Category: Game On

What a barrel of laughs this one is! The souped up cars look fantastically over the top and the racing is even more so, with passive and active power-ups and an insane AI for the computer controlled cars.

The game comes into its own in two player mode, where you can co-operate as a team and take on a 6 of the generous selection of cars in the game in various championship rounds. The difficulty curve is about right, although some races rely on you making three perfect circuits of a track and the leading AI car having a bit of a crash at some point.

It is all fast and furious fun, though and the pace you have to keep up over three laps is mind melting in some cases. To quote my team mate: “I forgot to blink again!” is something quite easily done in the heat of battle and trance-like concentration you’ll need on tracks such as The Gauntlet, Surf N Turf and Outer Limits.

The only downsides are the fact it’s pretty easy to complete all the championships – there isn’t GT like depth in this title. Sometimes having to rely on a fluke victory to open up the next level is very frustrating – try needing to finish second in an absolutely torrid race only to have it ripped from your grasp by a slightly misjuded final corner – it makes you swear and look to the heavens in desperation!

If you’re holding out for GT, this title deserves to sit alongside it on your shelf – as I said, it doesn’t have the depth, but the fun-o-meter is off the scale and the Twister effect has to be seen just to see how good it is.

I bought this game on the day it came into the shops and initially I was pleasantly surprized. Sadly, as I’ve gained a few hours play, there are sore points in here that become pretty annoying after a while.

Like when you race, the only in car view available is the over-the-head view used on tv. All very nice, but it doesn’t feel much like driving a car – more like hanging onto the air intake watching the drivers head loll about like a bladder on a stick. Hey, I drive karts and I know they’re 160 miles an hour slower than an F1 car, but if I flapped my head around every time I changed direction I’d last two laps before I threw up. Did anyone at Studio Liverpool actually watch any in-car footage for a prolonged period!?

Then there’s the timing – in F1 if you start your final lap of qualifying before the time runs out, your time counts – in the game it cuts straight to the menu with no warning as soon as the time runs out. Very irritating. Then there’s traction control – allowed this season, but not allowed in the game if you want to play at a level where the rest of the grid isn’t driving miss daisy!

It’s all very well for the instruction book to tell me to buy a new steering wheel and foot pedals to play the game at this level, but I’d rather stick to my Dual Shock and they’ve made it almost impossible to control the exceleration with that.

The commentary is woeful too – it’s a novel addition, but Madden 2001 is an example of how to do it right. Murray Walker can come out with howlers like “He should be able to recover from there!” when you’re on the track and nothing has gone wrong! Ok, Murry does this in real life, but the pauses and changes in tone during the commentary could have been worked on to make it a bit more polished.

If you haven’t bought this but intended to then hold out another month until GT3 arrives – I wont assasinate F1 2001 any further, although I could, but I’ll leave it by saying that it could have been so much better – an opportunity to show EA how to do an F1 game properly has been wasted by SCEE.

Looks like the UK price of the Game Boy Advance hand held console will yet again be higher than anywhere else on the planet.

The pattern that saw the PS2 launch at almost a $100 US dollars more than it cost in the USA is an indication of the fact that it’s the retailers in the UK who are intent on ramping up the prices of products when they know they can make a killing.

I’m just glad I don’t want one, but if I did I’d get an import instead of lining the pockets of directors at EB and HMV.