I have been a big fan of Sony’s Formula 1 series of games. Its history can be traced back to 1996 when Formula 1 (based on the 1995 season) was released. It was a complete masterpiece. Developers Bizarre Creations had made the first 3D Formula 1-based video game and they got it near enough perfect first time round. It is still a joy to play the game today.

It was an arcade-style racer which meant that it was fairly basic, certainly by today’s standards. But it was a huge hit even among non-F1 fans. It was Europe’s second biggest selling video game of the year.

Formula 1 97 followed the year later, refining the product to a great extent. You could even set an option to have tear-off strips. When your visor got too dirty you had to press a button to clean it! It also had a separate arcade mode which felt like a completely different game. This meant that the game pleased non-F1 fans and dedicated F1 geeks alike.

From there, things went a little pear-shaped. Despite the huge success, Bizarre Creations decided to call it a day with F1 so that they could concentrate on Metropolis Street Racer. That series has since become the hugely successful — and, I must say, excellent — Project Gotham Racing series.

In the meantime, Psygnosis, the publishers who owned the rights to the F1 game, were left in the lurch. Visual Sciences were given the job of developing Formula 1 98, but they had just a few months to do it in. Sure enough, the game was an utter beast — buggy, unplayable and generally unsatisfying.

Another change of developer came for Formula One 99. Studio 33 were brought on board. They managed to do a competent job, but it was clearly a case of getting the basics right first as the game was slightly bare. It was, however, the first game to incorporate the Safety Car! Whether gamers enjoyed the experience of being behind the Safety Car is another matter…

In the intervening period, Psygnosis was bought by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and renamed Studio Liverpool. This began Sony’s association with the F1 license. Gradual improvements were made for both the 2000 and 2001 editions, but the glory days of Bizarre Creations’s games would not be reached on the PSone again.

It is worth remembering that this period was a rather congested time for Formula 1 fans. In some years there might have been around half a dozen different versions of the F1 game. The PSone alone had four F1 games released in 2000.

As well as the Sony offering, Video System brought their F1 World Grand Prix brand from the Nintendo 64 to the PlayStation. Developed by Lankhor, the game was highly realistic, with a dizzying array of different set-up options and horrifically realistic handling. At least, I hope that was the case because it made the game damn well unplayable. It was a struggle even to reach the end of a straight. It was without a doubt the worst F1 game I have ever played.

The following year, Video System published a second game based on their 1999 license. This time they turned to Ubi Soft to develop it. F1 Racing Championship was considerably better than the first attempt, but that wasn’t saying much. As it was the third PSone game based on the 1999 season, there was little reason to buy it, particularly as the year was now 2000!

More successful was the Electronic Arts series. The company made the brave decision of publishing F1 2000 at the start of the 2000 season. Sony had been releasing their games at the end of each season. This meant that there were some inaccuracies in the game as teams proved to be more or less competitive than their pre-season testing form showed. But that seemed academic when all of a sudden there was a chance to play the F1 game several months earlier than normal, and crucially before the Sony edition came out.

However, the EA game was simply not as satisfying as the Sony version. For one thing, EA brought in Visual Sciences to develop the game, although this was kept quiet! VS was the company that made a hash of Psygnosis’s Formula 1 98. Although this time round they did a better job, it was still a bit of a handful to play.

EA also made the decision to release an updated version called F1 Championship Season 2000 at the end of the season to fix some of the inaccuracies of the original. There was quite a neat “scenario mode”, where you would relive actual events from the 2000 season. But by now the PSone market was truly over-saturated with F1 games.

Presumably realising this, FOA gave Sony an exclusive license to publish Formula 1 games from the 2003 season. EA’s parting shot was to release F1 Career Challenge. This took advantage of their licenses for the seasons from 1999 through to 2002. You would begin your career in a poor car and try to make your way up to a better car through the seasons.

This added a much-needed new dimension to F1 games which were often very samey for the obvious reasons that they were all based on the same circuits and the same cars time and time again. Sony / Studio Liverpool have since added a career mode to each of their subsequent F1 games.

These were difficult years to be an F1 gamer. Instead of getting what we wanted — namely, a decent F1 game every year — we were getting several mediocre games, none of which did the trick. Thankfully this changed with the move to the PS2 and the exclusive license awarded to Sony. It was tough luck if you didn’t own a PS2 though.

Sony’s early PS2 games were not all that great. But they were notable for being the only way you could get DVD reviews of the 2000 and 2001 F1 seasons, complete with footage from F1 Digital+. These remain the only official review DVDs of those seasons.

Every year the F1 game improved a little bit. Formula One 04 was enjoyable enough. But Formula One 05 was probably the first time you could say there was an F1 game as good as Formula 1 97. There were also some neat features where, using the Eye Toy peripheral, you could insert your own face into the game and watch yourself participate in the podium ceremony. Rather surreal, but good fun! Unfortunately, F1 05 was far too easy to play even on the hardest difficulty settings. Another nice touch was a set of unlockable classic cars.

