Formula 1 2001
is not a game that requires a great deal of explanation so I'll skip the
pleasantries.
The game options are to go for a Test Drive (Practice), play a Quick Race,
or a Single Race (same as "quick" but with qualifying and practice laps as an
option), World Championship, Time Attack (probably best for practicing with
as the ghost car shows how well/badly you did on your best lap) and the
Spectator Mode, which allows you a choice of racetrack cameras or onboard ones
in respect of each contestant.
The game looks fine enough and the grind of your motor gives you the feeling
of movement, but with a jagged look to the cars from time to time we've still
not reached the limits of what the PS2 can do for games like this by a long
chalk.
If there's a place where the game does hit a major snag it's in the commentary.
Occasionally Murray Walker - now retired - and Martin Brundle
say things that are relevant to you, such as when you come off the track,
but do it once too often and they say the same thing again and again with an
increasing lack of conviction such is the nature of repetition. Each driver
and team may be named correctly, but they have only been recorded as speech
the once and the dropping of names into a conversation sounds about as natural
as Stephen Hawking's computer.
Driving a car takes a while to get used to and I love smashing into a wall
and seeing the line "Car has wheel failure". Of course it has - the
bloody thing's come off!
Coupled with the game in the rather splendorous press pack that I received
is a DVD that's also included within 500,000 copies of the game as well as
being available separately for £19.99.
F1 2000 World Championship Review is a look back at all 17 of last year's
Grand Prix races around all the same tracks that are available within the game.
Running for over four hours in length, it would be one thing to just stick
the footage on a disc and let people watch it from start to finish, but Columbia
TriStar have done much more than that.
Look at the screenshot on the right. Taken from the menu to the Foster's
British Grand Prix, it's just the first of many screens that breaks each
chapter down into its many components - and each chapter is incredibly
brief as it is which shows how many there are, thus making the total relatively
unquantifiable.
Each chapter has up to five user-selectable camera options. Watch the main race
with "Super", take a roadside view with "Track", "OBC" stands for On-Board
Camera, positioned on each car, the occasional "Pits" cam shows you the crew
as they get to work on the cars that come in and a screen of "Data", specific
to the respective moment in time is also available. Quite an outstanding effort.
Game Details
GRAPHICS SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC PLAYABILITY ORIGINALITY ENJOYMENT
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
Game Details :
Formula 1 2001
is not a game that requires a great deal of explanation so I'll skip the
pleasantries.
If there's a place where the game does hit a major snag it's in the commentary.
Occasionally Murray Walker - now retired - and Martin Brundle
say things that are relevant to you, such as when you come off the track,
but do it once too often and they say the same thing again and again with an
increasing lack of conviction such is the nature of repetition. Each driver
and team may be named correctly, but they have only been recorded as speech
the once and the dropping of names into a conversation sounds about as natural
as Stephen Hawking's computer.
Look at the screenshot on the right. Taken from the menu to the Foster's
British Grand Prix, it's just the first of many screens that breaks each
chapter down into its many components - and each chapter is incredibly
brief as it is which shows how many there are, thus making the total relatively
unquantifiable.
