F1 2012 demo coming

[pk500]

I'm glad I ignored the doubters from the demo and picked up the full game. I actually like the driving model a bit better. It seems less predictable and that's especially apparent when hitting the curbs. You definitely don't get the same uniform bounce each time which is awesome. I already think I've played this one more than last years.

Some of you guys need to get your times on the leader board so I have something to shoot for in the time attacks.

Did you get it on 360, dude? I'm moving toward a lemming-like tipping point here.

[pk500]

Questions for you, Terry:

Did you play the 360 demo? If so, does the handling model feel any different in the retail game? Positive or negative?

Thanks.

[dbdynsty25]

I'm glad I ignored the doubters from the demo and picked up the full game. I actually like the driving model a bit better. It seems less predictable and that's especially apparent when hitting the curbs. You definitely don't get the same uniform bounce each time which is awesome. I already think I've played this one more than last years.

Some of you guys need to get your times on the leader board so I have something to shoot for in the time attacks.

Did you get it on 360, dude? I'm moving toward a lemming-like tipping point here.

Yup...been playing it the past couple days. Ironically w the new baby he likes the hum of the engine noise. It puts him right to sleep. Double bonus. Might not be too good if I wanted him to grow up a race fan if he's associating engine noise with sleep. Lol.

And to answer the question to terry it doesn't seem like the handling is all that different from the demo. Maybe a tad be tighter and predictable but then again I didn't play much of the demo because you guys all panned it. Decided to wait for retail.

[GB_Simo]

Questions for you, Terry:

Did you play the 360 demo? If so, does the handling model feel any different in the retail game? Positive or negative?

Thanks.

I'm not Terry either but I'll have a go at this one too: it's not appreciably different.

I've only had time to do a bit of the Champions Mode and a couple of quick races. On the subject of tyres, the first Champions Mode mini-race is you on fresh tyres trying to track down Kimi on worn tyres in the last few laps at Spa. The speed differential between your Lotus on good rubber and those around you on tired wheels is something else and as long as you can get through the traffic, you'll easily catch Kimi. Lose a couple of seconds getting past Force Indias, though, and it's a different game - I got stuck behind Di Resta for a lap on my first attempt and got absolutely nowhere near Raikkonen by the end of it. Hoping that translates into the main game to create that balance between pushing through traffic after your pit stop and remembering to save tyres for later in the stint; Terry's impressions suggest it does, so that's good to know.

The second Champions Mode race has you on slicks being chased by an intermediate-shod Hamilton at Interlagos in the rain. For most of that challenge, the amount of grip I had felt far too great for how wet the track appeared to be, so I'm a little worried that changeable conditions aren't going to be as taxing as they ought to be. The third event was in full wet weather coming off the back of a safety car period and that was different, in that I couldn't even get around the last two turns at Silverstone to start the event without crashing...

I tried to test how the tyres work with a 25% race in a Mercedes at Spa, but I ripped a wheel off the car in Q1 and then got DQed for corner cutting in the race when I missed my braking point for the Bus Stop first time through, so nothing to report there. I did however get the following things out of a 5 lap quick race at Monza:

- Much, much improved AI behaviour at the start. Good squabbling into the first chicane, everyone making it through intact, me in my Williams going four-abreast with a Caterham and the Toro Rossos at one point after crashing in qualifying (a theme is emerging, you'll notice)

- A mess at the second chicane. Maldonado, Massa and Di Resta went at it, Massa got pushed off the track, came back on and clipped Di Resta, who nudged Maldonado, who spun right in front of the pack. Cars darting everywhere trying to avoid an accident, me making hay and moving up to 14th. Big fun.

- On Legend AI, I spent the rest of lap one behind Vergne. I thought he was braking a little early on cold tyres but this seemed to sort itself out as the temperatures increased. I got a run down the outside into the first chicane as he covered the inside line and took 13th. Next lap, I got Massa for 12th on the inside at the same place and, thinking I'd got by cleanly, went to take my line for the second part of the chicane. The Ferrari was still there, racing cleanly with Vergne waiting to pounce. No contact at any stage, just good, hard racing.

- More improved AI. I thought they'd got better at overtaking in the demo. This was confirmed when I took my line through the DRS section in the middle of the lap and, having expected the AI to do the 2011 thing of lining up dutifully behind me on the straights, pretty much punted Massa off the road as he came alongside me. Watching the post-race replay I saw that into Ascari, one of the Toro Rossos got by Massa in a straight line. He covered the inside as the other STR attacked in the braking zone, to no avail as his rival made it by. Stamping on the throttle into the long right handed section of Ascari, the second STR was completely sideways as he brought the car back onto the racing line. This was only lap 3.

