F1 2009 (Wii) Review
Posted by Joe Roche on 12.31.2009
There aren't many options for F1 racing fans on the console but can this Codemaster's release fill that void?
Title: F1 2009
Publisher: Codemasters
Developer: Sumo Digital
Genre: Racing/Simulation
Players: 1-2
Rated: E for Everyone
I have one rule with any video game that carries a date on it – if the date associated with the game is for a year that is 90% over when the game comes out, we have a problem. Madden releases their 2010 version of NFL football in August of 2009, the same essential formula follows for every other sports genre. You are picking up a sports game before the following season begins so that you can play through the game as the season progresses. With that one rule in mind I’d have to say that there was an immediate red flag attached to Codemasters’ Formula 1 2009 which was released at the end of November 2009 after the completion of the 2009 Formula 1 season. This rule of thumb that I live by has no relation to the actual game play but it’s usually a bad marketing strategy to release a game for a sport that isn’t currently in season. Luckily for Codemasters the date issue wasn’t a significant problem with F1 2009.
Gameplay
The game offers a couple of different single player modes and a multiplayer (split screen/offline) mode. In single player you can choose anything from a Time Trial to a 3 year long Career in which you attempt to climb the Formula One ladder to become the F1 champion. Perhaps the best mode in this game involves the driver challenges, a set of 75 in total which must be unlocked by completing the previous challenges. Each challenge is slightly different (though mostly the same) ranging anywhere from driving around the track trying to hit as many checkpoints as possible, to winning a race outright. You are graded on your performance in each challenge and what grade you receive will determine if the next stage unlocks (and whether other new stuff is unlocked in the game). For a racing game the mini games (or challenges) have become a bit of a staple but they’re welcome here – especially when you first pick up the game because they provide a handy way to learn the controls and become more comfortable with the style of racing employed in F1.
Other then the mini-game challenges the only real appeal that this game carries is the career mode which is pretty good if not a big bare boned. You will take the helm of your own race team – doing some qualifying races based on time to gather sponsorships. After you secure a race team for the first of three seasons (the career mode only spans three seasons) you dive right into the crux of the career mode. One thing that the game does nicely is allows you to partake in the full race weekend activities. You will be able to participate in timed laps in two pre-race practices, before qualifying for time and then partaking in the actual race where you can accumulate points that will impact your season standings.
For fans of Formula One racing the career mode will probably be a fun aspect of the game because the game is officially licensed by F1 so you’ll be racing against all of the drivers that you know and love from F1. The one problem with that aspect of the game is that the drivers were put into the game at the beginning of the 2009 season so any driver changes or team/sponsorship changes that occurred over the previous year will not be represented in the game itself. While this is a minor detail – for those of you who are diehard F1 fans it might be a major turn off. For those of you who aren’t just imagine that in your favorite baseball game you were never able to move Victor Martinez from the Indians to the Red Sox – wouldn’t that bug you even just a little bit? Yeah I thought so.
As for the career mode itself – it’s pretty much what you’d expect. I mean there isn’t anything revolutionary but for fans of F1 racing it’ll do an adequate job of providing a season long simulation. All of the major tracks are represented here, and they’re all sufficiently unique so that you are constantly changing your car set up so that you don’t fly off the road and into a barrier (which will happen – a lot). I’d like the ability to change teams, or perhaps create rivalries like the NASCAR series tried to do (failed, but tried) but it’s still a pretty good representation of an F1 season and it’s the best available F1 game – which is probably the best thing that can be said about the game.
One thing that has to be mentioned is the controls – which are almost always pretty good, especially for a racing game that takes gamers to speeds of over 200 miles per hour. BUT, and this is a huge but – if you want to try and use the racing wheel in F1 2009 be prepared to hate everything about life and video games. I realize that most sane people would never use the racing wheel for an F1 game, but because I am dedicated to my work here at 411mania.com I did just that, and man alive is it a horrible experience. I should note that I never use the racing wheel though my wife loves playing Mario Kart Wii with the wheel I think it’s a lousy peripheral all around but it’s use in F1 2009 is infuriatingly bad. It’s really surprising that the handling is so bad with the wheel because the handling with all of the other controls that I used were very tight and responsive so it was especially glaring when the racing wheel came into play and I immediately regretting my decision.
Overall though the game isn’t bad, but it isn’t great. As far as F1 simulation racers go this is about as good as you’re going to find anywhere and the only things holding it back are all pretty fixable problems for an F1 2010 game. A true diehard F1 racing fan will want to check this game out – while most people will likely avoid it because the game offers little reason to care for people who aren’t already fans of the genre.
Graphics
Graphically this game is not going to blow anyone away – even for the Wii. While all twenty of the officially licensed tracks, and the officially licensed cars looked fine nothing really stood out graphically and the game seemed like an average looking PS2 game. The one thing that I will say is that I never anticipated this game would look great – racing games are notoriously not “great” looking per se unless you’re talking about a Forza 3 but even Forza games (and Gran Turismo) suffer from some relatively “blah” settings.
