2011 Video Games BAFTAs for F1 2010 and NfS: Hot Pursuit
The 2011 GAME British Academy Video Games awards took place this week, with two of the three nominated racing games claiming the top prizes.
In the ‘Sport’ category, F1 201 was victorious, beating stiff competition from FIFA 11, Football Manager 2011, Pro Evo Soccer 2011, International Cricket 2010 and Gran Turismo 5. An added twist is that the holders of the official F1 licence before Codemasters was, in fact, Sony! It’s a well-deserved win following the patches which fixed initial bugs in the game.
And although Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit lost out to Call of Duty: Black Ops in the GAME Award of 2010, it did claim the Bafta for ‘Multiplayer’. Strangely, in achieving this, it beat Black Ops, which has multiplayer as the main attraction of the game, but the discrepancy is explained by the GAME Award being the one chosen by the public (Who we think were wrong, given that Limbo, Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead Redemption were also up for voting).
Either way, 2 top racing games of the past year were both rewarded, and well-deserved congratulations to Codemasters and Criterion.
F1 2010 and Thrustmaster finalists in the MCV Industry Excellence Awards
The MCV Awards tend to focus on the industry side of gaming, with awards for the top specialist retailers, games publishers and distributors, or marketing and PR teams. But in amongst the finalists, there are a couple of mentions for F1 2010 as the lone representative of the racing genre.
It’s listed in the finalists for ‘Best Use of Social Media’ – up against the likes of Fable 3, Just Cause 2 and Just Dance, and happily for Codemasters, it also pops up in ‘Sales Triumph’ versus the likes of Mafia 2, Art Academy and Sniper: Ghost Warrior.
And in the ‘Peripherals & Accessories’ category, Thrustmaster are listed as purveyors of steering wheels to the online racer!
And in terms of retailers, you’ll be pleased to know that when you follow the links to Game, HMV, or Play.com from this site, they’re amongst the contenders for ‘Specialist Retailer’, along with Amazon, Asda, Tesco, Argos and Sainsbury’s for General Retailer.
The MCV Awards take place on April 7th, 2011 in London, UK.
Bargain racing games in Blockbuster pre-owned sale
The Blockbuster video rental chain is currently holding a sale on pre-owned games in the UK, both in-store, and apparently online, although the Blockbuster website doesn’t let you filter just games in the pre-owned selection. So if you’re looking to pick up some racing games for some pretty low prices, here’s what you can search for:
- Need for Speed Hot Pursuit – £24.95
- GT5 – £24.95
- F1 2010 – £24.95
- Modnation Racers – £14.95
- DiRT 2 – £8.95
- Motorstorm – £3.95
- Forza 2 – £1.95
- GT5 Prologue – £5.95
- FUEL – £5.95
Blockbuster doesn’t seem to ever carry PC games, so it’ll be the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 versions of the games you’ll be able to pick up from today.
Codemasters break out the F1 2010 bug spray
After weeks of putting up with tirades of semi-disgruntled customers on their forum, Codemasters have released a patch for F1 2010. As we reported, there were some genuine problems that needed fixing, and it indeed looks like they have fixed them. So what has now improved in version 1.1 of the game?
(The Xbox patch is not available at the moment – it should be online on Monday or Tuesday)
Well, straight from the horse’s mouth, this is what they have fixed:
1. Corrupt Save Games – We have identified an over-zealous anti-cheating check that manifested as falsely identified corrupt saves, specifically the ones relating to practice and R&D upgrades, the save-games should now load without issue.
2. AI not pitting in dry races where a mandatory pit stop was required (20% or more) – This has been fixed.
3. Player held in pit-stop too long – We’ve improved exit logic so that it isn’t too cautious in holding players during a pit-stop.
4. Puncture frequency reduced – The likelihood of players suffering punctures has been reduced.
5. Pit-stop lock-ups – Fixed several instances which caused the pit crew to lock-up and not be able to service the cars.
6. Automatically updating race strategy – Selecting prime tyres from the tyre menu (over default option) now updates the strategy so that the pit-crew assign options during the pit stop as opposed to re-attaching another set of primes (in a dry race of 20% or more).
7. First lap calculates correctly – The lap time for the first lap of the race now calculates correctly, from the lights going out as opposed to the cars crossing the start line.
In addition to these fixes we’ve also made improvements to the game based on your forum feedback:-
1. OSD changes – showing split times rather than gap to leader – We’ve changed how the OSD timing information functions so that split times are now displayed on the OSD, showing race time and race time differences to the other cars – I.e. how far ahead/behind are at a sector boundary.
