F1 2013 - Do I buy it?

[Bigbazz]

So it has been around 1 year since I played F1 2012, I bought it and hated it almost straight away, played for a few hours and uninstalled. I just fired it up to see if patches and time away from the series would help, and played the 2nd Career race. The handling on the cars is absolutely horrible, they just understeer and give no driver feedback and it just feels like a whole mess of a gameplay mode using a wheel.

I can't even begin to describe the frustration of playing 1 race, I didn't enjoy it at all and will probably never play F1 2012 again. But I loved F1 2010 and even more so F1 2011.


Can someone who has played all the games tell me how F1 2013 is in comparison to the old games? Is it more like F1 2011 where the cars can oversteer and slides can be caught? Where you can push hard and really attack the track?

Or is it more like the frustrating understeering horrible experience of F1 2012? Should I buy F1 2013? On the PC with a G27.

 

[AnAL0G]

F1 2012 did not really understeer, imo. It's just that we were used to F1 2011 which had terribly unrealistic physics and oversteer. In F1 2012 you were fine if you hit your braking points correctly and judged the corner speeds properly. I haven't played 2013, but I'm seriously considering it, however I have heard that the handling is similar to 2012, but that you can also adjust some of that with tuning. I also know that the game is more sensitive to throttle and wheelspin on corner exit. I'm not sure if this helps, but I also think that only playing F1 2012 for a few hours before uninstalling is a rather rash decision, so I might stay away from 2013 if I were in your shoes.

 

[BlacqueJacques]

So it has been around 1 year since I played F1 2012, I bought it and hated it almost straight away, played for a few hours and uninstalled. I just fired it up to see if patches and time away from the series would help, and played the 2nd Career race. The handling on the cars is absolutely horrible, they just understeer and give no driver feedback and it just feels like a whole mess of a gameplay mode using a wheel.

I can't even begin to describe the frustration of playing 1 race, I didn't enjoy it at all and will probably never play F1 2012 again. But I loved F1 2010 and even more so F1 2011.


Can someone who has played all the games tell me how F1 2013 is in comparison to the old games? Is it more like F1 2011 where the cars can oversteer and slides can be caught? Where you can push hard and really attack the track?

Or is it more like the frustrating understeering horrible experience of F1 2012? Should I buy F1 2013? On the PC with a G27.

Since you were so quick to judge F1 2012 I would reccomend that you steer (pun intended) clear of F1 2013.

I also agree with AnAL0G's assessment; I have recovered from a slide in the new game; there is wheelspin. I think I may just need more aero to reduce understeer now

 

[Bigbazz]

F1 2012 did not really understeer, imo. It's just that we were used to F1 2011 which had terribly unrealistic physics and oversteer. In F1 2012 you were fine if you hit your braking points correctly and judged the corner speeds properly. I haven't played 2013, but I'm seriously considering it, however I have heard that the handling is similar to 2012, but that you can also adjust some of that with tuning. I also know that the game is more sensitive to throttle and wheelspin on corner exit. I'm not sure if this helps, but I also think that only playing F1 2012 for a few hours before uninstalling is a rather rash decision, so I might stay away from 2013 if I were in your shoes.

That is the point though, I had not played F1 2012 for over a year, and F1 2011 for even longer, so this has nothing to do with it. I have not played any F1 series game for over a year so am not coming in with a bias from playing F1 2011. In that time I've played many different simulation games, Simraceway and Rfactor 2 mostly, but not touched a Codemasters F1 game since the day F1 2012 was released, then I come back and I play F1 2012 before then reinstalling F1 2011 (after this post) to compare.



The issue is this

Car has 100% grip, requires no skill to drive. You go 1% too fast and then the car completely understeers off track. There is no transition or progression through understeer or oversteer, no balance. It is 100% grip or 100% understeer or 100% oversteer. The game feels so stale and is frustrating to play.


F1 2011 on the other hand actually requires more skill, the cars can be nervious and will progressively move between understeer and oversteer, you can manipulate the car much more and you need to be more in control. You don't have grip and then suddenly hit a threshold where you understeer off the track with no way to fix it, the understeer is predictable and progressive and has to balanced. Alongside it you can feel twitches of oversteer as the car moves around, which altogether makes the car very agile and responsive.



It's not that I can't drive F1 2012 either, I came back and I'd left my game on Career mode 2nd race of the season, everything on the highest difficulty with all the aids off and I won the race for Williams from 7th on the grid (which is where I must have qualified before I uninstalled the game last year). After winning the race I quit the game with the frustration of how horrible and wrong the car felt to drive.