- Lap 4 and Vergne got me with DRS going towards Ascari. Nothing I could do, huge straightline speed advantage and having already bundled Massa off by accident, I gave him room. I got a better run through the chicane and lined him up for a pass into Parabolica. Vergne covered the inside, I went outside and I thought the AI braked too early. Post-race, the replay revealed I'd gone in deep and missed my apex while the AI quite correctly figured that braking normally and transferring onto the racing line, rather than having a braking duel with me, would give it a shot at retaking the position if I messed up. I'd saved some KERS and only that saved me from coming under immediate attack.

- Final lap. I'm looking just about secure in 12th, with not enough cushion to avoid a further DRS attack down the back straight but feeling sure that the straight will end before the chasing pack get to me. My race plays out quietly. The replay shows that the battle for 13th immediately behind me did no such thing. Ricciardo squeezed by Vergne with his DRS open, Massa went around the outside of Vergne at the turn-in point for Ascari and Di Resta, looking for an outside slot that didn't exist by the time he got there, ran out of road on corner exit and drove straight through the gravel.

I feel much less inclined to hot lap with this handling model, because the car isn't snapping at me like F1 2011's cars did and the aim seems to be to deliver a car that can be lapped consistently for a stint, not absolutely ragged for a single lap. The trade-off for that looks like it might well be much, much better racing, because that consistency means more time worrying about passing the other cars and less time wrestling to keep yours on the road. Haven't had anything like long enough with it to tell definitively but I'm happier now than the demo made me.

[GB_Simo]

And then, just to counterbalance my own initial positivity, I go to Bahrain, where Kimi gets a huge run down the main straight and just sits behind me when he gets to my rear wing, just like last year...this after a restart caused by me leaving the road and hitting an invisible wall which totalled my car. Hard to believe that bug is still in there or that the famous Codemasters quality control still isn't any better.

It's also raining according to the dynamic weather, which has never actually happened in any practice, qualifying or race in Bahrain, but since it rains there for 10 days a year on average, I could just have landed on one of them by fluke.

[GB_Simo]

A new, exciting problem I'm having: I'm about 2 to 2.5 seconds a lap quicker than the Pro AI in equal cars. I'm about the same distance slower than the Legend AI.

I don't claim to be DSP's fastest man over a single lap but I'm generally solid enough over a race distance, so the Career race I've just ran in Malaysia is irking me something rotten. The weather report showed the same rain graphic for quali and race, with the same 100% chance of rain, so I selected a wet setup for my Force India. In quali it rained steadily, the track always wet and reflecting the scenery as the cars threw up spray. I needed to run a 1:46.6 to make it into Q2 and I couldn't beat a 49.5, leaving me 18th thanks to the vast gap Codies sweetly left between the main pack and the Marussia/HRT/Caterham group.

I've read that it's no longer possible to make up a lot of places at the start so expected nothing spectacular in the race, particularly when I was taken to the grid on option tyres under a clear blue sky, albeit a clear blue sky from which rain was falling. It was with some surprise, therefore, that I found myself leading at the end of the first sector through nothing more complex than flooring it and driving around everybody. More than that, I knew we all still had wet settings, since the rules don't allow setup tweaks between quali and race, so there was no danger of people just blowing by me on the straights.

The track was still dry when at the end of lap 1, the entire field came in for intermediates. At the end of lap 2, the entire field came in for options. I'm not entirely sure what to say about that.

My lead at this stage was some 25 seconds over Sergio Perez, which didn't seem that big considering everyone had spent a lap on the wrong tyres in between making two more pit stops than me. When I pitted on lap 7 to exchange a still-healthy set of options for primes, that lead was 3 seconds. When I emerged from the pits running in 9th place, I found that everyone was in fact capable of just blowing by me on the straights, even when my corner exit had been visibly better. The tyres were still in good shape when I came home an eventual 12th, having just about held off Alonso on the final lap (helped by being able to use DRS on the final straight even though I was in front of Fernando throughout the lap), but nobody in front was suffering badly enough to fall into my clutches. No matter what I do at Legend level, I cannot go forward in normal circumstances. On Pro, I can't go backwards.