2. AI affected more by damage received – Damage sustained by an AI’s car will have a greater effect their handling characteristics, effectively slowing damaged AI down more. AI cars that cannot maintain a racing speed will naturally yield to faster cars & come into the pits for repairs. As before, If they receive too much damage, they will retire from the race.
3. AI yielding to other cars when not on flying lap in qualifying – Improved AI behaviour to move off the racing line or out of the player’s way when the player is on a flying lap.
4. Increased wheel support – Increased wheel support and force feedback tweaks (where applicable) for the following wheels; Thrustmaster Ferrari F430 Force Feedback (officially supported), Thrustmaster Ferrari GT Experience (officially supported), Thrustmaster RGT Force Feedback Pro Clutch (not officially supported but will work), Fanatec Porsche 911 Turbo S & GT3 RS2 (both officially supported).
5. Wet weather improvements – Rebalanced graphical and handling effect of cars driving on a wet track – the level of wetness has been increased as well as tyre trails being made more prominent.
6. Improved Damage Modelling – Tweaks to the damage system so that more damage is visible / received during lesser impacts.
7. Next lap invalidated time trial logic – In time trial the next lap is no longer invalidated for any offence committed in the 3rd sector. It is calculated per track and is predominantly based on the final corner.
8. AI: Driver Behaviours – Addressed some issues in driver behaviour balancing that were causing occasionally unrealistic finishing positions.
So, all in all, that all looks like a pretty comprehensive patch. Obviously some people won’t be happy as you can never please everyone, but provided these fixes work correctly it should iron out the minor flaws that prevented players’ full enjoyment of the gameplay, and more importantly, fix the corrupted game saves so that people can continue with their hard-earned career games.
Before you can enjoy the patch, you’ll need to buy a copy of F1 2010:
Amazon: PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3.
(Currently with the lowest prices – £34.99 for new copies for Xbox/PS3)
Game: PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3.
Gamestop: Xbox 360, Playstation 3.
Play.com: PC, XBox 360, Playstation 3
Is F1 2010 infested with bugs?
F1 2010 has been on general sale for a couple of weeks and has received generally rave reviews. The chart-topping game scored 86/100 on Metacritic. Official PlayStation magazine gave it 90/100. IGN gave it 85 and said it was “Easily the best Grand Prix game since Geoff Crammond was on the beat”, and your very own Online Race Driver scored it 4.5/5. But wait – what was that? The internet is not happy?! Forums are talking of it being rubbish? There are bugs, you say? Little Timmy fell down the well? Well – we had better investigate.
Since the game’s release, gaming forums have been awash with complaints from unhappy gamers complaining of a dodgy penalty system, impossibly long pit stops and some unrealistic AI getting in the way of their enjoyment. The official Codemasters forum has a 150+ page thread of people listing bugs, but they seem to vary across the different platforms. Codemasters have also announced they are going to release a patch for the game – which can either be viewed as a natural part of the development cycle, or as an admission of guilt that they have got some things wrong. But how bad are the problems? We’ve had a look at some of the common complaints to see if they are justified.
1. The AI is too slow/fast – How long is a piece of string? Some people have complained the game is too easy and others too hard, which are probably each correct depending on the player’s skill level. AI difficulty can be customised to four levels, and driving aids can be switched on and off to make things easier or more difficult. If you haven’t bothered exploring the options this is a pretty invalid complaint.
2. The AI drivers don’t pit – Some people have been complaining that despite taking their mandatory pit stop in career mode races, their computer opponents fail to do so, which does appear to be a genuine issue. Many players have experienced leading a race, pitting, and then being stuck behind some drivers who have not done the same, making the race unfair. However most cars do seem to pit most of the time, and the situation can only be enhanced by career games being in their infancy and having to drive one of the worst cars – meaning players can often simply be beaten by the length of a pit stop on sheer pace by the front runners, but the bug remains something that needs sorting out asap.
3. In-game interviews with the press are pointless – The much publicised ‘relationship with the media’ part of the game is one of the biggest let-downs. Some of the questions don’t make any sense, and it is not difficult to quickly work out that praising your team will make you popular with them, and slagging them off will not. It’s a nice idea, and they do have some effect on the game in terms of your relationship with the team, but the overall impact doesn’t seem to have a dramatic enough effect over the game to be worth bothering with.