Formula One 06 further refined the game. By now, a number of authentic features had been added to please the F1 fans. For instance, in career mode if you are stuck in the test driver role you have to be prepared to trundle around an empty track doing consistent laps — a lot more difficult than it sounds! Come race time you could even choose to drive the formation lap yourself and you would have to get the tyres up to temperature.

(You can read my more detailed reviews of Formula One 05 and Formula One 06.)

There has been one game on the PS3, F1 Championship Edition (strangely familiar title, that). It is based on the 2006 season. I’ve never had the chance to play it, but it looks great.

Just as the F1 series was becoming great again though, the F1 games have dried up. I had wondered why. After all, the 2007 season ought to have been more lucrative for Sony because of the hype surrounding Lewis Hamilton. Unfortunately, Bernie Ecclestone seems to have thought this more than Sony did, leading us to the current deadlock.

In the meantime, Electronic Arts have signed a £5 million deal with Lewis Hamilton. However, this does not necessarily mean that a new EA F1 game is on the horizon. Several years ago Jacques Villeneuve was involved in a fantasy racing game called Speed Challenge: Jacques Villeneuve’s Racing Vision. This EA deal could be a similar plan.

With stalemate all round, it is probably too late even for a game based on the 2008 season to be made. What a terrible shame. You might think I am going overboard a bit. But for me, the annual video game has become an important memento of the season, just as much as the review DVD is. If I feel a bit nostalgic for Pedro de la Rosa in an Arrows, I stick on Formula One 99. Now it looks like two whole years will be lost.

Fans of F1 games should check out F1Gamers. The site is chock full of obtrusive adverts, but it’s a good resource nevertheless.

Obviously there was much celebration among the Formula 1 fans of Britain. ITV has won few fans for its coverage. From the very start it was bad news due to the realities of commercial television meaning that races would be routinely interrupted.

This very fact is probably what, in the end, made ITV give up their contract two years early. Bernie hinted that it was ITV’s decision when he said:

It’s not that we are unhappy with ITV but I think maybe they will have their hands full with other things.

Sure enough, ITV confirmed that it was “a straightforward commercial decision”. And it probably isn’t a coincidence that on the very same day ITV won the rights to broadcast the Champions League.

But what made ITV pull out of the deal with two years of their current contract to go? ITV have been broadcasting for 12 years and if anything it had appeared as though their commitment had increased.

In the past year or two ITV have been much less likely to drop their live coverage of qualifying or shut it to another channel. And just days ago ITV announced that they had won the rights to broadcast practice sessions on the internet — the first ever time that UK viewers have been able to watch free practice.

It makes sense that ITV would up the amount of coverage given the success of Lewis Hamilton. Surely they will be able to increase their revenue now that there is a successful British driver. But ironically, I think it might be the arrival of Lewis Hamilton that was the final straw for ITV. Let me explain.

In the off season, along with the car launches and testing times, there is one story that seems to be an annual occurrence. Almost every year, ITV struggles to find someone to sponsor its coverage. This year, they even had to reduce the amount they were asking for — even following the success of Lewis Hamilton.

Honda pulled out of their £2.5 million deal after just one year. I seem to remember that was a last-minute deal, just as this year’s Sony one was. And the year before, ITV could only do a deal with Swiftcover to start sponsoring coverage four races into the season.

Why do ITV constantly have so much trouble finding a sponsor for their coverage? Simple. Each brand that sponsors the coverage becomes associated with interrupting the race. Instead of appealing to the millions of ITV viewers, sponsors simply piss them all off.

Andrew MacKinlay MP may believe that F1 coverage “could be provided, and should be provided, on commercial television.” He obviously doesn’t know much about the sport. Because if there is a sport that is wholly unsuited for commercial television, it is Formula 1.

Try as I might to think of another popular sporting event that may last as long as two hours plus without a single interruption, I have drawn a blank. Every other sport I can think of has some kind of break where commercials may be shown on television. (If anyone can think of a popular sporting event that may last for two hours uninterrupted, please leave a comment.)

It is a truism to say that, when the BBC and ITV jointly own the right to broadcast the World Cup final, everyone prefers to watch BBC. This is said to be mostly because the BBC does not have adverts. But at least when ITV broadcast a football match commercials are run at half time, well out of the way of the actual action. If adverts obscure the match, it is by accident, and only for the first few seconds of the second half.

With F1 though, ITV systematically, deliberately, routinely interrupt the action to bring us some words from their sponsors. There have been campaigns against this behaviour. It has been pointed out that 17 minutes and 15 seconds of the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix (Lewis Hamilton’s first ever F1 victory) were missed by ITV viewers. In total for the entire season, viewers lost 4 hours 6 minutes and 4 seconds — the equivalent of well over two average-length Grands Prix.

Moreover, several pivotal events have been missed by British viewers. Ironically, the moment when Lewis Hamilton effectively lost the 2007 Drivers Championship happened just seconds after ITV had gone to a commercial break. British viewers missed it, and the moment wasn’t even shown in the highlights package because James Allen and Martin Brundle were having their brief break (before resuming for other broadcasters who receive their commentary), so there was no commentary for it.