To further illustrate my problem, I've cleared all of the Champions Mode challenges with gold medals and had no bother at all doing so, with the exception of the challenge I mentioned a couple of posts ago. In a McLaren at Silverstone, the safety car is coming in, you've just switched to wet tyres, the field are on inters and you've got 3 laps to come from 9th place and win the race. It turns out that my difficulty driving the opening part of that challenge came from the tyres being absolutely stone cold. Even though my wets were the correct tyre for the conditions, I dropped a massive 7 seconds to Grosjean ahead. After about 2/3rds of a lap, the tyres were warmed up and suddenly making a sodden track feel bone dry, to the extent that I won the race despite being given a 10 second penalty for causing a collision somewhere, I know not where. That's on the hardest difficulty level in that mode, so to go from that to being absolutely nowhere on Legend...well, it's massively frustrating.

[webdanzer]

Wow, crazy invisible wall on the Hungary track!

[Gangrel]

He hit a groundhog!?

[Gurantsu]

They must have rented it from the 2011 Nurburgring!

You would think that should be an easy fix in a patch though.

[pk500]

Wow, crazy invisible wall on the Hungary track!

The reincarnation of the spring that hit Massa?

Sorry, that was a low blow.

Bad, bad glitch. Where is Codemasters' testing?

[TCrouch]

I had a TON of fun with this one on Friday and Saturday. I think I might have finished 1 race (maybe 2) in the previous years of the title, and in one of the loading screens where it shows you stats on Saturday I noticed I had already driven over 400 miles in F1 2012

I'm having a good time actually learning tracks this time with some of the expectations of good finishes out of the way. Just letting the track come to me over the course of a practice/qual/race weekend instead of feeling the burning desire to go as fast as possible as soon as possible. I consistently finish somewhere from 19th up to 11th, though. It seemed every weekend was something new--the tire type snafu in the rain, the running on Primes when everybody else had Options, staying out too long on old tires compared to guys pitting earlier, etc. Finally in the 4th race I ran consistent laps, picked up a bunch of places at the start and settled into a mid-pack position. Finished in 11th, the first time I hadn't done something massive to screw up a decent day in the Marussia ride.

Thinking perhaps I just totally sucked at F1 games, I went back and loaded a new career in the Williams, and saw what Adam saw--I was instantly 2.5 seconds quicker than 2nd place at Albert Park. But in the Marussia, I definitely don't have that issue LOL. I think for the career mode, one of the middle-tier teams will be where it's at for me. I may win some in something like the Toro Rossi or whatever it is, but it'll be a struggle for me I think. I have no hope of winning in a Marussia car, and that's fine with me, unless I can somehow make the team better.

It seemed like there were R&D goals I could follow? If that's the case, can you honestly take the bottom-of-the-barrel teams and turn them into a powerhouse by sticking it out with them? THAT would be cool if that's possible.

[GB_Simo]

Thinking perhaps I just totally sucked at F1 games, I went back and loaded a new career in the Williams, and saw what Adam saw--I was instantly 2.5 seconds quicker than 2nd place at Albert Park. But in the Marussia, I definitely don't have that issue LOL. I think for the career mode, one of the middle-tier teams will be where it's at for me. I may win some in something like the Toro Rossi or whatever it is, but it'll be a struggle for me I think. I have no hope of winning in a Marussia car, and that's fine with me, unless I can somehow make the team better.

It seemed like there were R&D goals I could follow? If that's the case, can you honestly take the bottom-of-the-barrel teams and turn them into a powerhouse by sticking it out with them? THAT would be cool if that's possible.

The pecking order changes from season to season and you can develop the car through the season - if you're made lead driver you also get to choose the development path your team takes - so theoretically, yes. I've never stayed with a team for long enough to see how much difference it makes, though. There's a huge difference between the Marussia/HRT/Caterham and pretty much everyone else in this and every Codemasters F1 game, mate, which tallies with what you're seeing when you jump into a Williams. They've won a race this year, so that one isn't a bad car at all, while Marussia's best finish was 12th in a race of attrition this past weekend in Singapore.

I've tried all sorts of things to get the car turned in and still can't do it - last night I ran maximum front wing, minimum rear wing, oversteer-inducing suspension settings and the blasted thing still had understeer everywhere. I've never been able to cope with understeer as well as you, so our different experiences make sense, but I'm running out of things I can reasonably do to fix it...