4. I’m being held in the pits too long – Another justified complaint, and one acknowledged by Codemasters. Driving for one of the smaller teams means your pit box is at the far end of the pit lane, and the game has a system in place where you won’t be released if another car is going past your pit box, meaning even if you pit in front of five other cars it is likely you’ll have to agonisingly wait for them all to trundle past you before you can get back into the race, unfairly costing you time and positions. In real-life teams are not allowed to release cars in front of other cars, but the situation is never so bad that a car would be held for ten seconds or more without reason. Codies and have suggested the following workarounds until they can sort it out via a patch: Firstly to “Increase or decrease your first pit stop by a lap from the pre-set default”, secondly to “Reverse your strategy to start the race on the prime tyres rather than the options, which will allow you to get significantly later in the race before having to make your pit stop” or thirdly to simply “carry on with your default race strategy but choose to ignore the lap where the Race Engineer calls you in and select to pit on the subsequent lap”. In summary – try not to pit at the same time as the AI.
5. I’m getting punctures too often – Punctures are a part of F1 no doubt, but some people have complained of getting four punctures in one session. This does seem rather a high number, but in my own experience I have only picked one up after a few trips off the circuit – staying on the circuit dramatically reduces your chances of getting one. I have probably played through about 20 races now and only had two punctures, with one being after I’d hit a wall quite hard. I’ll put this one down to either bad luck, or more likely, bad driving.
6. I get too many penalties! – Again, this is a customisable option and you can set the rules to ‘relaxed’ or ‘realistic’ depending on your tastes. If you make contact with another car it is likely you’ll get a warning or penalty, and the same if you cut a corner or rejoin a race after a spin and drive onto the track in front of oncoming cars. Many have been saying these rules are too harsh, but they appear to work perfectly to me – if you race as if you are a real F1 driver would and avoid unfair collisions and kerb-cutting and dangerously rejoining the circuit then you won’t have any problems. If you drive like it’s a computer game and bump into everyone then you’ll get penalised. If you brake too much when you’re on the racing line and another car runs into you then you’ll get penalised. The rules are an important part of the F1 simulation, and whilst they can be unforgiving, I think they are implemented fairly. After all, contact in virtual motorsport is far more common than in real life.
7. R&D doesn’t work – The career mode features an ‘R&D’ objectives mode where if you complete a certain lap time in practice you’ll be rewarded with a new part to improve your car. Many drivers have hit this lap time but then ended the session and not received it. This appears to be a difference between skipping the session and allowing it to end. It looks like if you quit the session and move straight to qualifying the time won’t count, but if you fast-forward the session to the end via the timing screen on your monitor it will work properly.
8. Corrupted game saves – Not a bug exactly but bloody annoying. Players across both consoles and PC’s have reported losing the fruits of their sweat and tears by having their game saves corrupted. This apparently happens when you complete an R&D objective and then quit straight to the paddock. There is no problem if you progress to qualifying and then quit… apparently. Hopefully this will get fixed it the patch.
So there clearly are some issues to be addressed – , but there is also a lot of vitriol on the internet that is unfounded and appears to be written by players struggling to master the game, who should realise that the game itself is very frustrating by it’s nature. It aims to reflect reality, and look how worked up real F1 drivers can get – for example this, this and this. From a development perspective F1 2010 is a pretty difficult game to get right first time, and after spending a week playing F1 2010 I still believe this game is excellent.
Having said that, I sincerely hope the issues can be ironed out before too long, as many people will be rightly peeved at their £40 game not working as it should. We’ll bring you news of when the patch will be released as soon as we hear anything – hopefully we won’t have to wait too long.
Buy F1 2010 at:
Amazon: PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3.
(Currently with the lowest prices – £34.99 for new copies for Xbox/PS3)
Game: PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3.
Gamestop: Xbox 360, Playstation 3.
Play.com: PC, XBox 360, Playstation 3
ORD reviews Codemaster’s F1 2010 – 4.5/5
Well, where do you begin? After all the hype and expectation, the first Formula One game for four years has arrived. Much was hoped for when Codemasters obtained the licence – a company with a good track record in making great racing games, and their style is immediately apparent when you boot up the game.
The presentation and menus are all beautifully presented – clean and modern, no lag when switching between menus and very easy to navigate. There aren’t a hundred logos and start-up screens to skip through every time you start the game and everything has been generally well laid-out. It’s also worth mentioning the soundtrack at this point too – the remix of Ian Brown’s F.E.A.R that formed the soundtrack to the developer diary videos is the perfect fit, with soothing strings re-recorded at the Abbey Road studios sounding effortlessly cool. In short, the presentation is top notch, crisp and good-looking.
