F1 goes multiplatform

For the last few years F1 simulations have only been available on PlayStation platforms, so it is with great excitement that fans await the first fresh look at the sport on the Wii some time soon. This new approach comes courtesy of famed racing specialists Codemasters, or at least that is what everyone expected when they announced they had secured F1’s new multi-platform licensing deal.

Oddly, this game isn’t being developed by Codemasters’ own Racing Studio (designers of DiRT and GRiD). Instead SUMO Digital, the team behind the recent versions of Sega’s OutRun and Virtua Tennis franchises, will do the honors. This is because the main studio has been given a longer development cycle to create Formula One 2010 for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC; a game which is aiming to be “the best F1 game ever made”.

F1 for everyone

Obviously, Codemasters still feel that they owe it to the sport’s fans to give them something for the 2009 season and that comes in the form of Formula One 2009, a game which they want to represent “F1 for everyone”. The game is based on the incredible EGO Engine (which powered GRiD and DiRT) albeit with a highly reduced level of graphical fidelity. This shows in everything that has been displayed of the game so far – some severe comprises have clearly been made when it comes to the visuals. However, Codemasters have for some reason never stated whether the footage and screens shown were captured on a Wii or PSP (the game’s only two release platforms). It seems more likely that the screens are from a PSP, given that the Wii is certainly capable of better graphics than those shown.

The other major compromise in the presentation is the lack of a TV broadcast style. Instead of using the TV commentary and TV-style HUD made popular by Sony’s F1 games, F1 2009 will focus more on radio chatter from your driver’s race engineer. This could certainly prove unpopular with some hardcore fans who felt that the commentary in particular was a nice distraction in Sony’s games during the more tedious sections of longer race distances. Official TV captions and HUD presentation will also be sorely missed.

F1 2009’s main single-player experience is a career mode, similarly structured to the one in F1 Championship Edition on PS3. You create your own driver and have to start as a tester before getting a race seat, moving up through the teams and eventually winning the world championship. Codemasters have chosen to move you through the teams faster than in Sony’s game, which hopefully means less time doing the tedious job of a test driver. However it also means a shorter game length of 3 seasons instead of 5.