The year before, the pivotal moment also happened almost immediately after ITV went to a break. When Michael Schumacher’s engine blew in Japan, effectively handing the 2006 Drivers Championship to Fernando Alonso, British viewers were completely unaware. If football fans had to endure this sort of thing, there would probably be riots in the streets.

Yet, it is a commercial reality. ITV simply cannot afford to let two hours’ worth of televisual real estate go by without screening an advert. ITV were probably waiting for someone like Lewis Hamilton to come along to let them make more money. This would partly explain their fawning coverage of Golden Boy. But the opposite happened. As the viewership increased, it simply increased the amount of people who were pissed off by the adverts. When they struggled to find a sponsor even at the height of Lewismania, it was probably the final straw.

It is fair to say that the vast majority of fans will not be sorry to see the back of ITV. Their coverage has become laughably one-sided, with all of the commentators unashamedly obsessing over Lewis Hamilton to the extent where some viewers might be surprised to find that when the race started there were 21 other drivers.

It is, of course, understandable that ITV would concentrate on the British hope. But the sheer obsessiveness, to the point where Hamilton’s father and brother have both been elevated to the status of minor celebrities in their own rights, utterly grates. Imagine if football broadcasters started every programme with a hour’s worth of, “Well, we really hope Manchester United can do the business today,” and interviews with Cristiano Ronaldo’s brother and Wayne Rooney’s father. And all without a mention of any of the other teams in the Premier League. You would be thoroughly sick of it.

Whenever they weren’t stalking Lewis Hamilton, viewers were treated to patronising fluff of the lowest order. Who could forget ‘Cooking with Heikki’ or the tour of Jarno Trulli’s vineyard? Just one race into the season, ITV delivered a gem presented (sic) by Tamara Ecclestone. She “interviewed” the Ferrari drivers going skiing, but all she could say was, “That’s wonderful. Amazing. Just incredible.”

Then, of course, there is James Allen. You don’t have to dig deep to find swathes of people on the internet criticising his coverage, often in rather rude terms. He is a good writer, but his contrived excited style really grates and he is constantly putting his foot in his mouth. Murray Walker made plenty of mistakes as well, but that was more endearing. James Allen has an air of smugness about his commentary that most people cannot abide.

It is strange because James Allen is a really good writer, and I thought he was a fine pit reporter as well. But he simply isn’t suited to the role of main commentator. ITV’s inaction over this matter — this is Allen’s seventh full season as ITV’s main commentator — earned them a major black mark in most F1 fans’ minds.

It is not all bad news though. It is easy to forget that ITV truly have revolutionised coverage of F1 since they won the rights in 1997. Even though the preview show is often annoying, at least it exists. The BBC used to do the bare minimum. A bit of competition is healthy, and no doubt the BBC will up their game. It certainly sounds like it from the little hints we have been hearing already. But I will write a separate post about that.

Fuck off! As far as I am concerned, Easter is for chocolate eggs and nothing else. In my day, all I got was chocolate eggs. I remember getting quite a lot of eggs, mind. And maybe I got some money as well. I can’t really remember. But that was all I got. Nowadays kids seem to get bloody toys and everything.

I even saw one website suggesting that some parents who “wanted to give their children something more special than Easter eggs” would be buying PlayStation 3s for their children’s Easter. For fuck’s sake! These kids will grow up thinking scarce commodities fall into their hands directly from God’s anus (or the Easter Bunny, whatever) at the click of a finger.

Soon enough we will have bossy kids going around wailing their heads off whenever they don’t get what they want. And the weakling parents will cave in and get them what they want anyway. Brilliant. A generation of Little Miss and Mr Bossy Boots will be running the fucking country in thirty for forty years time. As if our leaders weren’t already bossy enough.

People in this country point at places like China and say, “Ooh, look at all those Little Emperors.” Well I think some parents need to take a bloody look at the Little Emperors they are bringing up themselves.

It seems as though some weakling parents are a bit too desperate to be the best parents in the world. And of course, it only takes one of these parents to get an idea in their head. Of course, they will have some hints whispered into their ear from toy-making firms. A sign is hanging in the shop window, “The perfect gift for Easter!” splashed across a picture of a PS3.

I can see the evil parents’ thoughts now. “My little angel is the best little angel in the world. To show her how special she is, I will buy her a PS3! And then she will love me and look after me well in my old age!”

After the Easter break in the school playground, the kids are discussing their Easter eggs. Then Little Miss Bossy Boots pipes up. “Chocolate? Pah! I got a PlayStation 3 for Easter!”

The other kids then become jealous, then go home and tell their parents how the normal thing to do is buy an exorbitantly expensive games console for Easter. Parents are then guilted into buying ever more impressive presents as the years go by. The entire trend spreads around the country and that is us stuck in consumerism hell forever.

In 2006 Tarquin got a PSP.
In 2007 Henry got a PS3.
In 2009 Bobby from the council estate will get a fucking bloody HDTV from guilty parents who can’t afford it.

