, for example breaking under 12mph or hitting a specific button as quickly as possible.

The quicker you perform these tasks will reflect on the speed of your pit stop, but anticipate one, or do something wrong and you’ll have to wait even longer while your dedicated crew fixes the problem you’ve undoubtedly caused, and pitting wasn’t the only time I created problems for my pit crew. Damage options can be fiddled with, and this does drastically alter how your car performs if you do cause any damage by hitting a wall or another car (which has the intense tendency to spin you fully).

Authenticity with a touch of a superlicence

Rain, as frustrating as it is for an F1 driver can be forgiven for the nice effects.

As terribly as I was to begin with, I still managed to get my superlicence within a few tries of each section, but mostly in one go. Admittedly it does aptly act as a short tutorial, but lulls the average player into a false sense of security for the first race. And it’s difficult… I don’t expect that racing an F1 car is the easiest thing, but I feel that the authenticity provided by the game should have been artistically waned to allow for less skilled racers to immediately get into the game.

Driving the car does feel as close to the real thing as most of us are likely to get, but I have yet to get a particularly great position in any race, even from hours of playing, so the game will certainly take a long time to master, especially with the ability to tune and alter your car with the full roster of licensed individuals to challenge from the 1999 to 2002 seasons inclusive, and there’s a good deal of fun in gradually improving your skill and status from an amateur to a superstar, but can you put in the time and frustration before you master it?

Let’s take a closer inspection

See plenty of cars far into the distance. Relatively speaking of course.

F1 Career Challenge certainly looks the part. Tearing along at well over 150mph around a track designed for that very purpose looks impressive, with dust clouds breezing over your trail if you veer off course, and smoke emitting from your burning tires in certain obvious situations. Being able to see far into the distance seems pretty necessary for such a fast paced sport, but helped by your map and symbols that appear onscreen to help you navigate, it’s not difficult to at least see where you’re meant to be going. The screen shakes, blurring the view when you go off the track, or roll over a bumpy edge, which adds to the authenticity of the feel, and definitely looks impressive.

Although you can see far into the distance, there isn’t too much ‘pop up’ of the surrounding scenery, and the only time I really noticed it was when I was actively looking at the visuals of the game for flaws and saw fences build up around the track ahead. The frame rate seemed pretty solid for most of the races, although when pitting, having so many characters on screen dealing with your car does look authentic, but noticeably slows down the refresh rate, which isn’t really an issue for the gameplay, but does tarnish an otherwise pretty good graphical record.

Authentic sound

It seems that everything in this game is trying to be closer to the real sense of F1 racing, and the audio doesn’t let it down in terms of realism. The cars sound nicely meaty, with appropriate collision and other sound effects, but they do seem to overwhelm the vocal feedback your Chief Mechanic is trying to give you, sometimes reducing him to an undecipherable murmur, which is probably very similar to a real race, but doesn’t necessarily improve the game.

Similarly, there is no music whatsoever playing throughout the races (although the menu music isn’t bad), mirroring the real sport, but adding little atmosphere and feeling to the active art of driving around the course.

A day at the races

An arcade mode lets you quickly race. I'm taking control of Michael Schumacher and I've managed 17th.

F1 Career Challenge is an F1 fan’s dream, as long as they are motivated enough to work through the pretty steep difficulty curve, but for anyone who doesn’t have the patience to spend four seasons bettering your virtual career, there are probably better pick up and play racing games out there. There is a pretty decent multiplayer mode with split screen capabilities for up to four players, which certainly eliminates the problem of challenging competitors, since your friends probably won’t be flawless and a simple Arcade mode that lets you get right into a game.

Most games are improved with playing against a human opponent, but fortunately F1 Career Challenge does have an in depth enough single-player portion to hold it on its feet even if you can’t play it with multiple players. Personally, I wouldn’t have the patience to totally master the game enough to win each race and finally prove my weight in the overall seasons, but it’s definitely possible. The real question you have to ask yourself before considering a purchase is whether or not you want to win enough?