F1 2009

Review - The thin (racing) line

Is there anybody left who remembers what racing games used to be like before the arrival of the racing line? Hard, that's what. Case in point: old F1 games. The speed of the simulated cars is so intense that it used to be all too easy to fly straight off a corner and into an unpleasant pause-restart cycle, which was usually enough to put you off those games completely. Needless to say, I was incredibly relieved to see a helpful guiding line in Sumo Digital's F1 2009. Phew.

Racing line firmly in place, I was more than ready to prove that, in a different life, I could have easily been an F1 driver. Like DiRT and GRiD, F1 2009's initial moments encourage you to make yourself, choosing a three-letter nickname and a helmet as your sole means of personalisation. My one had flames on.

F1 2009 uses the antiquated style of text entry you used to see in the PS2-era, where NAMES and PLACES are capitalised every time they appear, and the game makes no indication to tell you it's messing with the laws of language at the beginning: glum old M. Gaston spent half his career sticking out like a sore thumb sandwiched in-between L. HAMILTON and J. BUTTON, until I cracked and changed it in the options menu. Yes, I'm a pedant.

I found the menus (and general presentation) a bit disappointing overall, with an unattractive block capital font and a single piece of background music in the menus - a tune just irritating enough to burrow into your brain and demand to be hummed when you're waiting in the kitchen for the kettle to boil. For a game published by Codemasters, who traditionally oversee some of the slickest UI's in the entire games industry, it comes as a bit of a shock. You certainly spend enough time scrolling through them to expect better, lapping up all sorts of uninteresting fake e-mails and twiddling with car options.

Still, we're not here to look at menus: I want to race some superfast cars around some famous twisty tracks! Part of the modern Codemasters formula is the illusion of having you zoom about with reputable drivers, and their F1 license extends to all the big names from the 2009 season. But it's the middle of November, and with the 2010 season starting in just over three months, the game seems out of date before it's even been launched: in the last week Mercedes-Benz have snapped up Brawn GP and their champion Button looks certain to move to McLaren. That's got to be a kick in the crotch for developer Sumo Digital. It probably would have made sense to wait for March and call it 2010, like Codemasters (who are developing the 360/PS3 version) are doing with their interpretation.

The game, though, frames itself around Career mode. Striving for authenticity, Sumo Digital have you play out the entire affair, putting out qualifying laps on the Friday and Saturday before Sunday's main event. You're given yonks to post the best time you can, but in most instances you'll just do one lap, set the record, and then skip ahead - which forces you to load (load times are typically horrendous, in typical PSP style) back into the menu and then again into the course you were on seconds before. The option to jump straight into the Grand Prix is there if you want, but it means you can't start in the top six. On the easier difficulties that doesn't pose much of a problem, though.

After all the work to get to pole position, it's immediately upsetting to see the engine fall over struggling to keep a solid frame-rate when the game has twenty cars in one place on the track. It's not something you expect to experience - showing racing is what a racing game should do - and especially in a game with less resplendent visuals than ancient PSP launch titles WipEout Pulse and Ridge Racers. The internal view is even worse, showing the jagged, blocky pixels of the tarmac and scenery even at speeds fast enough to blur everything into a grey line.

It also handicaps itself by throwing players into extreme hand-holding mode from the beginning. Even me, who was admittedly terrible for the first six or seven hours, never lost a race on default settings. On harder difficulties, and with the assists off, I found myself spinning out on every corner, managing fuel levels and (like you naturally should) carefully avoiding other vehicles when overtaking. With those features on it captures quite a bit of the F1 experience - an atmosphere the default settings painfully lack. And I did get better, eventually. But I also turned the racing line back on.

Perhaps it's because this is a game also designed for the Wii, but F1 2009 errs too far on the side of family-friendly caution. Features such as the game levelling out multiplayer by sussing out who should have what assists turned on are nice, but less important than cracking the one-player experience on a traditionally single-player handheld. Tip: raise the difficulty settings.

The PSP gets its own exclusive feature by way of the Challenge mode, which puts players through a series of traditional obstacles: overtake as many other cars in a single lap, pass through checkpoints, burning laps, etc. These are all sufficiently robust - Sumo Digital's prior experience porting OutRun 2 clearly shines through - for bite-sized commuter-friendly gaming, but these modes have been seen in so many racing games now they're starting to feel a bit tired.

They've certainly managed to cram a lot onto the UMD, with all seventeen events of the F1 season - including the fantastic Singapore night race - alongside plenty of different textures and the engine sounds of each team's cars. That, in itself, is an achievement. But for all Sumo Digital's (who are probably one of the UK's most unappreciated developers) efforts, F1 2009 comes off unrefined. The core mechanics are solid, but the challenges of putting out a licensed product - and starting with a company as fussy as the FIA probably wasn't a good idea - have clearly got the better of them. Though I imagine if you're a devout F1 nut you can add 10% to the score.

65%