I want F1 2013 for the obvious reasons of the 2013 content and classic cars/tracks, but I need to know where it lies. Is it more like F1 2011 or F1 2012. I don't care if you think that I need more time with F1 2012, the 2 Career weekends and 7 hours steam sais I've played with the game in total are more than enough for me to know I don't like the game and never will.

 

[Mini Stiggy]

I've only played 2012 and now 2013, but I like 2013 much better. It takes more skill to go fast, and the AI is much better.

 

[Bigbazz]

A mate brought over a classic edition today for me to try, on the PS3 though (i'd be buying on PC).

First impressions, the physics/driving model is taken from F1 2012 but isn't exactly the same. Sadly I did get pretty angry at the game while doing the young driver test. The hairpin you go around at the start of the first few tests, its like you can't take a tighter line and if you don't take the perfect line the car will not make it around without going off the track.

In high speed the cars back end never steps out, it's too stable. Same issues as F1 2012 really, no progression through the understeer or oversteer and the car is too stable, if you add more lock instead of the back stepping out into a twitch oversteer you will just understeer heavily, but when it is working the car is 100% stable with massive grip.

Pretty frustrating. I did find some joy from it though. The Classic cars 80s and 90s are awesome, they are unrealistic as ****, I did a 1:15.8 in the 88 Williams at Monaco, so I would have made Q3 in 2013, hahahaha.

But still, as unrealistic as they are they don't share the frustrating driving characteristics of the modern cars and they move around a lot and I found them great fun to drive. Tried the 88 Williams and Ferrari, the 86 Lotus and the 92 Williams so far and enjoyed them all. The 88 Ferrari sounds horrible, they really didn't do much of a consistant job on the sounds. All in all I dont think I will buy it, I'l give the Career 1-2 races in the modern car and if I feel the same as I do in F1 2012 I'm not going to bother, the Classic Edition cars are great fun to drive though.

 

[MagpieRacer]

You know F1 cars are build with the intention of having grip in corners? Also the YDT has various aids on by default. If you feel the cars are too stable in 2013 then nothing will satisfy you at all.

 

[HKS racer]

You know F1 cars are build with the intention of having grip in corners? Also the YDT has various aids on by default. If you feel the cars are too stable in 2013 then nothing will satisfy you at all.

Yes but what he is saying basically is you can catch a slide in a real F1. And there's definitely some progression from 100% grip to oversteer / understeer.

 

[Bigbazz]

You know F1 cars are build with the intention of having grip in corners? Also the YDT has various aids on by default. If you feel the cars are too stable in 2013 then nothing will satisfy you at all.

The driving aids are turned off when you select "I want to test myself against the very best". This isn't about the cars not being challenging or difficult to drive, infact it is the opposite.

Because there is no progression from full grip to understeer and because there is no oversteer (back end stepping out) when you add too much lock at mid-high speeds what you get is a very stale experience that is hard to guage. I've gone into a corner feeling like I have great grip only for the car to just understeer badly in a very unpredictable way because I've pushed 1% too hard.


I've driven all the proper simulation F1 cars (iRacing, Ferrari Virtual Academy, Simraceway, Game Stock Car, Rfactor 2) and originally F1 2010 and F1 2011 (though not full sims) follow those in this same respect. There is a certain way these cars should behave and they just don't in F1 2012/2013. In F1 2011 you can feel the car being nervous and you can feel the twitches, if you add too much lock the car will oversteer, if you have too much entry speed the car will understeer but its all very predictable and because of this the cars can be driven very hard with confidence.

In F1 2012/2013 this just isn't present (not in the 2013 cars anyway) and I actually get to the point where I'm angry that the car won't do what it's told. The hairpin where you can't take a tighter line at Abu Dhabi when you 100% should be able to with ease, the car should not just have 1 line or understeer clean off the track regardless of how much lock you add, along with that I should not be needing to shift down to 1st gear in so many low speed corners just to get the car to not understeer clean off the track, I should rarely ever be in 1st gear.

It's like the lock it allows you to use is connected to the speed/gear in a very inorganic way, it doesn't feel right. I think I'l just have to accept that this series peaked at 2011 and is going nowhere. The classic cars were fun but it isn't enough to keep me playing when there are so many better F1 experiences out there. It's sad that in Simraceway or Ferrari Virtual Academy I can't play an official championship, but the driving experience and realism is in another world.

