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GAME REVIEWED: F1 '98

RELEASED BY: Psygnosis

PRICE: £44.99

REVIEWED BY: A.K.

REVIEW: -

With the highly successful releases of F1 and F1 '97 you would think that F1 '98 would be the most realistic Formula 1 racing game available, but then you'd be wrong. Psygnosis seem to have done the equivalent in the gaming world as what Williams did last year in the racing world, they've gone from the front of the grid to crushing mediocrity, allowing other companies to fight for the F1 crown.

F1 '98 has been written from scratch, Bizarre Creations, the developer of the first two games demurred this time around so Psygnosis gave the job to Visual Sciences but, they couldn't match the class of the previous efforts although they put a lot of time and effort into trying to make this game compete. Psygnosis' ground-breaking televisual experience seems to have been sacrificed for a more obviously gamey look and along with this is the unacceptable loss of detail and quality evident throughout. If you have a copy of F1 '97 and you got or seen F1 '98, compare their starting grids to see exactly how poor the new cars look. It's no exaggeration to say that the cars three or four rows in front wouldn't look out of place on the old Mega Drive or Master System.

Everybody was looking forward to the prospect of having a 'motion-captured pit crew' in this game. Once you (very) slowly trundle up an eerily quiet pit lane and into your pit bay, what you actually get is five sausage-limbed mechanics which you sometimes drive through without doing them or your car any damage. Now it really starts to get exciting, the mechanics on either side, ever so slightly, bend over and a series of clunky noises are emitted before they appear upright again (exciting stuff!). The best bit is when the jackman at the front of the car literally slides along in front of the car until he is out of the way, it looks like he's on a pulley system (very like the real thing!).

This is just one in a long line of problems the game suffers from. The scenery is a lot more glitchy than in the previous games, giving the appearance that the engine isn't quite sure whether or not to draw in a piece of scenery. Collisions are diabolical, collisions with the scenery are frequently bizarre affairs with the apparently feeble AI reduced to wobbling CPU cars in order to shake them free. Collisions with other cars are far from respectable, seemingly happy to simply teleport cars rapidly away from each other in the event of the slightest contact which always seems to reduce the speed of your car dramatically and it hardly seems to affect the CPU cars.

This review could be centred around nothing but faults, instead I'll just concentrate on the two worst offenders: opponent AI and handling. Some of the racing that goes on in front and around you verges on the ridiculous. Cars leap from the left to the right of the track, even turning a full ninety degrees at the start, again this could be down to the unreliable engine, but it gives the impression that it isn't top F1 drivers driving the cars, but a bunch of monkeys escaped from the local zoo. Even the familiar tracks have lost their beauty thanks to the handling on offer. It seems that the controls simply cannot cope with the real challenge that formed such a vital part of F1 '97's hardcore appeal, it's more that the controls are fiddley, should you suddenly divert radically from the straight and narrow, expect to be wobbling around for a few hundred before finally connecting with a barrier and then coming to an instant ( thoroughly unconvincing) halt.The Arcade mode offers slightly more fun, but what about hardcore F1 fanatics who want to play a full season? Now, in the new age of the highly successful Gran Tourismo and TOCA 2, a top racing game needs better handling than this.

We shouldn't forget what a mighty package that F1 is, you get 16 tracks , 22 cars, the real up-to-date roster and more tactical and set-up options than you can shake a dipstick at. This years effort isn't really enough, a top series that has been F1 so far deserves an outstanding game every year but this year it's been a bad year for Psygnosis and now certain other companies have taken on the challenge of making the perfect F1 game. Not a totally bad game but there's plenty better things to spend your £44.99 on, and with the original F1 on offer for £20, only buy this game if you really, really want.

SCORE:

72%

LINKS: www.psygnosis.com


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Last updated: April 03, 1999.