F1 Career Challenge

"A Game With So Much Promise, Let Down By Countless Glitches"

F1 Career Challenge is the first career based F1 game since the old “Ayton Senna Monaco GP” games for the Mega Drive and definitely is the first game to try and retain a long-term goal and point to what can quickly become a repetitive game. EA gives us a 4-season (99-02) challenge to grab a drive, and work you way up the teams to get the WDC and a few new features that set off nicely for a game that after a few weeks you’ll love and hate in equal measures.
Lets start with the graphics. The game runs very smoothly, with 22 cars racing around at great speed. Yet, then in some places, the trackside graphics flash and disappear which puts you off you’re driving. While it doesn’t affect the actual track, it’s a small shame.
The handling makes this possibly one of the easiest games to get used to. Through each season the cars to get progressively harder to drive, if a little sluggish, but it does remain consistent (at least until tyre wear sets in) and praise the lord, there is NO pressure sensitive rubbish that has ruined almost every other F1 game out there.
There are plenty of options too, aside from career mode you can race any season with the regular drivers for a few laps and have a nice time learning to tracks in what actually seems a much harder mode than the career mode!
The career mode itself is a strip down version of F1 – a race between 6-8 laps long, and you must make an interactive pit stop, and you must qualify within 107% of the pole sitter to race.
So far so great, but the main mode that shouts out so much, also lets down in equal measures and its all down to some extremely vital glitches and AI problems.
AI cannot overtake you without going off the track or doing some courageous move and taking you off the track. While it usually makes for much more exciting racing in the career mode, where damage is toned down to make for closer racing, if your just single racing, you’ll be lucky to make it around a few laps on circuits!
The AI is also responsible for the dreadful pit stop problems to game suffers. Cars may drive down the pits, but they don’t always pit and thus gain about 10-15 seconds on you, often losing you a race. What’s more the timing problems in the game means if you overtake a retired car be it from a lap or 10 laps ago, under a yellow flag, you’ll be giving a penalty.
These glitches will push you to frustration as the game once your busy in the all-fierce career mode has so much potential in it and its being thrown away.
EA gave us a tantalising game full of bugs and if they were to try again and iron out all these and more faults, put in a few more original modes and extras (buying a new pit babe after a win is not what I’d call a reward) then it would be a formidable game. Sadly F1 Career Challenge is a compromise.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/07/03