Ramp the difficulty up though, and every turn of the car, every gear change, and even aspects of pit time are your responsibility. Thankfully, with a range of braking assists, traction control and a racing guideline available, F1 2012 remains accessible for newcomers who want something perhaps closer to a typical racing game but still serving as an entry point to the sport. Veering onto the grass causes the green stuff to accumulate on your wheels, adding a perceptible slide and minimises traction, while deploying KERS (strip back the complexity of the rules and it’s a horsepower-boosting equivalent to a speed power-up in lesser titles) affects your braking times and accuracy as a side-effect of its eye-watering forward momentum. Throughout the game, vehicle handling proves simultaneously precise and punishing. As such, it can become difficult to gauge any sense of genuinely improved performance. Given just how specific the game’s demands are though, there’s temptation to become over-reliant on Codemaster’s trademarked Flashback feature zooming backwards to take one more pass at an awkward hairpin or avoid a collision. With even minute deviations from the track resulting in time penalties or outright disqualification, learning to control the cars properly will be your number one priority. The overall difficulty could be placed somewhere between the brutal F1 2011 and the challenging F1 2010 – not easy then. “Improvement is something you’ll have to work hard for though, and rarely does a game make you fight so hard for a fraction of a second’s performance on a lap time. Even returning F1 players should appreciate this refresher course in basic training, as there are plenty of nuanced differences to pick up on that reflect the changes the FIA has introduced to the motorsport since F1 2011 hit shelves.
F1 2012 GAMES VS REALITY DRIVERS
Depending on your inherent skill, the young drivers test will take about 40 minutes to 1 hour to complete but this solid foundation in gameplay mechanics will prove time well spent. Taking you through everything from vehicle handling, acceleration, and breaking to the more advanced elements of the sports such as KERS and DRS, a mixture of hands on time and short instructional videos prove invaluable to those either unfamiliar with the sport or new to its digital recreations. Yet for its third outing with the Formula One license, that’s just what Codemasters have done with F1 2012, delivering numerous small-but-notable improvements over the last two years’ offerings.Įverything starts with the young drivers test in a meticulously recreated Yas Marina Stadium and racetrack in Abu Dhabi. While the likes of EA’s FIFA and Madden could easily get by on roster changes alone, most other games really need to prove their mettle to get punters to pony up their hard earned cash again. Yearly sports titles tend to face an uphill battle.