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| Image is my own from F1 2016 (Codemasters). |
My first game was F1 04 and I played that game so much when I was a kid, mostly driving as Michael Schumacher because I was a sheep back then and just followed whoever was considered the best (Not that I think anyone who likes Schumie is like that, I still like him now. On another note, keep fighting Schumie, hope you're recovering).
I have had quite the history with the F1 games and so many other racing games, so I consider myself very well versed in illustrating my point for what should be done to create the best F1 game possible. As ever, I wish to present them to you in a non-shit manner, and I had hoped to get this done much earlier like I had promised but it's only getting done now because I'm one lazy piece of crap! So let's get started.
For me, my personal experiences with many racing games have been very differing, however a personal peak for me was a game that whilst it did was it is supposed to do and be an effective driving game, it also did something I had never experienced before and immersed me. F1 2010 was the game, and I have so many fond memories when playing F1 2010.
The reason why I say immersed is because when you opened up the game, you were immediately in the paddock of whatever Grand Prix you were up to in career mode. You had David Croft near your team garage ready to interview you after a race, your team mate nearby looking at some information with some team personnel, and you could jump into your motorhome where you had your agent and if you were lucky enough, the drivers world champion trophy. Adding onto that, you could go into the press conference room if you finished in the top three.
Teamed with such incredibly detailed lighting and incredibly soothing music, F1 2010 is such a an amazing game to experience and it honestly set the bar so high that when F1 2011 rolled around, it was a huge disappointment. The graphics were a bit naff, the driving felt quite digital compared to F1 2010's pure analogue feel, it honestly felt like all the worst possible combination of ponderous handling with no feel through the wheel, teamed with the graphics that it had.
2012 rolled around and it felt like a back to basics in terms of the handling model, as like F1 2010, the cars handled wonderfully and you could tell exactly what they were doing. Though my one disappointment is that the paddock surroundings were replaced by a simple wind tunnel, and the same with F1 2013 the following year, though that made up for it by having something else.
In 2013, Codemasters introduced classic cars into the game. This was something the community was overjoyed about, and they went above and beyond the call of duty with what they implemented with the classic cars, because many of us were expecting to just have the cars available to us to drive around the 2013 circuits and maybe some classic tracks for the older cars, but this was not just the case.
We could race the classic cars on both the 2013 and classic circuits, we could even race the 2013 cars around the classic circuits and we had drivers in the old classic cars that were affiliated to some extent to the team which fielded the car, even if they didn't race the car back in the day. For example, Alain Prost (F1 champion 1985, 1986, 1989 and 1993) won his fourth championship with Williams, however you could race as him driving the car that won the 1980 F1 championship with Alan Jones.
You had a choice of either racing in 80's or 90's era F1 cars and even the 2013 cars around older configurations of Britain's Brands Hatch, Portugal's Estoril, Spain's Jerez and Italy's Imola, and because 2013 was the year that the F1 movie Rush was released, you could go to Time Trial and drive Niki Lauda's 1976 Ferrari. This was something that the community absolutely adored Codemasters for, as it was quite a ballsy move considering us being able to drive these cars at all to the extent you could on F1 04 and F1 Championship Edition in just the time trails would have been more than enough.
So you're probably wondering what I thought of F1 2014? Well, I didn't pick up the game. I believe I was going to, then it was announced that the retro cars and tracks would not be returning so I decided to not do so. I believe this was when I was mainly just into GTA so don't feel sorry for me.
Fast forward to F1 2015 and now F1 2016, right now I'm struggling on F1 2016 in the same way I did on F1 2015. These two newer F1 games are on the next generation of consoles (PS4 and Xbox One) as appose to all the other games being on the last generation (PS3 and Xbox 360), and as a result of this, the newer games have a higher frame rate, that being 60 FPS as appose to 30 (I believe, I may be wrong).
Something I find to be such a plaguing issue is when I go into corners, the cars are going so much faster that the steering feels heavy and the car doesn't want to get going as the steering wheel just drags as I accelerate. I use a controller by the way, I plan on seeing what will happen once I get my PS4 wheel, but right now, I am struggling and willing to take any advice on.
I will commend F1 2016 for this though, I love the manual starts and the slowing down before entering pitlane as well. I'm also more than happy with the fact that we now get to pick race numbers and customise helmets, though I feel perhaps the helmet customisation should be worked on for the next game. Which seems like a perfect transition to the whole point of this article, an amalgamation of all the best from these F1 games to make the perfect one, that hopefully Codemasters will listen to.
Back on F1 Championship Edition, I loved the pit stops you could perform on there by pressing buttons in order to get your pit crew to perform certain actions and I miss that. Though that was back in the day that pit stops took about 10 seconds and there was refuelling, so with the fact that a bad pit stop is just under five seconds due to refuelling having been banned, maybe it could be very difficult to nail a pit stop if you're pressing buttons in this new era. I'd love to see that.
