F1 2013 review

I’m in a Ferrari F399 from 1999, at Spa, in the wet heading towards Les Combes for the first time. On my right is a chap in Nigel Mansell’s championship-winning Williams from ’92, and to my left someone’s in Damon Hill’s championship-winning Williams from ’96. If I’m not careful, I’ll end up with a) a large bill from Sir Frank and b) broken bones, so I brake a bit earlier, turn in, apply the power, control the four-wheel drift and avoid a slidey Williams by less than a fag paper (a Rothmans one, at that), and somehow or another make it out the other end of the corner in front of the Williams boys, while putting a hand up to show my disapproval of “Hill’s” driving standards.

You would be forgiven for thinking that I’ve been dreaming and you would be wrong – I’m in an online race with total strangers on the new F1 2013 computer game and boy is it good.

The falling rain looks stunning, and as I slide and wrestle the car again, I think to myself that I could be a proper racing driver. The game has that effect on you: gone is the frankly terrible handling system from ’12 that made me sell the game within a week of launch last year, and in comes a fresh new handling model that allows you to actually turn and brake at the same time, and lets you get on the loud pedal / trigger (depending on your configuration) without the fear of finding the nearest wall, backwards. It’s fantastic.

The best bit about the new ‘classic’ content – which offers five cars from the 1980s, five from the 90s and four tracks (Brands Hatch, Estorial, Imola and Jerez)? The on-screen graphics which replicates the television coverage from the era – the ‘80s is full of yellow, and races with the ‘90s cars look just like the ITV Sport days of Formula One on the box. In the weekend that I’ve spent playing the game, I’ve spent the majority racing in a timewarp both online and against the AI.

Seeing names such as Fittipaldi  and Mansell going wheel-to-wheel with you around the GP loop at Brands  – albeit virtually – won’t get old in a hurry, and when it does, the new scenario mode, voiced by Murray Walker, will keep you driving cars that are better off without DRS or KERS, for hours on end.

Of course, you have the 2013 content too. As you would expect, it comes with a career mode where you start out at a slow team and gradually progress to the bigger teams if you’re good enough. This is the same as previous iterations apart from a handy new addition; the ability to save mid-way through a session, and that includes races too. No longer are you forced to do a race in one sitting - instead you can simply save part-way through a race and then come back where you left off later on. This doesn’t sound ground-breaking, but it is really handy for those who can only go on a console for, say, half an hour at a time.

Along with the career mode, the Grand Prix mode (where you can race as any driver on any track at any time with any weather) makes a welcome return, and the Young Driver Test has been expanded. I hated the YDT last year because it was mind-numbingly patronising, but thankfully, this year it is a little better, mainly because it allows you to skip the bit where the game tells you the controls and forces you to demonstrate that you’ve listened by making you re-input them, if you’ve played 2012 before. That said though, it is a good idea to try your best in the tests, as a) it allows you to get used to the handling model and b) the quicker you are, the quicker the team that you can start off your career with.

There are a few problems with the game, though. For starters, the safety car comes out far too often, and often for no reason whatsoever. Take a race at Bahrain: I had to dodge someone with a blown engine, thought nothing of it, and then two laps later the Safety Car appeared.

Also, the spectators at Brands Hatch appear to have been ported straight from another Codemasters game, and the modern-day medical centre is in view as you round Surtees. The lack of any classic McLarens is a minor bugbear too, but that’s down to the lack of a licence rather than anything else.

If I take a step back and ignore the minor faults with the game then I find an incredibly rounded game that improves on the previous year’s effort in every single area without a doubt. It has more depth than last year’s game which can only be a good thing, however, my only concern is that people will overlook the 2013 content and instead play the classic content, although that isn’t a bad thing at all.

If anything, that’s a testament to Codemasters for giving fans of the sport the ability to race iconic cars on their favourite circuits in such detail.  With RUSH, and now this, fans of classic Formula One are in for a treat, and I can’t see the enthusiasm dying down at all: expect it to continue to sell well during the run up to Christmas. All in all, F1 2013 is a great game for small kids who want to drive big cars and big kids who want to drive small cars.