If I ever have kids — which I won’t — I will give them mud for Easter. That will teach them that luxury goods are earned and not given to the kid that throws the biggest tantrum or guilt trip.

But no surprises as to what was number 1:

1. Big Brother’s Big Saviour. This post about Russell Brand stormed to the top of all sorts of mucky Google searches after some person in the comments mentioned Imogen’s sex tape. Disgusting. This page accounted for over 10% of all visits to this blog this year!
2. Richard Hammond. Descended into a debate about whether it’s disrespectful to dislike somebody (Steve Irwin) even though they’re dead.
3. Weekend mornings are meaningless once again. Simon Amstell left Popworld, but most people were only interested in searching for pictures of Miquita Oliver.
4. Another new Freeview channel. This post lays into smileTV, Freeview’s mankiest channel. People arrive at this page looking for information on Freeview channels. I imagine this post is a good advert.
5. Countdown to PS2’s Formula One 06. I’m still a little bit peeved that the actual review I wrote for this game is nowhere near as popular. Gah.

A few posts from 2005 were actually more popular than some of these, but they don’t count right because we’re talking about 2006.

The ‘popularity contest’ plugin, which also takes into account things like comments and whatever else, comes up with a slightly different result:

1. Big Brother’s Big Saviour
2. Another new Freeview channel
3. Weekend mornings are meaningless once again
4. Time Trumpet. I can’t even remember what I wrote in this post.
5. MySpace UK seems to have launched. Check out the comments full of emos who are shocked at the way I diss their Space.

So there you have it. My five (or seven) best posts of the year. I wouldn’t recommend it. Although I can deduce that April was a stupidly popular year. Hmm. I will try and get some kind of Reddit- / Digg-style voting plugin for this blog. That would probably be much better.

Okay, how else can I look at last year? What music I’ve listened to. I know I still haven’t posted my top ten albums of 2006 yet. I promise that is coming. But Last.fm offers a handy way to track what you listen to, and a glance at the rolling year chart on this day allows me to have a look at what I listened to over the past year. This will change tomorrow, so it’s worth taking a note of, if you’re interested in that kind of useless information.

1. Boards of Canada (851)
2. Radiohead (674)
3. Pulp (624)
4. Broadcast (615) — I don’t remember listening to this much Broadcast?!
5. Autechre (607)
6. Squarepusher (588)
7. The Fiery Furnaces (579)
8. Tortoise (472)
9. Aphex Twin (384)
10. Prefuse 73 (366)

Perhaps the most surprising thing (apart from how high Broadcast are) is how low Autechre are. For the most part though, this isn’t too different to my all-time top ten on Last.fm.

As for the tracks chart, apart from two tracks that appeared on two different releases (thus probably getting twice as many listens as they otherwise would have), all of my top ten is made up of tracks from Florida by Diplo and Everything Ecstatic by Four Tet. I got both of those albums for last Christmas. So that is probably proof that I don’t spend nearly as much time on the computer as I used to. The chart will probably look completely different at the end of the month.

This is what my brother got me for Christmas:

I guess that’s almost the same as exchanging five pound notes.

Diving straight into a ‘quick race’ and the game feels quite similar to last year’s edition — on the surface at least. It can be difficult to find your feet when you play a racing game for the first time. Different racing games all feel quite different, so you will often find yourself running wide or spinning off on your first lap. But within another two or three laps you will find your feet and you’ll be right up to speed.

Not so in Formula One 06. A brilliant new feature in the game is that each kerb is individually modelled — they are all different. So you can’t just attack every kerb like you would in most racing games.

Martin Brundle’s excellent book, Working the Wheel, which I read earlier this year, really illustrates the fact that tackling a corner and finding the racing line is not merely a matter minimising the angle of the corner. You must also watch out for bumps, crowns, dodgy drain covers, slippery paint and whatever else might increase or decrease your grip.

Formula One 06 gives a sense of that. You actually have to learn which kerbs you can ride, and which way you can ride them. You won’t always get away with it. Some evil kerbs — such as Variante Alta at Imola and the final chicane at Magny Cours — can throw you up into the air, into a spin or straight into a wall. A lot of trial and error is involved. This is a great feeling though. It feels like you really have to learn the tracks as opposed to just pointing your car towards the apex and flooring the throttle.

One of the other things I quickly noticed was how easy it was to spin the car. It can get quite frustrating. But it would just be boring if it was too easy, right? And that brings me on to another great thing about this game. My biggest problem with last year’s edition was that it was simply too easy. Even on the hardest difficulty level with all driver aids turned off, the AI cars would just tour around at a snail’s pace. The game simply was not enjoyable, and as such I didn’t play much of what was otherwise a pretty solid game.

The good news is that the difficulty has been ramped right up for Formula One 06. At first it is actually quite intimidating. All of your opponents seem almost impossibly quick. When you combine this with the fact that it can be quite easy to spin and that you now have to tiptoe your way around the kerbs, you end up with the opposite problem to what we had in last year’s game.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that F1 06 is too difficult. Besides, it would be better for it to be too difficult than too easy. But let’s just say than in Career mode I’ve been sacked from Scuderia Toro Rosso, and now I’ve found myself doing donkey work for Super Aguri, unable to get a race drive. I guess that’s realistic.