None of that is to mean that the graphics are bad – as a matter of fact every once in awhile you’ll find yourself mildly impressed with the graphics in a nostalgia type of way. In a video game context it’s always a tricky prospect to animate speed. I mean how do you convey that a car is going 200+ miles per hour when the only surroundings are empty bleachers and the occasional ING sign? I’m not entirely sure and if I had the answer I’d be working for Codemasters and not writing this review – but they accomplished the feat because this game feels like it’s happening at a very high rate of speed, which isn’t always a plus in game play but it’s an impressive feat none-the-less.
The cars themselves look pretty solid. I don’t put as much weight into that achievement as some others might if only because other then the cars there is almost nothing else to produce graphically in this game so they should look good – and they do. The only other real point when the graphics come into play are the menus which are pretty basic, standard and bland – but they’re easy to navigate and won’t cause you much of a headache so again not necessarily a win, but nothing terrible either.
Sound
This is a tough section to judge because on the one hand the sound is relatively authentic (I mean it’s authentic enough) but on the other hand the sound is absolutely infuriatingly annoying to the point where a half a dozen races into my first play through of the game I was ready to mute the sound and listen to the radio. One of the coolest aspects of the F1 race cards is that their engines are almost jet engines – and the sound of an F1 car going around a race track is pretty intense. The problem arises when you’re playing an F1 video game and they try to recreate the jet engine like sound that the F1 engines make – the end result ends up being a high pitched whine as your car speeds around the race track. It’s not the most offensive video game sound that I’ve ever dealt with but it’s pretty obnoxious and quickly turned me off from the game as I played through a handful of races.
Here’s a weird addendum that I wanted to add two days after I wrote the above paragraph, the more that I’ve played F1 2009 the more the audio has grown on me. I wish there was more chatter with my spotter because too often I went way too hard into turns which could have been avoided had my spotter given me a bit of a heads up. But as for the sound of the engine it gets a bit hypnotic the longer you spend with the game and it doesn’t bother me as much as it did when I first put it in the console. I guess what I’ll say about the audio in this game is that there isn’t much of it – and what is there will take you some time to get to a point where you don’t hate it.
Lasting Appeal
As I write this review we’re about to change the calendar over from 2009 to 2010 and yet I’m sitting here playing a Formula 1 racing game that doesn’t have online multiplayer. It is absolutely inexcusable to me that this game doesn’t have an online component. I understand that the Wii hasn’t entirely figured out the online multiplayer aspect of games just yet but there is no excuse for this game to come without the ability to jump online and compete in a race against 19 other people around the globe – hell F1 is huge internationally, this game is begging for online multiplayer but alas unless you’ve got friends on hand you’re playing this game solo my friend.
The only way that I could possibly justify recommending a game that had no online component is if the single player is flawless – and this game does not have a flawless single player. It does have a robust single player, and the career mode (while short) is pretty detailed and well done, however nothing stands out – and nothing here is worth more then a short play through which makes it difficult to recommend. The career mode only allows you to race for 3 seasons which is probably enough for most people but still kills the lasting appeal, and while there are something like 75 driver challenges to undertake most of them are repetitive and the allure wears off quickly. The game has some merit, but you won’t still be playing it when the F1 2010 season kicks off.
Fun Factor
Whether or not you enjoy this game is going to be directly related to how much you enjoy Formula One racing. I know that’s an obvious sentiment but it really is that simple – this game is the closest approximation to F1 racing on any console on the market right now so if you’re a diehard F1 fan then you’re going to enjoy this game, but if you either don’t care or downright don’t like open wheel racing then you should avoid this game at all costs.
I know that my review has not painted this game in the best light but there was enough in this game to make me enjoy playing it. The controls (at least when you’re not using the wheel) are really tight and the racing action is relatively true to life. F1 racing isn’t like NASCAR so there is not a lot of bumping in a race which to me turned down a bit of the fun factor because you had to be so precise in your timing, turning and passing but then again I’m a much bigger NASCAR fan then F1 fan so I am supposed to think that way.
The bottom line is that the game is fun. I have explained my enjoyment with F1 2009 in the classic Carl tradition by saying “I hated every part of that but overall I liked it.” As a racing simulation the game is pretty accurate, and the fact that the controls are so tight makes this game enjoyable. In a game when you need to be able to go from 200+ MPH to 50 MPH making hair pin turns the controls make or break the experience and luckily for those F1 fans out there Codemasters did a good job making the controls responsive thus making the racing experience enjoyable. Would it have been more fun if I could’ve taken myself online and raced against other F1 fans? Of course, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t have fun with the deep customization options, the 75 driver challenges and the solid (though not spectacular) career mode.
The 411
This game is made specifically for one type of person – F1 racing fans. Unlike other sports titles which try to appeal to a cross section of the gaming community, if you’re not a Formula One racing fan then you will not want to pick up this game. On the other hand if you’re an F1 racing fan and you absolutely want decent simulation experience of the F1 series then this game is worth at the very least a rental. It’s a bit light on features, though the challenges will give you plenty of stuff to do after the career mode wears thin but without online multiplayer there might be little incentive for you to revisit this particular racer after it comes out of your console for the first time.
Graphics
7.0
Average even by racing game standards
Gameplay
7.0
It's a fun F1 simulation experience, if that's what you're looking for but not enough depth
Sound
5.5
You won't last long with the sound turned up
Lasting Appeal
6.0
No online component really hurts this score
Fun Factor
6.0
Fan of F1 should try it - everyone else should skip it.
