- #F1 CHALLENGE 99 02 TRACKS DRIVER#
- #F1 CHALLENGE 99 02 TRACKS FULL#
- #F1 CHALLENGE 99 02 TRACKS LICENSE#
It should be noted that the game sports no dramatic enhancements, just a few key improvements here and there to further increase the sense of authenticity. On the track, the already incredible racing experience of last year's installment, F1 2002, is incrementally better this time around. Nor can you build a custom season or undertake a second championship without first ending your current championship. In F1 Challenge, you can't even campaign the four championships concurrently without starting freshly on each given season.
#F1 CHALLENGE 99 02 TRACKS FULL#
Seeing that this is the grand finale of the series and an examination of four full seasons, a career or even a chance to do a little sponsorship hunting and business wheeling and dealing would seem like a natural fit. What's worse for returning veterans is the continuing exclusion of a career. Unfortunately, EA decided to drop its informative driving school component, which certainly makes the game a more difficult proposal for newcomers. F1 Challenge offers a variety of choices, including single races, test days, and full season-long championships the latter of which incorporates every test, qualifying, and warm-up session you'd find at a real F1 event. In the meantime, you'll want to do some driving. Once through the opening rigmarole, you needn't revisit it unless you want to change teams or seasons. This means by selecting something like an also-ran British American Racing entry, you'll have to perform at an even higher level if you hope to dislodge the Ferraris and McLarens from their typical podium positions. The latter is quite important, as a fast, capable machine in the real world is also just that within the game. When you create your ID, you'll also be asked to choose a nationality, a team, and a car in which to drive.
#F1 CHALLENGE 99 02 TRACKS DRIVER#
If a driver has changed teams or a team changed sponsors or colors, you'll see it. If a circuit has been altered, dropped, or added in the real world during those years (Hello, Indianapolis!), such changes are reflected in the game. Image Space has done a nice job in this respect, developing a unique set of parameters for each year. To the uneducated driver, four separate seasons-each with many of the same venues and many of the same drivers, teams and cars-would mean very little. Namely, you have to decide which of the last four seasons, excluding 2003, you wish to enter. Once you've entered your ID, which, thankfully, allows you to race as yourself rather than one of the game's 34 real-life F1 pilots, you have a big decision to make. It then expands exponentially from there. The good news is that EA and Image Space have given us a really big finale that is already the subject of numerous third-party modifications.į1 Challenge begins humbly, with a simple interface sporting a simple request to login with your chosen player ID.
#F1 CHALLENGE 99 02 TRACKS LICENSE#
According to EA, "The license was up, and we chose not to renew." According to its growing fan base, which has come to view F1 as the most authentic depiction of open-wheeled racing on any gaming platform-and leagues ahead of anything played on a console system-the end came far too soon. Whether it is resurrected in the distant future is anyone's guess, but it is most assuredly gone for some time to come. Indeed, F1 Challenge is to be the final installment of this superb franchise. And that's because it has.Ĭourtesy of the F1 Challenge replay camera, this section of Canada's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve looks even busier than it actually is.
Furthermore, there's little doubt that it feels like a backward-looking wrap-up-a parting shot-to a series that has unfortunately come to its fruition. Nor does it even brush upon the most recent season, 2003.
Firstly, though the game is a grandiose and stunningly gorgeous affair that builds upon its already strong base by combining all four seasons from 1999 to 2002 into one neat package, it is not the huge face-lift some were expecting. Sadly, this excitement is somewhat tainted. And it has, in the form of F1 Challenge '99-'02. Surely something even more exciting would arrive in the next edition. In the three short years since, developer Image Space Incorporated has tweaked the game through three revisions, the most recent of which drove this series to the top of the open-wheeled racing genre. When EA Sports' F1 series first bounded into our consciousness in 2000, it appeared as a thrilling and exacting, but somewhat flawed, strike at the reigning Formula 1 champs in Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix and Ubisoft's superb Monaco Grand Prix II.
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