While we’re on Career mode, I must mention how much of a step up this has taken yet again. In particular, the role of test driver has been well thought-out. The qualities needed of a test driver are quite different to those of a race driver. A racer needs to drive fast, spend all day looking cool and spray champagne like nobody else can. Meanwhile, a test driver has to trundle around doing hundreds of laps at a time — not quickly, but consistently, so that the team can collect data.

So in F1 06, a test driver’s role is not merely to go quickly, although that’s obviously part of it. But as a test driver you must go consistently quickly. It’s all very well to beat your target time by two seconds — but can you do that for three laps in a row? Because this is what you have to do in F1 06. And I can’t do it! I am a complete failure at driving consistent laps. The amount of times I have set two stunning lap times only to lose my concentration on the third lap — I am going insane with this game. And I love it!

On a similar note, the developers have also devised a clever way to make Friday practice mean something. It is called Race Car Evolution. Your team will send you out with a variety of different set ups, and from there you can judge how each change affects the handling of your car and ultimately your lap time. At first the process looks laborious. But if you can get clean laps in consistently it can be over quite quickly. Whatever, Race Car Evolution is optional anyway, so you can skip the whole thing and set up your car normally if you wish.

Once you’re happy with the set up, it’s time to qualify. And this is another area where this game excells. You can tell that quite a bit of thought has gone into the presentation of the qualifying sessions, which can be great fun. The on-screen graphics mimick those used by FOM for television, but not just for the sake of it. Pole time is shown, as well as the time you have to beat in order to avoid knocking out. Towards the end of the session, a list of people in the ‘drop zone’ slids out. Watching the times fall while you’re stuck in the drop zone really piles the pressure on. Perfect for a video game.

Come race day and yet another nifty new feature is unveiled — the formation lap. This is one of those things that spoddy F1 gamers have asked to be included in a game for a long time, along with the safety car, pit lane speed limiters and all the rest of it. Now that the formation lap has made it to the game, I realise why perhaps it has never been included in a game before. It is horrendously dull.

Or it would be, if you could ever manage to complete the formation lap. This feature is extremely buggy. Sometimes it will all go wrong. A car might go away slowly or something, and then all of a sudden the game skips straight to the start. Not good. The formation lap is just badly executed in general. It was billed as an opportunity to get your tyres warmed up, but it is actually impossible to do that. Your speed is limited and besides, the AI controls your car to a large extent.

The formation lap is a nice idea, but it needs some real work if it’s going to be included in next year’s game. As it stands, it is far too rough around the edges to be included in the game.

So we find ourselves at the start of the race. A smile was brought to my face when I noticed an added element of realism — James Allen’s commentary is complete with Allenisms in this game! “When the lights go out we are…… RAAACIIIIIIIIIIING! It’s almost as if Allen has scripted the commentary himself.

In all seriousness, the commentary has improved greatly from previous years, especially as you can now hear commentary in Career mode, unlike last year where a bug crept in at the last minute. It could still do with a lot of improvement. There is no interaction between James Allen and Martin Brundle. Indeed, Brundle appears to be confined to the pre-race spiel. Formula 1 97 still has the best commentary in my view, because both Murray and Martin would keep you entertained, and they spoke to each other, even if it was just the occasional “That’s right Murray” from Martin.

Another criticism I would have about the commentary is that they never mention the player during Career mode. Granted, this would be difficult due to the fact that you play yourself in Career mode. (Unfortunately you can’t create your avatar with the Eye Toy this year, but I guess that was a bit gimmicky anyway. You can still enter in your own name though.) But it can’t be too difficult to have generic commentary along the lines of, “the Super Aguri driver has spun!” or, “the Brit is in the lead”. Developers used this method to good effect when Jacques Villeneuve couldn’t appear in the video games.

Now for some more bad news I’m afraid. There is a bad bug in this game which causes the field to start very slowly, almost as though they were on the formation lap. The form a nice, orderly queue — sometimes single file, sometimes in two distinct queues — and they are all very polite, they are slow and they don’t overtake each other. Unfortunately this makes it very easy for you, the player, to charge your way through the field. Even if you started from last place, and even if you are in hard mode, you will find yourself leading by the second corner. Doh!

My first suspicion was that this was a problem with formation laps, so I turned the option for formation laps off. It seemed to be the end of the matter, but a few starts later and the problem cropped up again. I read at F1Gamers.com that the bug could perhaps be something to do with Race Car Evolution — skipping RCE avoids the slow starts. I’ve not had a chance to test this out yet, but it doesn’t matter. This simply should not be happening.

Bugs have haunted Sony’s / Studio Liverpool’s Formula 1 series, particularly on the PS2. In a way it is understandable, as they are made on a very tight schedule. But that fact doesn’t make the pill any less bitter for the gamer to swallow. I find it difficult to comprehend how this game was released with such a massive flaw in it.

