F1 06 (PSP)

Looked around for this for ages after my mate had bought it with his PSP. After many attempts at winning it on eBay, I was finally successful.

I looked forward to racing against my mate, and proving who is the champion of driving games. Unfortunately this is where the game falls over big time. There is no multiplayer option, I repeat, there is NO MULTIPLAYER OPTION. This is criminal considering the PSP's ability to connect wirelessly ...
.../> As a single player simulation, the game is good, but not brilliant. You have all the teams, drivers and tracks of the 2006 Formula 1 season, and the rules are pretty accurate.

Each grand prix has a couple of practice sessions where you can "evolve" the car, tweaking the fuel and tyres, the camber, the brake balance and the suspension. This can be quite tedious as you need to complete clean laps in order to make any progress, ... more

Looked around for this for ages after my mate had bought it with his PSP. After many attempts at winning it on eBay, I was finally successful.

I looked forward to racing against my mate, and proving who is the champion of driving games. Unfortunately this is where the game falls over big time. There is no multiplayer option, I repeat, there is NO MULTIPLAYER OPTION. This is criminal considering the PSP's ability to connect wirelessly to the internet and to other local PSPs.

As a single player simulation, the game is good, but not brilliant. You have all the teams, drivers and tracks of the 2006 Formula 1 season, and the rules are pretty accurate.

Each grand prix has a couple of practice sessions where you can "evolve" the car, tweaking the fuel and tyres, the camber, the brake balance and the suspension. This can be quite tedious as you need to complete clean laps in order to make any progress, this means that if you happen to drift a little too much on a corner and go off the track, the lap is no longer clean. Whether or not your times improve due to the evolution, or whether it's because your knowledge of the track improves, I'm not sure.

Once you have evolved the car, you need to qualify for the race, which is in three stages, just like the real thing. And finally the race, if you have qualified in pole position, you have a clean track ahead of you, if not, then it is far too easy to crash into the other cars, they seem to brake earlier than they need to. Any contact like this is considered to be unsporting behaviour, and you are given a penalty, which restricts your speed. Unless they have changed the ruling and I am not aware, I would have thought this would be a stop-and-go penalty.

In addition to the career, and single grand prix weekend modes, there is also a time trial mode, where you compete against the times of others, in an unlocked car of your choosing. So far I have unlocked a classic racer, although admittedly I haven't tried the time trial mode.

I have WRC, which is a rally game, and even though Rally runs are done with a lot of time between cars to avoid contact, WRC actually has a multiplayer ability. You can race against the shadow time of your opposition. If they can do this in a rally game, why not in a Formula 1 game?

I also must point out that this game has crashed on me a a number of times now. Not come across a console game crashing before, very strange.

If you're a fan of Formula 1, then this is worth a look, if not, then there are other driving games around that offer more, and the option to race your mates. 

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