[TCrouch]

Never played an F1 game enough to know how different the teams are, strangely enough. I know the concept, but I didn't think it would be that drastic. We're talking 3 to 5 seconds per lap difference.

And on understeer, I hear you. I can drive a pig better than most people

Too bad the loose cars are the fast ones, and I suck with those. My whole driving style is slowing down and rolling through corners, not cooking anything. I think that's part of the reason I dig this year's so much. If they really did mess with the brakes and raise the ire of fans everywhere--I'm in the opposite corner. This one feels much better to me.

(and I just saw the earlier question...I never touched the demo. Thought I had no interest, sorry)

[GB_Simo]

Now for PC users and soon for console folk, two patches:

http://community.codemasters.com/t5/F1- ... 434#U94434

Patch 1 didn't seem to have much in, apart from getting rid of the invisible walls, but patch 2 apparently contains somewhere over 200 fixes and improvements. Haven't found a full set of release notes yet to say exactly what they all are.

[pk500]

Patches 4 and 5 released for PC version of F1 2012. Some nice improvements, such as reduction of understeer and elimination of regular rain at Bahrain:

http://www.virtualr.net/f1-2012-patches-4-5-available

Hopefully all five of these patches will be rolled into one uber-patch for consoles. Then I might consider buying the game.

[pk500]

Well, I succumbed to the reduced price of $29.99 at Gamestop and bought F1 2012 last night.

Anyone around here still have this game? Anyone race online? Would enjoy racing with some DSP brethren.

Thanks.

[10spro]

Well, I succumbed to the reduced price of $29.99 at Gamestop and bought F1 2012 last night.

Anyone around here still have this game? Anyone race online? Would enjoy racing with some DSP brethren.

Thanks.

Mine is still in the wraps PK. I'll get to it...eventually.

[TCrouch]

Yep. Still have it.

[Zeppo]

I have yet to buy it but I should have some time for gaming during the holidays and would love to get some online races going with you crazy cats. It'll be f***in AWESOME!!!

[pk500]

I have yet to buy it but I should have some time for gaming during the holidays and would love to get some online races going with you crazy cats. It'll be f***in AWESOME!!!

[TCrouch]

More importantly..anybody want to try Co-Op Championship?

[TCrouch]

Ok, so that went over about as well as a bag of hammers.

But after diving into this again last night, I'm blown away every time I play it by how much you can race the AI. You're not attempting to keep your car under control, and at the same time predict what non-human behavior the other car is going to exhibit. Instead, you're squeezing every ounce of speed out of your car and really getting after it with AI cars. 3 wide through sweepers, outbraking each other at hairpins--it's just a marvelous game to run against AI.

Every past F1 game I couldn't play much at all, but the stat sheet showed I turned 2,000 laps in F1 2012 so far, which is about 1,990 more laps than I did in F1 2010 and 11 combined. Such a joy to play this game, and I'm a noob F1 fan enough to not know what all the various gamebreaking bugs that people talk about are. I start a career race, and generally have a stop or 2 in a 15 lapper and have nothing but fun from start to finish.

[GB_Simo]

Right.

I grew to hate this thing when I had it before. It was, by a distance, the worst of Codies 3 attempts at doing this F1 thing. The AI still wouldn't pass properly down straights, the difficulty was imbalanced to such an extent that I was 2 seconds quicker than Pro AI but 2 seconds slower than Legend, the bugs were...well, they were bugs.

They've patched it since, though, have they not? And what if, my friends, that patch has transformed it from a game where the flashes of promise were obscured by the many, many failings to one I actually quite like?

I'm just nipping to the supermarket. Shan't be long.

[TCrouch]

Tough to say. I know they were blowing by me on straights when I didn't get a good exit. I really wished I had a way to record a race last night, where I had a 5-lapper that I just sat and watched the whole replay of because I was so mesmerized. It could still have whatever issues made you hate it, Adam...probably the equivalent of me thinking that the NASCAR games are unplayable because of a few things that many people don't see.

I'm glad other people are getting it now, at least so I know whether I'm crazy or whether it's actually that fun.

[Zeppo]

Terry, I'd love to do co-op season but I'd never be able to find the time right now. I've been itching to try it since its debut as a feature in last year's game but again, just never found the time.

Maybe in January if my schedule frees up we can try to work it out. But once I get some time I will be very focused on trying to rally the kind of crowds we had for a little while I'm last year's game for online races. So much fun with the full 24 car field of humans and AI!