Luckily the AI cars aren’t slow for very long — maybe half a lap or something — and after that we are back to the difficult challenge we faced during testing and qualifying. Opposing cars really hound you in this game. They will overtake you, and it is such a thrill to be racing like this after years of fairly duff Scalextric-style AI. The AI is also quite clever during qualifying and practice. If they are shown the blue flags they will slow down and get out of your way if you’re on a hot lap. Oh, and they have been known to make mistakes aswell.

A few laps in and you’ll find yourself having to make a pitstop. No surprise there, but this year’s Formula 1 rules which saw the reintroduction of tyre-changing mean that the interactive pitstops — essentially QTE mini-games — are much more of a challenge. If you need to change your front wing you are bound to get in a muddle! Don’t expect to gain so much time on your opponents during pitstops this year!

A final word on damage. It is much better this year. You can’t really get away with slamming into the wall this time around, which is a relief. There is also a cool phase where your tyre will wobble around like Kimi Räikkönen’s at last year’s European Grand Prix. It doesn’t seem to affect the handling too much, but I wonder if when the wheel flies off James Allen says, “See, I told you!”

So there we have it. All-in-all, not a bad game at all this year round. Yet again the whole thing is let down by some bad bugs, but I can see myself playing this game a lot more than I played F1 05 for the sheer reason that it’s much more of a challenge. I can’t wait to unlock those classic cars and the Jerez circuit.

• PlayStation-F1 website
• F1Gamers.com — Formula 1 video game fansite

This year marks the tenth anniversary of Sony’s Formula One franchise, which started off in fine form with the original Formula One and Formula 1 97 which were made by Bizarre Creations. These days they are making the best racing game in existence, Project Gotham Racing, for the Xbox. F1 and F197 were benchmarks which some still say haven’t been improved on to this day!

Studio Liverpool, who make the games today, always work flat-out on the game right up to the last moment they can get away with. This resulted in Formula One 05 containing a rather unfortunate bug, created at the last minute, which meant that there was no commentary in career mode. Anyway, current estimates for the release date vary wildly, from as early as next Friday (!) to as late as mid-July.

We’re talking about the internet here, so of course there is a website dedicated to Formula 1 video games: F1Gamers.com. It’s a bit ad-heavy, so be prepared for that. Anyway, they’ve built up a good relationship with Studio Liverpool, and there is a good Q&A which outlines what we can expect for Formula One 06.

Overall I’m quite pleased with what I’ve read in that article. When I first played Formula One 05 I was impressed by the graphics and the general feel of the game, but after a while it just became far too easy, even with all the options set to the most difficult settings. I ended up playing it much less that Formula One 04. It sounds like Formula One 06 is going to be much harder, although they explain most players aren’t nearly as good as so-called “hardcore” F1 gamers, which is why features like launch control and the pitlane speed limiter have been removed from the game in recent years (apparently it just confused most players!).

I am surprised, though, that they have decided to include formation laps in the game. And of course, I can’t wait to have a go at the new qualifying format, which is apparently perfect for a video game!

1. WipEout Pure (a return to form for the WipEout series!)
2. Lumines (the most addictive puzzle game I’ve played in ages)

While we’re on fancy new-fangled gadgets, I’ve been hearing one or two people predicting that 2006 will herald the end of mobile phones, MP3 players and hand-held games consoles being separate. I doubt this. It’s been tried several times before. As far as I’m concerned, phones are only ever successful as phones.

Sure, camera phones took off, but only as a novelty as far as I’m concerned. If you really want to take a photograph, you are going to reach for the digital camera every time, not the piece of crap that was appended onto your phone as an afterthought.

As for gaming, remember the N-gage? It didn’t kill anything apart from itself. Then there’s the music. Rokr anyone? Here’s a neat article I found via Wikipedia:

What [the Rokr] seems to lack, is any realisation of the fact that actually, it is difficult to make a device which is both a great phone and a great iPod.

The problem is that power limitations mean you don’t want to play too many tunes before your phone goes dead; that you don’t want to have too many calls before your MP3 player goes quiet; and that the controls are a compromise.

I’m sure this time last year Sony were banging on about their “iPod killer” — did it kill the iPod? I bet nobody can even remember what it is now (I certainly can’t). I have a friend who has a Sony Ericsson phone with Walkman branding on it. Another friend asked him if he actually listens to music on it, and he just laughed — of course he uses his iPod to listen to music.

My iRiver can play music (obviously), but you can also view images and text files on it. Have I used either of the latter two functions? Of course not. The images do look quite nice, but why would I need to look at images when I’m on the move? The text function, meanwhile, is really fiddly, and I don’t know what on earth I could use it for. As one entertaining iRiver fanboy told me in the comments once:

your [sic] a twat… the [iRiver] h340 now plays videos aswell (full length movies to watch) … hmm why would you want that you will probably say… and you dont even deserve to know why it has picture and text capabilities, READ YOUR MANUAL!

Translation: “I don’t have the foggiest either!”

If there ever is a decent device that can be used as an MP3 player, a games console and a mobile phone all in one, I’d love to see it — but I’ll have to see it to believe it. In the meantime, I’d use an iRiver for listening to music, a PSP for playing games and, er, my phone to use as a phone.

