F1 2013

errlloyd

I was somewhat surprised there was no thread for this game, but I figure it's because (I hear) its quite similar to F1 2012 and series like these get tiresome. I got this for 15e on Steam the other day, hell of a deal. I play using a Saitek Steering wheel I've had years.

I think I'll drop in a little review with my general opinions.

The game is the first F1 game I have played in a long time, I had GPL and F12001 when I was younger, but didn't commit to the new franchise because I didn't have much time. So I'm not a brilliant race gamer, but I am an F1 fan. I've played once season worth of career mode, quarter distance races with full qualifying.

Firstly the presentation of the game is brilliant - I haven't been as impressed with starting a game in a long time. With most games you start up and there is some sort of awkward "tutorial mode" that you have to select from the menu even though you really want to just skip straight to the career

In f1 there is a young driver test - based on the real life young driver tests that happen in the off season every year. Rather than let you select it, the game just shoots you straight into it. Initially the tests are a bit simple - but as a first time player quite welcomed. The best part about the young driver tests is they award you points and the better you score the better the job offers you get for the beginning of your career. So the actual tutorial feels like part of the game. If you really wanted to start out racing for Red Bull you could just replay the tutorial, but I felt it was more fun to count my first successful attempt at any lesson and select based on that (I ended up taking Force India).

It then brings you into the career screen. In my opinion the actual career mode is a little bit lacking in features. You have an email account which basically sends you the odd congrats email and a mail before each race telling you about the circuit, you have the drivers standings, a comparison between you and your teammate and one between you and your rival (if you have one). It would be nice to have some career control from this screen if you're the number 1 driver you get some control over car development (aggressive v conservative) and both drivers get contract offers here but otherwise its a bit lacking.

Contracts themselves come in at about the same time as they do in real F1. So early in September / Late August right the way through till there are about 5 races left. Contracts will state whether they want you as a primary or secondary driver and not much else - they don't for example state what will be expected of you. There is no level of negotiation. Sometimes contract will be instant mid-season transfers. There isn't much history of that in F1 - Fisichella replacing Badoer at Ferrari in 2009 is one that comes to mind - but that was kind of injury enforced because of Massa (and Badoer being awful). Some contracts will have a time limit, others will give you the whole season to decide. The one way to force a contract with another team is to make their driver your rival. To do this you need to be either two places behind, or two places ahead at race 10 or so, then you can nominate them as rival and if you out perform them over the next few races their team will offer you a contract.

Before I move on from career mode, I do have 2 or 3 complaints. The first is what I call Unrealistic Expectation Syndrome or "Fifa try not to do too well right after being promoted because if you do you're screwed" Itis as it's known. You can start a race weekend with being asked to Quali 12th and finish 10th, if you end up 6th on the grid they will think its okay to expect you to finish 4th - which it's totally not. In the main screen it gives you a form prediction of how well you will do - its really bad. I was predicted to come 6th when it was mathematically impossible for that to happen. They are very reluctant to promote you to number 1 driver. I finished my first season on 180 points, Di-Resta was on 0 - we were still "equal" and he still had higher race expectations. The career mode isn't a true career, second season is exactly like the first. Drivers / Teams / Tracks / Form doesn't change. If you move from Force India to Ferrari you take Massa's seat (he no longer exists) and Sutil takes his seat back from you. I'd like to see teams developing, so if I win the Drivers championship with Force India (I didn't), they attract more sponsors, develop and get a bigger budget and better car - maybe they buy a better driver to be my team mate. Like all sports games I compare it to FIFA. I'd like to see other drivers transfer and maybe have some "fake drivers" or real GP2 drivers take the place of ageing f1 drivers.

Race weekends themselves are pretty good, career mode allows you to choose whether you want to do quarter length, half length or full length races. With Parc Ferme on you are only allowed to make modifications to set up until Q1 so its worth having a practice session - you can always skip it if you know what set up you want. You can choose if you want a full weekend, if you want just full qualifying, if you want one qualifying session or if you want 2005 style one lap qualifying.

Car set up is relatively simple, its not quite arcade but its not quite sim either. You can set up your normal aero, camber, break bias, gear ratios, fuel mix, fuel level (for qualifying and practice) everything is pretty well explained.

You can choose your tyre strategy for race day, obviously with Parc Ferme on your Q3 tyres are locked in and already worn. Detailed info on how worn tyres are doesn't really exist - which is probably fair enough in some ways. Individual acts of poor driving don't seem to affect tyres like they do in F1 - so a long lock up doesn't cause lots of damage. But general aggressive driving definitely wears them quicker than better driving.