But obviously looking and sounding cool is useless unless you have content to back it up, else you end up with the gaming equivalent of a T4 presenter – always has a great appearance but is ultimately incredibly boring. Fortunately this is not the case in F1 2010. Having said that, there are no real surprises in terms if game modes – you can start a career, do a time trial, have a one-off Grand Prix weekend or go online – nothing new there, but each option is fully customisable. If you want to do a full-length Grand Prix complete with free practice and qualifying sessions you can. If you want to do a whole season of one-lap races you can do that too. You can also create custom championships – pick your favourite tracks and do them in a sequence you choose. You can make the game your own which is far better than picking from a few rigid, uniform options.
The online modes are interesting too – firstly because there are only four to choose from and yet they adequately cover all bases. You can compete on a hot lap Q3-style shootout called ‘Pole Position’ as well as doing 3-lap, 10% and 20% – length races including mandatory pitstops. Damage levels are customisable, as is car performance – meaning you can choose all cars to be equal or for them to reflect their 2010 standings. Making them equal seems like the only fair thing to do online though – as it will be pretty frustrating to trundle round in an HRT for 20 laps and watching a Red Bull zoom past you just because you joined an online lobby late. But again, you can specify the criteria of games you want to join.
Online participation is rewarded in the form of experience points/XP – meaning you can rank up by setting fastest laps, finishing in the top three and even by completing clean and penalty-free racing laps. If you cause an accident or get disqualified all your XP will be void for that race – so it’s a nice incentive for racers to be a bit more careful online and will hopefully deter perennial rammers. In my first race I did Silverstone and ended up on my roof at Club – something made more frustrating by my not realising I had to press start and then ‘reset to track’ in order to carry on. I finished a lap down. Poo.
So let me stop myself beating about the bush any longer – it’s all about the quality of the racing. It’s probably why you are reading this and clearly the most important aspect of the game. And I’m xelighted to say Codies have nailed it. With all the namby-pamby options switched off like brake assist, traction control and ABS the cars are brilliantly brutal. There is a good learning curve when driving them and the feeling of speed is immense, and with all the circuits recreated in such detail it makes for a great experience. I can’t vouch for how the cars handle with all the driving aids turned on because I haven’t tried them out yet – but needless to say you can customise the game (and AI skill level) to make it as easy or hard as you want to and still have a thoroughly enjoyable experience.
As I just mentioned, the circuits look great. They are all 2010-spec, meaning Singapore’s Marina Bay night race is included complete with minor tweaks to the chicanes and the Korean Grand Prix features for the first time in any racing game. Added to painstakingly recreated classics like Monaco, Monza and Spa-Francorchamps there is more than enough to keep hardened F1 fans happy for a long time. Little hills and spectator banking on the outside in the track are in the right place, even food outlets can be seen where they should be – and overall the graphical design is a superb achievement… and all this is before you factor in the weather.
F1 2010′s dynamic weather system is very impressive – to the point where it can genuinely ‘rain’ on different parts of the circuit at any one time. For instance it can be wet at Spa through La Source and Eau Rouge, but when you get around to Poulin the track is dry – which is where the game allows you to employ Jenson Button-esque tyre call tactics. Do you stay out on slicks and hope it dries up? Or pit early for wets and potentially make up a lot of time? These are calls that will make and break real championships, and their inclusion adds a whole new dimension to the game. The rain itself looks stunning – making it both exhilarating and terrifying to closely follow in another car’s spray.
Pit stops themselves are also quite interesting – you can set these to ‘automatic’ and ‘manual’ and as always in racing games the ‘manual’ option is a lot more fun and rewarding. This requires you to brake down to the put lane speed limit as you enter, and hold down the rev limiter. Then you have to slow down for your pit box – as overshooting will cost you valuable time and you’ll have to sit patiently as your mechanics push you back into position. Then it’s back on the rev limiter and away. If you’re also using manual gears the pit stop is quite a technical exercise, but one that is very enjoyable once you know what you are doing. I imagine anyway, as I keep overshooting my put box. Poo.
The only criticisms I can level at the game are relatively minor, but they do prevent F1 2010 getting a perfect score. My two biggest gripes are the lack of a two-player split screen, and the limitation of online races to twelve cars per-race. Codies did a sterling job last year with F1 2009 on the Wii, and managed to squeeze in a full two-player split-screen championship mode. Given the increased power available to the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC in particular I’m disappointed at the exclusion of the feature. I wouldn’t mind it so much had the online modes catered for full F1 grid of 24 players racing simultaneously. Having done a few races online and seeing the general carnage for myself I can see why they have chosen to limit the numbers, but a twelve-car grid for an F1 race still seems somewhat disappointing. If the designers were worried about newbies and rammers spoiling everyone else’s fun they could have implemented an XP system where you unlock the ability to participate in full races. There may be other technical reasons for it too, but it still seems something of a missed opportunity.
