Formula 1 2011 3D review

by Paul on Oct 3rd, 2012

Formula One has undergone a real resurgence over the last couple of years, both in terms of the appeal of the sport amongst the hordes of fans who were starting to feel a little jaded with the glorified conga line that the races had become, and with the video games that looked to provide an accurate facsimile of the sport. Certainly, since Codemasters got hold of the licence a few years back, the F1 games on 360 and PS3 have been consistently excellent. So, it was with a big feeling of optimism that I sat down to give Formula One 2011 on the 3DS a good run around the track.

It all starts so promisingly as well. The front-end menus give everything a glossy and professional feel, although it has to be said that navigating through these sections always feels a little more drawn-out than it needs to be. There are several play modes to choose from. There’s the customary time trial which is where the bulk of my time tends to be spent in games of this ilk. It’s just you and the track of your choice and it’s during these lonesome sessions that the game is at its most exciting and thrilling. Hurtling around the numerous courses on offer is never less than a joy and doing lap after lap to shave a few more milliseconds off your top time really scratches that “one more go” itch. As fun as it all is though, this is not really what we’re playing the game for. It’s all about the main race day and taking on the rest of the grid in a tussle for first place.

There’s four variants to what I’d call the main campaign. You have Quick Race, Grand Prix, Championship and Career. Quick Race lets you pick a driver and a track and you’re left to get on with it in a single race with no qualifying. Grand Prix is also a single race but it takes in the whole race weekend so you can try your hand at practicing and qualifying to get yourself higher up the grid. Championship sees you picking a driver and then playing through the entire race calendar trying to finish at the top of the table when the season concludes. Career mode is essentially the same, except you are now playing through three seasons on the trot instead of just one with the aim to be the highest-scoring driver at the end of the three seasons. Career mode struck me as a real missed opportunity. Firing it up for my first play-through, I had visions of a whole host of player / team management features waiting to be tinkered with but sadly it was not to be. Still, this is hopefully something that can be improved and expanded upon if a new 3DS edition rears its head in the future.

So, it’s all par the course for an F1 game so far, but it’s within these main game modes that the problems reveal themselves. The addition of other cars onto the track generates some pretty bad slowdown and the rate in which the background pops into view grows by quite a large degree. If you’re a big fan of having the 3D turned on during the race I really wouldn’t bother as everything will start to stutter quite badly although if you’re like me and leave the 3D off then things do improve. However, the AI of the other drivers is the biggest issue. Their behaviour really is quite awful; they’ll ram into you as if you were not even there and generally drive like a bunch of shits. Some will just take off into the distance leaving you with no real hope of catching them while the remainder seem to be deliberately hanging back behind you. In no way does it replicate the real-life driving we see each race weekend where the driving is nuanced, tactical and measured. As a result your enjoyment of the game is reduced dramatically, especially in races where you’re in the top half of the grid and pushing for points, only to have your race ruined by an infuriating computer-controlled git who smacks you up the arse. Considering how long the races can last in F1, you’ll soon realise that this brings out chucking-your-3DS-at-the-wall-in-a-rage behaviour at its worst. Maybe I’m asking too much of the 3DS to replicate the AI driving standards we can see in the main console F1 games but surely the coding can be made better than this?

What’s so disappointing about all this is that the game comes from Sumo Digital, the guys who did such a good job of other racing games such as the Xbox Live conversion of OutRun 2 and Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing. To see them producing a game where the AI driver behaviour is so awful is a crushing blow, although the suspicion is that the game was not truly ready to be released rather than it be any fault on the developer side. They just needed more time. I would have preferred that they held it back to fix these issues; much better for a game to arrive late and working, rather than on schedule but inherently flawed, but then I’m not the one holding the purse strings.

If you can tolerate such behaviour mid-race and just enjoy the game for what it is then there’s a lot of content here for you, but as it stands the only really good bit of the game so far is the time trial and as fun as that can be for petrol heads or obsessive compulsive types like myself who are just two hundredths of a second away from being top of the table, it certainly doesn’t justify a purchase. But then the game goes and pulls out its trump card … the challenge mode. This is an inspired idea and, apart from the ones where the dodgy AI conspires against you, the challenges present some interesting and enjoyable scenarios to tackle. You’re given a list of tasks and objectives to complete and you’re graded on how well you did. It could be passing a series of checkpoints before the time runs out, or being asked to catch up to the race leader and overtake him before the time runs out, etc. It’s a surprisingly meaty list as well with 60 challenges in total and they do a lot to remove that nasty taste from the mouth that the main game gives you.

Graphics in-race are good for the majority of the time. Cars all sound suitably powerful, with no hint of a lawnmower being used as a substitute sound effect and it is evident that plenty of hard work has gone in to make each track look as close as is possible to its real-life counterpart. The handling of the cars is also excellent. You get a real sense of the brute force that these bad boys contain under the bonnet, with the cars feeling jittery and a challenge to control but not excessively so. You can tune your car and the sensitivity of the steering to help tailor it more to your tastes. It is such a shame that the main component of the game – the actual racing with other drivers – is so broken.

If you can find the game for cheap (I’ve seen it on sale for as little as £5.99 in some shops which is a bargain) then I’d suggest it’s worth picking up. If driving games are not your thing then sadly there’s nothing in this title to change your feeling towards them but for those who do enjoy their racing and don’t mind ignoring some of the glaring issues within the main event then try and rent it out and see what you think. I just hope that Sumo Digital are given another crack at this. There is definite scope to improve and enhance things beyond what we have here which, while its not exactly stuck in the pits, is far from the pole position we were expecting.

3/5

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