published by Ubisoft
Reviewed by Ken Baugh
My Test System used for this review is a Dell PII-300 with an STB Velocity 128 Riva AGP, Canopus Pure 3d (3dfx) SB AWE 64 sound card, 64 Meg SDRAM, 17-inch monitor and Thrustmaster T2 wheel/pedal combo.
Before starting this review, it is important to let everyone know where this reviewer is coming from. If you don't care, then skip to the next paragraph! I love auto racing, although I have never been a fan of Formula One auto racing. I grew up and spent every saturday night from age 5-18 in the town and the track where the ASA started, back in the late sixties and early seventies. Mark Martin, Darrel Waltrip and Rusty Wallace came to the 1/4 mile Anderson Speedway when they were just youngsters competing in the ASA. My passion has always been the local saturday-night short tracks, so common across the U.S., especially the 1/4 to 1/2 mile dirt ovals that run late models and winged sprints. I've visited over 50 short tracks across the U.S., Willamette Speedway, a 1/3 mile dirt oval that fields 30-40 outlaw late models every saturday (in Lebanon, Or.) being the best. The largest and oldest (short track) being the Milwaukee Mile where I saw an ASA race in 1978. My only experience with open wheel asphault racing was my 1982 visit to the Indy 500 and the F1 and CART races I've seen on T.V. As far as games, racing sims are my favorite genre, and I've driven thousands of laps in the Indy Car, Nascar, GP, and now F1RS sims. With that said, I do not consider myself an expert. I am probably more like the average sim racer who wishes he had the time (and his wife had the patience) to spend dozens of hours tweaking each car's setup at each track. Since not everyone has time for that, we often find ourselves making minor adjustments to the default settings; wing heights, tire types, gear ratio...or downloading a setup some other hardcore simhead has put together and tweaking it a bit. I have so little free time, I want to spend most of it IN the car, racing! Anyway I just wanted to let you know where I am coming from before starting this review. I'm not the Know-it-all expert of racing sims or setups...but I've played quite a few; enough to know the good from the bad, and I love auto racing of all types, even CART and Formula One!!
F1RS is Ubisoft's first attempt at a racing simulation and I'm glad to report that they've done it right. This review is based upon the U.K. version, which Game Pad purchased from Interact CD as an import. Ubisoft's aim was to produce the most realistic sim of F1 racing ever seen on a PC. Ubisoft worked with Christian Blum (Renault Sports mechanical engineer) as well as Jean Alesi to incorporate numerous technical aspects of formula One racing. F1RS models the 1996 season of 16 Grand Prix races including practices, heats(qualifying), and race day. All the garage settings one could want are available, except for a couple. There is no option for tire pressures, and temperature gauges during the race are absent ( which is actually more realistic). All the drivers and teams are represented except Jaques Villaneuve, who is named driver X. There is a patch available that will let you chnge to his real name. Multiplayer is available via splitscreen, serial link and network.
If the game has any one area of weakness-this is it. I'll be honest though and admit that I didn't think the sound was all that bad, until going back and playing CPR and GP2. I was just having too much fun with this game to notice. I'm not saying that I don't find sound important, I do. It's just that the graphics and AI are so well-done and I was having so much fun (after the disappointments of Road TO Indy and CPR) that I didn't notice the engine sounds being a bit weak...ok, very weak. Actually they sound more like high-powered racing go-karts than F1 cars. The shifting sound is hard to describe but is kind of wimpy. The sound of tires screeching and sliding are ok, as is the sound of the car when it bottoms out. The gears all sound alike though. First sounds just like fifth...A sound patch wouldn't be a bad idea in any case.
Ok, lets get down to the meat. The AI and the car physics. As I've mentioned in other reviews, I've never driven an open wheel car (other than a go cart) so I can only compare sims to other sims and see whether I'm "convinced" that it feels real. The best previous driving model to compare this game against would have to be Grand Prix 2. GP2 had a very good physics model but was unrealistic in a couple of key areas. For example, in full realism with no driving aids, I could overtake another car in a turn by SEVERELY underbraking and over accelerating VERY quickly. If I happened to get a little loose, I could still recover from a fishtail, 85% of the time. This wasn't very realistic. In other words the car was a bit sticky! In F1RS, as in real life, this is a recipe for disaster. In F1Rs(with no driving aids) when I tried this as aggressively as I did in GP2, I would either understeer (and end up in a sandtrap) by braking too late or end up in a spin by accelerating too quickly. Common sense and watching a few F1 races tells me this is much more realistic! Also sliding off the track (into the sand or grass) in this race will cause your car to be slippery for a short period after reentering the circuit. The grass or sand actually stays on the tires for awhile and affects your handling! These are the types of detail that convince you that you are actually THERE in a Grand Prix and that other developers should strive for! Yes there are a couple of minor flaws. Often, I found myself beating the track records by a second or 2 with no driving aids and by 4 or 5 seconds with driving aids; Not realistic. Another flaw is that you can pass on yellows without being penalized, although if you jump the race start, you will incur a 10 second penalty.
The AI on the opponents cars is very well done and as good as, if not better, than GP2. The better drivers in real-life are better here, and the lesser drivers tend to make more mistakes and cause wrecks, especially at the race starts. My only complaint on the opponent AI is that at times they can be a bit passive. In CPR and Road To Indy, the AI has a problem of ramming into you and being stupid quite often. Here it is the opposite. It is often too easy to bully your opponent when passing and cause him to leave his line and allow you to pass. In other words, they try too hard to avoid you. This is mainly only a problem in the easy and intermediate levels as opposed to expert, so it is a minor quirk. One very nice touch that Ubi added is that the different cars handle differently. For example in Buenos Aries, I tried each of the teams' cars and found that Schumacher's Ferrari and Hill's Williams-Renault had a top-speed of 4 mph faster than any of the other cars, with the exact same setups. I'm not sure if they handle differently in the turns but they seem to-a bit. This certainly adds a nice touch to the game, that I don't believe any other sim has ever incorporated!
The user menus aren't bad, although they do take a bit of getting used to. There is a poor design choice/bug though; when setting up your car and entering the track and then leaving the track, you have to load your car setup each time. Shouldn't have been too hard to have designed this so it was defaulted to your last setup instead of defaulting to the Ubisoft default setup...a patch could easily fix this. I found the control to be excellant with my Thrustmaster T2 wheel/pedal setup. Calibration was smooth as well car handling in the game itself.
There is a nice-looking, 96 page color manual with several french-to-english translation errors. There is some very good information on car setups and the circuit diagrams, but no help on setup or driving tips for each individual circuit. There is also some good info on the teams and car types.
This is a very well-done and realistic racing sim. It is the one that I and many of you have been waiting for. No, it's not perfect, but it's the closest yet! I'm glad I didn't wait for the U.S. release. If you love racing, you owe it to yourself to get this sim NOW!! I don't often say that, but this sim deserves you and you deserve this sim!
Tell us what you think of this review (or write your own ) at thegamers@gamepad.org
Here are some screenshots. All are in 3dfx with Canopus Pure 3D.
Argentina Pre-race lineup
Minardi Ford in the rain
In the fog/drizzle-cockpit view
sun glaring down on the cockpit/visor
End-over-end pic from our screenshotz page
Go to Screenshotz page for more F1RS pics
Sites worth a visit
Richards F1 Racing site(great site with lots of setups and ghosts!)