However neither of these ‘problems’ are things that detract massively from the overall experience of playing the game, and are very minor criticisms given the brilliant overall experience the game offers. F1 2010 has had me going ‘ooh’, ‘wow’ and ‘whaaaat!’ for a couple of days and has genuinely set a new benchmark for the genre. It is a game that will keep fans of the sport more than happy for a long time to come and I can categorically say that it was definitely worth the wait.
Looking to buy F1 2010? We recommend:
Amazon: PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3.
(Currently with the lowest prices – £34.99 for new copies for Xbox/PS3)
Game: PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3.
Gamestop: Xbox 360, Playstation 3.
Play.com: PC, XBox 360, Playstation 3
The PC version is £29.99 from Game, Play.com and Amazon.
F1 2010 Codemasters vs F1 Real Rain
F1 2010 vs Real Life (Spa Francochamps)
The stuff racing dreams are made of
Racing games have come a long way since I was a youngster. My first experience of gaming in any form was a variation on ‘Pong’. I’m not sure who made it, but it was almost certainly possibly nearly identical to this.
By the time I experienced my first racing game, things had developed a little, but only a little. My first console (I say mine, I didn’t buy it myself as I was five) was the Acorn Electron. What a machine. Connected to a cassette deck, this baby had 32 KB of ram and could load games in well under an hour.
Bugatti Veyron – my dream car by bikracer on Flickr (CC Licence)
My first racing game was developed by a British company called Micro Power and was called ‘Stock Car’ – here it is. To drive the car you didn’t have an ‘accelerate’ and ‘brake’ but instead a choice of four gears which gradually increased and decreased your speed. There were six tracks to choose from, and four cars in each race. You could turn the sound on and off, decide whether you wanted ‘oil slicks’ to appear on the track (out of nowhere obviously) and set your ‘skidding percentage’ to determine how much grip the circuit surface had. Set it any higher than 20% and it seemed less like skidding and more like all forms of gravity had disappeared. At 99% you floated off into the wall as soon as you attempted to get off the line. Yet despite the game’s primitive nature I loved it deeply, completed all the tracks many times and dreamed that one day computer games would resemble something like real life.
There have been some landmark moments for me in terms of the development of racing games, for example I remember when Grand Prix 2 was released, although I don’t remember this advert. I pestered my dad to take me to PC World (for it was the only place I knew that sold PC-things) and threatened a tantrum unless he bought it for me. I was a lovely child. When we returned home I disappeared into my room to lap Silverstone for weeks on end, only re-entering real life for food and bathroom breaks.
I wrote this article a couple of weeks ago about my affection for the Toca series, the appearance of which was another watershed for me as these were first games to recreate the British circuits that I had spent my childhood visiting – Oulton Park, Donnington and Knockhill were all faithfully recreated and I loved it. It was another step forward, and I once again envisioned the day when games would make the next leap forward. My boyhood dreams were really threatening to turn into reality, although sadly not the ones about Pamela Anderson.
The most recent landmark for me was Gran Turismo. A friend of mine had it on the PlayStation but I thought it had a ridiculous name and was probably one of those rubbish arcadey-type racers that were all the rage. How wrong I was. After resisting his efforts to get me to play it for a few weeks I finally gave in and popped over for a quick race, fully expecting we would end up playing something far more interesting, like Vib Ribbon. I must have only left his house when his mother insisted I leave. The graphics felt real for the first time. The cars certainly looked real. The lighting effects were amazing – and despite the dodgy soundtrack I played it for weeks on end, and ended up buying each of the series through the PS2 incarnations and most recently GT: Prologue on the PS3.
Prologue is an endlessly irritating game – not because of flaws in its design or the fact it only has a few tracks, but that it pointed towards what was coming – providing a sweet-tasting sample of what racing games were on the verge of becoming, and letting us finally see what would be possible when developers finally get to grips with this current generation of consoles, which are now entering their prime. The slim versions are out and there have been a string of brilliant ‘new generation’ games – Modern Warfare 2, Heavy Rain and Red Dead Redemption have all been ball-bustingly brilliant, but there has not yet been a racer to blow the socks off everything that has gone before.
But the next landmark is coming – F1 2010, GT5, and Colin McRae Dirt 3 are all heading to my living room before long and they will define this generation. After a long time in development they appear to have harnessed the power of the current consoles and will be the first proper ‘sim’ racers released since developers truly got to grips with the hardware. The upcoming games are the stuff I dreamed about when I was a kid, and those dreams are about to come true.
