Reviews// Formula One Championship Edition (PS3)

There are also options to use a variety of steering wheels as well, so don’t fret if that’s your weapon of choice.

There I’ve said it, I enjoyed the Sixaxis. Now I’m going to say the other thing, “Give me bloody, sodding, bloody rumble! I mean, how on earth is anybody supposed to be able to really feel how things are working from the only real perspective you should be playing this damned game – first person – without rumble!?”

OK, graphics and sound. Yes. Right. There are some. Even with SPOnG’s considerable playing environment, the sound is, to say the least, thin. If there’s one thing that strikes anybody who has been to a real-life supercar event, be that Hickson Road in the centre of Sydney (in the old days) or a Silverstone F1 GP, it’s the grunt. The low-range, gut-pounding, bone fragmenting grunt that assails your entire body as these beasts turn the air around you into the kind of sound wall that The Ramones should have shot Phil Spector for not producing, that’s what to expect.

With F1 for PS3, what you get is sort of a whine. Sure, it’s a whine that we’re assured is reflected correctly off buildings and is tied to the way your car is actually working. Nevertheless, it’s a whine not a grunt – to be frank, the sound on GT HD on PS3 is far preferable.

And as for the guy in your headphones, he does sound exactly like a chap who wants to be an F1 driver but instead is the chap who is really, really close to being an F1 driver. It’s the voice of the posh bloke who hangs out with not posh blokes, at the back of the crowd and who, when the lads are giving it large says things like, “Yes, indeed, we’re giving it largely!” But this is one busy and polite person – he works for every single team and never, ever says the phrase “For fuck’s sake, a drunken clown could have taken that corner!” or “That dog-shagger Coulthard is behind you!” To the best of my knowledge, real-life team managers do make use of the odd bit of invective.

Okay, this is being deliberately picky, but if you’ve got a license to simulate a real-life event – an actuality – and you’ve got the kind of audio, graphical and storage ‘next-gen’ power that the PS3 is supposed to be all about then, surely it’s down to you to simulate it.

Which brings me to the graphics. Sure, each individual car has more polygons and processing chucked at it than all 22 cars in the previous version put together but what about the backgrounds, the smoke, the spectators, the clouds, the lighting? Given the PS3’ness of the outing, I expected a great, great deal more.

Right, so it looks to you as if I might as well just go to the SPOnG cupboard, dig out a 286 PC, and play some nostalgic Crammond game or two because nothing’s going to be up to par for me.

Well, hold fire then, you cheeky sod, there are two elements to F1 CE for PS3 that make me return to it despite the hoots of derision from the horde of non-F1 appreciating co-workers. Speed and learning curve.