With its heavy emphasis on realism at all costs, the recent F1 games have done a great job of winning over the hardcore crowd, who want nothing more than a pixel perfect recreation of the motor racing spectacular, but their combination of an unwieldy and confusing interface, coupled with annoying penalties that penalised you for cutting corners, or worse still, accidentally crashing into another car (or sometimes even being rammed yourself), meant the game was to novices as a flying brick is to subtle. In fact, the game was something of a juxtaposition, with a wide range of assists designed to make the game easier for novices (like auto-braking and a racing line, which showed you where to go and changed colour if you're going too fast), meshed awkwardly against the unforgiving penalty system, which only served to turn newbies off. Thanks to the game being a yearly license, the series will be making its return to consoles and PC later this year in the form of F1 2012 - but this time, developers Codemasters have been tweaking the formula somewhat - and hopefully they'll be making it easier for us, too.
Bringing with it a variety of different modes, it seems Codemasters have listened to the criticisms somewhat, and are prepared to make some changes to make the game that little bit easier to get into. One of the biggest inclusions is the Young Driving School mode, which we're imagining will may work a little bit like a tutorial, as you try out for a position on one of the F1 teams before a season starts, marking the beginning of the career mode, and the start of your journey to the Drivers World Championship. When coupled with the promise of a new interface, it seems that F1 2012 should at least be a slightly less daunting task for newbies, or those less skilled at games.
And people say it's just a procession of cars. Tch.
But not all of the changes have been designed to make the game easier. Another addition to this year's game is dynamically changing weather, which promises to make the weather during races as temperamental as, well, living in England during the summer. What this means is that different parts of the track will have their own, localised weather - so on one part of the track you could be struggling to see through torrential rain, while around the next corner, the track's bone dry, all of which should add up for some rather challenging races, as you go from having perfect grip into what's effectively a skid pan. Helping keep up to date with the Joneses, F1 2012 will also feature the new Austin Grand Prix In America, which is making its way into the game, despite not yet being finished.
One of the changes Codemasters have been shouting the loudest about for 2012 is how they've been tweaking the AI of your opponents to offer more of a fair challenge, making them not ridiculously easy to beat, whilst also ensuring they won't leave you standing and lap you, either. All we're hoping for is the ability to turn off the chuffing penalties, which penalise us for being rubbish drivers. And the return of the funky co-op mode, which let you enlist a friend to help out, racing in the other of your team's cars as you tried to cinch first and second.
Promising updated teams for the 2012 season, a selection of new features to make the races more interesting, and, most importantly, a redesigned and easier to use interface, F1 2012's aiming to straddle the ground between Formula One addicts and racing novices alike. We'll see how well they manage it later this year, as F1 2012 launches late September on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.
