If you follow the predetermined modes, be prepared for penalties galore as I’ve yet to find a decent set of racers by picking random’s that doesn’t include someone driving like its destruction derby all over again.
Hopefully a patch can sort out the issues but until then a custom race, or custom online championship is utterly out of the question. Everything but the latter is online only.
I’ve also had several occasions where races start with drivers getting penalties, the game getting stuck in the pitstop and a lot of crashes in the in game menu system.
The AI also suddenly reverts back to an old style of driving through you and causing stupid incidents online too – yet works wonderfully offline. This doesn’t happen on quick race strangely. When the host leaves or the players drop to 8 or below, the race kicks off. When building a custom race as soon as more than 8 players have joined, the game freezes upon entry. So what on earth has happened currently to the online events? It’s here currently where F1 2012 absolutely falls down. Props too for the new weather mechanics that really do shake races up. The AI is much better this time round, having their own accidents, the occasional engine blow up and the tyre simulations mean you’ll often find yourself on a real balancing act as everyone strategy comes alive. Of course the 5 year career mode is still there with some minor tweaks.Īs a whole the single player mode is massively improved. It also forces a one-shot qualifying system like F1 had in 2003-5. It harks right the way back to Ayrton Senna’s Super Monaco GP in its set up and is a very welcome addition. Also here is season challenge which targets you to pick off rivals and move to their seats over an arcade style championship base. This is a nice extra to sit alongside time trials and single lap leader boards. Champions mode is a six event scenario mode to challenge each champion in increasingly difficult missions. The third change is the extra modes for the single player. I found leaving the set up as default would see me up to 2 seconds off the pace on Legend difficulty yet moving it up the scale just one notch suddenly had me on the pace. Quick set up’s normally gear you towards a lower downforce set up to keep up with the AI down the straights. Maybe for future updates if this stays it’d be great to show exactly what each function does in a side-by-side comparison. I found this was where the tutorial was really lacking. This then in turn brings set up to the fore a bit more. The emphasis, as shown in the new New Drivers Test day (a tutorial of sorts), is now on smoothness of the steering and pedals. If you’re used to flooring the accelerator you’ll be spinning off at the first turn. Unlike previous versions, here I’m finding set ups and trigger button pressures really matter more than ever now. It really does enhance the experience ten fold when you’ve not got to think “those buildings are moving slower than my eye can notice”. Also improved are the fibres, damage pieces and general grubbiness throughout. This was my biggest problem with last year and its happily far better this time round. The first biggest change is the vastly improved graphics and smoother frame rate. F1 2012, like the previous outings falls firmly in the middle, although it does feel this time round things have moved slightly towards the sim end more than 2011’s version. Creating a game for such a split market is no easy task and you have to feel for Codemasters – they’ll be slammed for making an ingenious genre defining sim, they’ll be slammed for making an arcade gem.