Unfortunately, their quality is often fairly patchy. Formula 1 games need to be rushed out, because they get out of date pretty quickly. I remember back in the late 1990s, the days of the PSone, you had to wait until September or October to get your mitts on the Formula 1 game. But by that time the season is practically over. That was when Psygnosis had the Formula 1 console market all to themselves.

Then EA Sports came along and in a bold move they actually released their first attempt, F1 2000 in March. Since then, we’ve not had to wait until winter to pretend we are world champions, and now that Sony (ie. Studio Liverpool) have the license all to themselves again we seem to have settled on a regular summer release.

I’m in two minds about this. On the one hand I like Formula 1 games to be a bit like a souvenir of the season, so the performances of the cars in the game roughly match the performances of the equivalent cars in real life, and so that substitute drivers are also included in the game.

Nowadays you don’t get that. I think the last time you could choose to drive as a substitute driver was in Formula One 99. But this year the driver lineup changed in each of the first five races, and there have been other changes since then. This kind of sums up the feeling that Formula 1 games are kind of half-arsed. All Formula 1 video game fans have lists *this big* of things that they’d like to see in the game. The Safety Car is one that’s quite high up on my list.

Mind you, you wouldn’t want the games to be too realistic because obviously if I could realistically drive a Formula 1 car I would be driving an actual Formula 1 car and not playing video games. Also, you’d end up having just six cars at the United States Grand Prix. So instead of carrying on whingeing about what’s not there, let’s look at what they’ve actually put in.

And I can tell you that Formula One 05 is quite an impressive game! I even saw one person say, “At last, I can say there is a true sequel to Formula 1 97.”

First things first — the Career mode is vastly improved. Right at the very start of the game you are asked to create your profile — fill in your name, your nationality and all the rest of it. But if you’ve got an Eye Toy you can have your head in the game. Creating your head is very fiddly — I had to have about three different attempts, and it took about twenty minutes. But it’s very cool to actually be in the game, to stand there being interviewed by a journalist on the grid; to spray the champagne on the podium.

In Formula One 04, Career mode was not very customisable. But now you can change everything from race length to rules, so you can now play Career mode like you would a normal World Championship. A very good move indeed! Test sessions are more varied, with particular pressure heaped on when you have to beat your team-mate’s time!

Step into the car and it’ll make your jaw drop. My brother initially complained about it having “a million needless graphical effects,” but even he now says that it doesn’t annoy him. The car judders and vibrates uneasily as it booms down a bumpy straight, just as the real life on-board cameras portray. Motion blur — and we’re not talking a silly cartoony streak here — makes it difficult to view the scenery on the periphery, making it look like you’re travelling at 180 miles per hour.

Haul the car round a corner and you can really feel the tyres being dragged across with the Dual Shock controller. As for setting the car up, for once this is a game that actually penalises you for have an oversteering car — spin ahoy! So you have to be more conservative with your set up now. The circuits are also looking absolutely fantastic, although you still get the corners which you just know you shouldn’t be able to take flat, but you can. Watching the grand prix this weekend after playing the game on the same circuit easily confirmed this.

It’s not all geeky though. There are plenty of driving aids to help the rookie along. I still keep my ABS on for instance. Studio Liverpool seem to have made a real effort to help the novice get to grips with the game. Whether this has worked or not, I can’t say.

Despite the game having a very simulation sort of feel, the rules of Formula 1 have been adapted for the video gaming experience. Drive-through penalties do not exist in this game. Instead, if you cut a corner, you are shown the black and white diagonal flag which, in this game, means that your revs will be limited for an appropriate amount of time. It certainly puts you off cutting the corner, but it doesn’t always work. It’s easy enough to just park the car on the apex of the corner to hold everybody else up. It’s very good for an arcade-style video game, but I think there should at least have been the option to switch this off, and include drive-through penalties, with stop-go penalties for serious corner-cutting (and of course, ultimately, the black flag, which only seems to exist in this game for going around the circuit backwards).

Also, yellow flag zones last for an entire sector, not just a corner — annoying if you want to overtake somebody! It’s not all bad news on the flag front though. The slippery track flag makes an appearance in this game! If somebody’s engine blows up, they leave a visible trail of oil on the track. Step on the oil and you’ll slide off the track. Nice! The black-and-orange-circle flag is also in this game, although it’s kind of redundant because of another addition to this game — a diagram showing you how damaged your car is. Of course, most driving games from the past ten years have included these, which only goes to prove how half-arsed Formula 1 games often are. But I can’t complain that it has been included for this game — it is a very welcome addition.

Speaking of damage, that’s another thing. It’s not harsh enough. You can crash into somebody and you’ll see some generic debris fly off — but your car will emerge unscathed. Tap the wall, and your front wing will still remain in tact. Slam the wall and your front wing might start vibrating. This isn’t realistic enough I’m afraid. I know a lot of people hate it in an F1 game when you end up in a gravel trap and can’t get back out. But a damage leniency option (better than just plain on / off) wouldn’t go amiss. Tyre wear isn’t significant either. I’ve felt myself almost slide off once or twice (okay, well I actually have slid off more than once), but I really thought I’d feel it more, what with the one-tyre rule and everything.