Character customisation is another thing I want to see expanded. On F1 2016, we have a choice of selecting a few pre-made faces for our driver, and I would much prefer to see a system implemented where we can customise them completely like on GTA, so we could have anything from white, black, Asian, or even an option for either a man or woman driver. Then afterwards, we could decide what hair style, hair colour, eye colour, the size and position of the nose etc. whatever possible to personalise our characters even more than before.
Helmet personalisation was an incredibly surprising and welcome feature for this year's game however I do have a few details that I want to propose with the customisation. Every team in F1 has a template for all their helmets, with Ferrari for example having their logo on the forehead area of the helmet above the visor, as well as a ring around the top with one of the team's sponsors. So what I reckon they should do here is whilst designing the helmet, see what the helmets would look like with any team's sponsors and designs before finishing the helmet off.
Another helmet design feature would be a system similar to that of the old Forza games where we can pick shapes, colours, country flags etc. and even our own custom design for a race number that we pick. So for me, I would have my number 56 coloured in red for the five and yellow for the six, with the British and Italian flags on top as well just beneath them. The rest I'll figure out in time, but that's what I have for now.
Next up, I would like to see podium finishes make a return along with the national anthems of the winning driver. I remember on F1 Championship Edition, I would create a new profile with a different nationality and set the difficulty mode for the AI on easy so I'd hear a new national anthem, rather than do what the average idiot would do and go listen to it on YouTube.
In 2012 and 2013, there was a young driver test at the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi and I really liked the system that they had where you drove a Red Bull, Ferrari or McLaren and performed various tasks in order to learn. You could obviously choose not to do it but I found it very beneficial when I did it, and not only that it was also a very authentic experience as there are young driver tests for drivers who have competed in two Grands Prix or less.
I'd love to see the young driver test make a return, maybe either at Yas Marina again or like in recent years, Silverstone. Though that being said, ever since Silverstone held in-season tests, that seemed to expand into including regular drivers as well.
Could we have in-race commentary back too? I know we have Anthony Davidson and David Croft giving commentary before and after the race, but why not inbetween? I loved that with James Allen and Martin Brundle in F1 Championship Edition where they recite the order or talk about a retirement. Plus in F1 CE, they break the fourth of wall and refer to the person playing the game when in career mode as "You" and not "The (Insert team you drive for) driver" like in F1 2016.
Final two things I want to see back, the paddock atmosphere similar to that of F1 2010. Immersing yourself in the F1 world again after the most recent games having such a bog standard menu especially in the same way it worked on F1 2010 again, would be something I would be overjoyed with.
The other thing? Yep, classic cars and classic circuits once again. Implemented the exact same way it was in F1 2013 where you go into 'Retro mode' or whatever it was called, and you are inside a garage with a classic car.
Oh and before I forget, before the British Grand Prix in 2012, an F1 track in London was created by Santander, McLaren and Sky Sports. I have been wanting to drive that track for so many years, asking Polyphony to ditch that fucking awful excuse of a London street race in favour of the one created here.
It started on the Mall, went pass Buckingham Palace and Big Ben, alongside the Embankment on the River Thames and underneath Admiralty Arch. I would be elated to find out there was a Grand Prix held there in a few years, and even more happy to find out it was put on Gran Turismo or Project CARS. So I'm thinking as a trophy, unlocking the London Grand Prix track would be great prize.
Of course though, the F1 games should do one thing really and that is be a great F1 game and for the most part, Codemasters have always been knocking it out of the park, some more than others. This is basically a wish list for minor details, but I think the main thing is for the F1 games to allow for both people on the controller and people on the wheel to be able to drive the cars quickly and for us to be able to know what the cars are doing.
Last time I was able to drive the cars like that was F1 2013, and it peaked in F1 2012 so I hope I can get better on F1 2016 at the very least.
Codemasters, hope you consider a lot I have to list here. That's if you're reading this at least, and if you are, please consider making a follow up to F1 Race Stars as well. Anyone who isn't an F1 fan, play that, it's so fun.
Alright! That'll do for today, thank you all for taking the time to read this. I see that I have written a lot of motorsport orientated posts as of late, next blog post will not be the case, infact it will be one I have been promising myself to make for a while. Infact my friend Morgan that I mentioned in my Pokémon live action movie post (Link here - https://redsone-shot.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/live-action-pokemon-movie-thoughts.html) asked me to make my first blog post the one that I will be working on next, well it has been way too long!
My next blog post ladies and gentlemen, for those of you who know me so well, will be... (Insert unnecessary dramatic music), Why I love Kingsman. Barring anything that may pop up beforehand but I promise, as far as things are going now, that will be my next blog post.
So if you're looking forward to that or just want to see more of my posts in general, either follow me on Twitter @TheLucaFormat or if you're on desktop, type your email address into 'Follow by email' if you have not already.
So until we meet again,
Luca.
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