F1 2012 The Game First Impressions (XBOX 360)

At first blush, the temptation was to hate F1 2012. But I gave it a chance, and I started to realize pretty quickly that perhaps what I was disliking was the loss of unrealistic elements of 2011 that had me super spoiled. In short, F1 2012 no longer lets you get away with any shenanigans. No more mashing on the accelerator, no more charging in and braking late, no more going wide...and no more holding full throttle for lights out. You heard me. You have to start properly now, or you will quite literally stay in place spinning your wheels and wasting some perfectly good rubber. Mash on the accelerator too much or too soon out of a turn, and you will spin, even with full traction control. Better make sure you are completely finished braking and are hitting the entry speed for a corner spot on before you turn in, and don't just whip into the turn either, or at best you're going to slide...at worst you are going to spin. You will spin if you begin to turn in while still on the brakes. A lot of this I think comes as a result of not having the blown diffuser effect as part of the handling model this year. I think too that it's just more realistic handling in general compared to what we could get away with in F1 2011. F1 2012 requires smooth, properly placed inputs in combination with a good setup to get around the track without incident. You can no longer throw the cars back and forth with the kind of gay abandon we were all used to before. I admit to balking at this somewhat when first going through the Young Driver Test mode. Definitely spoiled by the old "on rails" way of doing things, which was a bit of a stretch in terms of realism, blown diffuser or no. I found that I got used to the new handling pretty quickly, and was actually finding the more challenging nature of it a bit more fun because I did have to use proper technique and I did have to be more careful. Soon enough I was flying around the track pretty easily, and I noticed, a lot more like the real life drivers.  The hardest thing for me to adjust to has been the behavior of the car under and immediately following braking. Very hard not to slide at all unless your entry speed is spot on. And we do want to keep sliding to a minimum so as not to destroy those sensitive tires!  There does seem to be something underlying about the handling, perhaps the things they brought back from F1 2010, that seem like a step backward from F1 2011. But again, maybe its just that we had it too easy last year. I do think we could have done without the return of the hyper sensitive curbing though. Gave me fits at Singapore!

It seems that things have been evened out between assist vs no/low assist drivers, in that I felt like the assists were far less help but still enough (I use ABS, full TC & auto gears), or in the case of auto gears it seemed like the gearbox was smarter, if that makes sense, though I will have to see what happens once my racing club makes the move to using F1 2012. I do know that the advantage manual gears drivers used to have is gone, since you can no longer rapid downshift the way they do in 2011 without blowing the engine. I am also happy to report that going wide off track is now punished and if you're not careful you will even spin if you try to keep going flat out (I know, because it happened to me). Track cutters and go widers, you have been warned.

More care required in handling, more discipline with respect to the boundaries of the track...it definitely seems to me that it is the disciplined driver who uses the right amount of care who will be most rewarded by this game. Music to my ears! The shenanigans of old will no longer work.

There is just one thing I am disappointed with. The graphics. Now I freely admit that I am playing an HD game on a standard def screen, but F1 2012 looks almost cartoony by comparison. I much preferred the looks of F1 2011. Everything is too smooth and somehow off, although the car liveries are gorgeous. The cinematics and replays got a great upgrade too. In particular, while I like the new cockpit view as far as what it offers me for driving view, I think the lack of detail is almost laughable. It isn't much better than the cockpit view on F1 2011 for the Vita. Not too good. I can overlook it though. Its a great game. And maybe it'll look different when I get my HD tv.

For some people this game might be a try-before-you-buy, but I encourage everyone to give it a fair chance before you make a final decision. It was a must buy for me just for the inclusion of Circuit of the Americas. It is not broken by any stretch of the imagination. Just different. I'm of the opinion that a little more discipline and care in ones driving will bring them back up to the level they enjoyed in F1 2011. If you don't have one of these F1 games yet...well. Get F1 2011 first.

By the way, I was using my Microsoft Wireless Speed Wheel. I found a dead zone of 2% and throttle saturation of 50% with everything else default to give me performance equal to what I had before in F1 2011. I was peeved that I couldn't navigate some menu screens because it was mapped to the LB/RB that my wheel lacks, but nothing that was required for playing was affected at all. I will warn speed wheel users that you have to do some finagling to get through the part of the Young Driver Test where your are first in the garage and they want you to press the shift up/down buttons. I assigned them to A and B, then pressed them as instructed in the test. Then I paused, reset my configuration by selecting the default xbox 360 wheel profile (if I didn't do this it said my configuration was invalid when I changed buttons back for some reason), then reassigned my buttons the way I wanted them. I have KERS on X, DRS on Y, car status B, and Look Back on A. Everything else is default.

Below are videos of me participating in the Young Driver Test at Abu Dhabi (for Red Bull of course), doing the RaceNet challenge at Singapore, and doing a 5 lap race with quali at Circuit of the Americas (again driving for Red Bull).