And that brings me on to pit-stops, and this is cool. Now you’ve actually got something to do! When your car pulls into its ‘made-of-men’ garage you’re given a reaction-based mini game. You have to hit the buttons that flash on the screen. If you’ve got damage or you need to change tyres, you’re given a more complicated array of buttons to press. If your respond too slowly your pitstop will also be slow. But quick reaction times can result in a slick four second-long stop!

There is now an incentive to do Time Attacks — or Timed Test Sessions, as they’re known in Formula One 05. There are bronze, silver and gold times that you have to aim for. Setting fast enough times allows you to unlock some classic Formula 1 cars, including a 1960s-style ‘cigar-shaped’ Lotus, and a John Player Special Lotus from the 1970s. I’m currently trying to set gold times to unlock a bonus circuit. In Career mode you also unlock helmets as you score more points (which is kind of weird in my opinion, but never mind).

As for other modes, they have taken away the great fun Hot Seat multiplayer game, leaving us with basic races and head-to-heads only. There is no arcade mode either, which is a wee bit of a shame because a good arcade mode can set an F1 game apart. But I’m not too upset because in recent years arcade modes have been really bad (amounting to some cartoon-like damage and a highly irritating over-the-top American commentator).

The old aggregate qualifying session is in this game; they didn’t have time to change it to the new one lap style. You can let them off; it’s only a few races old. However, having a variety of different qualifying formats as ‘mini games’ would be a nice addition, I think.

This game is a joy to play, but I’m afraid to say that I find it too easy. This is especially disappointing as the one and only professional review of Formula One 05 which I read prior to buying the game complained about it being too difficult. To illustrate how easy it is, I had it set to the hardest difficulty level available. In my Career game I got a drive for Red Bull, and I have only ever failed one test. I won my first race, and I came second in my second race. Then I realised a sure-fire way to win every single race — have a one-stop strategy. All of the AI cars have two-stop strategies, which aren’t the fastest for a 50%-length race (I would do 100% race but, believe it or not, I have a little smidgen of a life. Sometimes. Full-length races are too tiring anyway).

The AI cars are really fast during practice aswell. Michael Schumacher set a 1:23 lap time at Monza, so I learned how to drive the circuit that quickly. When qualifying came around nobody was fasted than 1:25, and none of the AI cars seemed to come close to 1:23 during the race. So where does all the pace go, eh?

There are still things I can do to make it harder. Amongst the suggestions I’ve heard are to use the cockpit view, switch ABS off (yes, but I’d still like to be able to drive the bloody thing (this does look like the most viable option though)), switch traction control off (but even real F1 drivers use traction control!), deliberately set the car up badly (but finding a good set up is an important aspect of being a racing driver), or to go a Minardi (really, I should be able to drive a Red Bull without winning). I would like the AI to challenge my lap times anyway though. Don’t get me wrong, the AI is good. They really have a go at you sometimes and will capitalise on your mistakes. But they are simply too slow even on the hardest difficulty level.

Another problem I have is that in Career mode you are the only one who ever replaces any drivers during the season. How about adding real-life third and test drivers to the game for next year and have them substitute for their team mates for a one-off race — like they do in real life, for whatever reason — at random. Also, if I become Red Bull’s first driver I will replace David Coulthard, and Christian Klien will remain as my team mate — but surely in real life it would be Klien who’d get his marching orders?

Thankfully, this game doesn’t suffer from any of the major bugs that Formula One 04 had. Last year’s game had some truly awful bugs in it, including one where sometimes half of the cars would be stuck in the pitlane at the start of the race, and there was nothing you could do about it except for reseting the console.

This time around the worst bug is the fact that there’s no commentary, or even any pit radio in career mode. What a stinker of a bug it is! How was this not noticed during testing?! Unbelievable. Thankfully all necessary information is still conveyed to you on the screen, but that is a serious stinker. I have experienced no other major bugs; certainly not ones that badly affect gameplay.

Commentary itself is another wee problem. It is probably an improvement on previous PS2 versions, but this isn’t saying much. Mind you, with James Allen in the commentary box the crappy commentary is actually quite realistic!

Despite the niggles, though, I have to say that this is a major step up for Formula 1 games. Ever since the honking Formula 1 98, Sony’s Formula 1 games have been reasonable, but never fully satisfactory. But Formula One 05 changes that. Once again, good features of past games have been taken away for no apparent reason. But I can’t wait to see what they come up with for the 2006 version of the game.

Update: I just unlocked the bonus track. It must have taken me about seventy or eighty attempts to nail Japan (I don’t know why; I got most of the others in under ten), but it was worth it in the end. Very cool! Looks like it could be Long Beach. That’s what my brother thinks anyway. Apparently it’s Detroit.

• Formula One 05 website
• PlayStation (UK)
• F1Gamers.com — Formula 1 video game fansite
• Formula 1