Like 2013 f1 tyre wear is hugely important. I threw away my second win by doing an extra flying lap in Quali. With my softs going off in Hungary I pitted for primes a lap earlier than planned, start of penultimate lap I had a 4 second lead - then they hit the cliff and became unusable. Around the mid point on the final lap I lost 1st, ended up finishing 6th. Since then I have been more careful - so for example it is not worth following a car you don't intend on overtaking. If you're on primes and he's on softs and you're planning to undercut him in the pits or go for longer and get him when you switch then drop back to 2 seconds behind or you'll wear your tires more. Similarly its often not worth creating a gap at the expense of tyres. Finally I think Tyre wear is the limiting factor preventing keyboard play. I haven't tried it yet, but if I couldn't feather the throttle and control the lock I'd be destroyed tyres.

You can pick your fuel strategy, Cautions, Standard or Aggressive. I go Cautious every time because I am doing 25% races and I can't bank on a safety car or slow period in the race to help out. If I was racing at a higher difficulty level of at 100% race length I think I'd be open to experimenting. The major problem I have here is that fuel management in the race doesn't seem that easy. Apart from short shifting I can't think of any way to keep fuel consumption down, and there is no detailed info on what fuel consumption is (perhaps that is realistic, I don't know if the pitwall in real F1 has accurate info). The race engineer talks about other cars running full revs, standard revs and low revs but I don't see a way to change this on your own car in race.

The other race strat issue I have is the lack of timing. I know F1 drivers don't have access to live timing, but their teams do. I'd like to be able to know if the pit window has opened for instance. In f1 having a 5 second advantage over second place is huge, because it means you often get a pit "window" first. A pit window is where there is a gap in the field so if you pit you won't come out in traffic. In f12013 there is no way of knowing when the pit window is so you often end up rejoining in avoidable traffic. You can't really communicate with the pit at all, so you can't do things like change your front wing angle, which is open to real drivers. You also can't adjust your break bias.

The racing itself is fine from what I can tell. The tracks are gorgeous, sunset in Abu Dhabi with the Yas Marine hotel lighting up looks way cool. Modern tracks are smoother and easier to drive IMO, the older tracks are harder. The only track I didn't enjoy was Monaco - I used to love it on 2001. I haven't got the AI on the highest level, so it would be unfair for me to comment. Usually they seem pretty good, pretty aggressive and they defend well. I haven't worked out when they use their KERS, but they use DRS when relevant. Y

The driving aids will be very helpful to any newcomer. The automatic gears are a little slower than manual, but fine. The racing line marker can be set up to not just show you the line, but also change colour to indicate if you're going too fast to be on that line. There is also traction control and breaking help. The breaking help is the worst, I had it on for a while, but for tracks like Canada where the pit entrance is on the last corner, its useless. It slows you right down when you're going straight.

You can also modify the rules - so you can have full rules, or no rules, or just cutting corners. I have heard it said that the player is almost always blamed in a crash with AI. Arguably the best feature for casual gamers is the rewind. You can choose how many you get in a race. It allows you to rewind about 10 seconds and play from any point. So if you have a crash, or run wide stupidly you can try again. Even experienced gamers should probably keep it on for non game mishaps like pulling out the USB, or the cat jumping up or batteries going (etc).

The one downfall here is damage. The damage is horribly inaccurate. You can fairly pelt into the driver in front and not lose your front wing. The AIs don't seem to crash much / at all. Mechanical failures do happen to AIs but I have yet to experience one except for KERS and DRS which break a fair bit, but are usually repaired within a few laps (so imagine you're driving Mark Webber's Red Bull and that is almost perfect SIM).


Final observations.

The game is not quite detailed enough to be a sim. If you turned off all the aids and whacked up the difficulty level it would be pretty good, but it lacks detailed telemetry and some features. There is also a general feeling that they weren't looking to make it super detailed - because I believe they could have done better in certain areas.

That said there is a learning curve. I wouldn't buy this for a 10 year old with a 10 minute attention span, he can get a copy of need for speed. When you start off with all the aids it gentle eases you into the game, but you want to start actually learning quite quick.

You don't need to be an F1 fan to enjoy it - I think it helps. But I hate soccer and love FIFA I think this is similar.

errlloyd

Just to follow up, you can change your fuel mix, break bias and tyre strategy mid race. Just hadn't found the buttons yet. (numpad for those on pc, D pad for Xbox).

Another problem I have discovered though is tyre wear is too extreme on inters. I did a half length Malaysian grand prix, 28 laps, 5 sets of inters rated for a maximum of 6 laps each - had all three quali sessions been wet you'd have been fairly screwed come race day. To make matters worse the AI all pitted every 5 laps, meaning that their tyres were screwed come the last few laps.

Then my race engineer told me to pit for drys because the weather cleared with 3 laps to go, turned out I was the only one who pitted, the AIs all stayed out. Which was annoying.

Slight flaws there.