The good news is that the pros and cons of each car’s performance are leveled and there is parity among all cars, from the Red Bulls to the HRTs. You want to drive a Ferrari? That’s unfortunate, because you’re getting a Force India.
One thing we found slightly disheartening was the random assignment of cars in this mode.
The rest of the online modes are largely familiar from the previous two titles. How you handle team orders is your business. Depending on the scenario, you need to either hold one of them off for the checkered flag, or overtake before the allotted number of laps runs out.Īlso new to 2012 is the Co-Op Championship, which allows you and an online friend to compete in a season-long challenge as teammates. Champions mode drops you late into the race, and pits you against on of the six world champions from the 2012 grid (Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso, Kimi Räikkönen, Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button, and Sebastian Vettel). Time Attack dangles bronze, silver, and gold carrots out in front of you, coaxing you to improve your performance through each sector.
Time Trial allows you to race against a ghost car representing your personal best time, and delivers opportunities to return to the garage to optimize setups. This is much preferred to previous iterations’ method, where your responses in media interviews determined your rival and your ability to beat him in the championship standings determined which teams offered you a contract the following season.Īnother new feature for 2012 is the Proving Grounds section, which features Champions mode, Time Attack, and Time Trial. Choose your rival, beat him, and you get his seat. One detail we welcomed in Season Challenge was the new Rival feature. Do poorly or skip the test altogether and you’ll wind up with HRT or Marussia do well and seats will open at Caterham, Toro Rosso, and Williams.Ĭareer mode is largely unchanged from F1 2011 and F1 2010, while Season Challenge offers the same challenge of progression in the F1 paddock as does Career, but in a much more compacted time frame. Aside from teaching newcomers to the franchise the basics, the level of success achieved in the test determines which teams will offer you a seat in Career mode.
For the fanboys, what’s perhaps most interesting is the names of the drivers you’re training alongside-American Alexander Rossi, among many other real-life up-and-coming drivers, makes an appearance testing for Lotus.
It’s at this annual season-ending test at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi where you’re taught vehicle dynamics, acceleration, braking, cornering, and overtaking, as well as how to maximize the use of systems such as KERS and DRS. Upon popping in the game, you’re thrust into one of F1 2012’s newest modes-the Young Drivers Test.
(This review covers the PS3 version the game is also available for Xbox, PC, and Mac.)
(You mean you didn’t camp out for F1 2012 solely to drive the Mercedes AMG W03 with its double DRS?) So Codemasters took it upon itself to infuse a few new ideas of their own into its latest edition of its F1 video game, which was released a few weeks ago. While those changes make viewing the series a must for race fans, those sorts of changes aren’t going to be enough to keep virtual racers coming back for the latest iteration of Codemasters’ F1 franchise. The introduction of rules, circumventing of those rules, and engineering around the subsequent regulations is what keeps F1 so fresh year after year. It constantly adjusts the rules, keeping engineers, drivers, and team principals on their toes-but the payoff is that it keeps fans glued to the television. Formula 1 has trouble leaving well enough alone.