 

[freight48]

How many hours have you played 2012 total? Remember this game isn't a sim game, it's mean to be in between sim and fun. They don't want beginners to stop playing either because its "too realistic"

 

[Bigbazz]

How many hours have you played 2012 total? Remember this game isn't a sim game, it's mean to be in between sim and fun. They don't want beginners to stop playing either because its "too realistic"

7 hours and 2 career weekends in F1 2012, played on legendary AI with all the aids off, driving for Williams. in F1 2013 I did the young driver test (with all aids off, everything setup from main menu) and then got annoyed that it was the same as F1 2012 driving model, then I moved to the Classic cars where I had a complete blast!

Look I'm not asking for complete realism, F1 2010 and F1 2011 were nowhere near complete realism, they were watered down semi-sims. But the main thing is that the basic characteristics of the cars and the way you drive them did not differ so much from a proper sim. The annoying thing is that even though the Classic cars are completely unrealistic and far far too fast they feel great to drive, I have none of the frustrations I got with the 2013 cars.

 

[AnAL0G]

The hairpin where you can't take a tighter line at Abu Dhabi when you 100% should be able to with ease, the car should not just have 1 line or understeer clean off the track regardless of how much lock you add, along with that I should not be needing to shift down to 1st gear in so many low speed corners just to get the car to not understeer clean off the track, I should rarely ever be in 1st gear.

Again with the exaggerations. "Clean off the track" if it's not perfect? And how can you blame the gearing? You know you can change that, right?

I think I'l just have to accept that this series peaked at 2011 and is going nowhere.

Except that this is their most successful release to date.


It feels like you didn't ask the question you posed in this thread with any sincerity, more that you wanted people to respond so that you could go off on the series. I honestly can't understand how anyone can possibly think F1 2011 was the peak of this series so far. What were there, 1:20 time trials at Melbourne? Even faster?

 

[Bigbazz]

Again with the exaggerations. "Clean off the track" if it's not perfect? And how can you blame the gearing? You know you can change that, right?



Except that this is their most successful release to date.


It feels like you didn't ask the question you posed in this thread with any sincerity, more that you wanted people to respond so that you could go off on the series. I honestly can't understand how anyone can possibly think F1 2011 was the peak of this series so far. What were there, 1:20 time trials at Melbourne? Even faster?

"Most successful to date" based on what?

Anyway, it's not about realism, you don't get it. In time trials the track, car and tyres are always at 100% grip, which provides unrealisticly high grip levels. But then a 1988 car in F1 2013 doing 1:15 laptimes around monaco is even more crazy. if you were on a career race weekend with fuel sim on, tyre wear and the progressively improving track the laptimes were much much slower.


Why am I making the post? Because I really wanted F1 2013 but didn't want to get screwed over again.

F1 2010
F1 2011

Great semi sim games, a lot of bugs and lot could be improved but the basic game was solid, the "live the life" theme (which has now been abandoned) was interesting (more so than menus) and the driving physics though not sim like were really solid and predictable. The main complaint with F1 2010 was that you could not correct slides or catch spins, which they sorted for F1 2011.

F1 2012

They dropped the "live the life" and added the young driver test tutorial mode, still loads of bugs and along with it they introduced the "understeer" physics model. It had an absolute massive uproar of angry fans at the understeer on the forums. Most defenders of the new model just told these people to "L2P", nevermind the fact that some of these like me were still able to win races on Legendary, we just didn't like the driving model.

F1 2013

I so so wanted to buy it, I want to play F1 2013 with a solid driving model and I really wanted to play the classic content. Sadly since I was refused a refund on F1 2012 I wasnt willing to buy it. A mate of mine offered me the chance to play it today so I got a go.

2013 cars = Pretty much the same as 2012, same issues.
Classic cars = Awesome fun to drive but ridiculously unrealistic


I don't care about the realism in reality, so long as it doesn't stop the game from being good, none of the F1 games have been realistic sims but that doesn't matter so long as they are good racing games, and I feel the driving model on the modern cars ruin it.






Edit : Actually I think the point is, I don't want you to tell me I'm wrong for not liking F1 2012, I didn't come to be told that I need to spend more time with F1 2012 because I should like it. I came to ask "Is F1 2013 more like F1 2012 or F1 2011/2010".

 

[Bleached]

If "lock" is full steering input, can one "add more lock?"

 

[Bigbazz]

If "lock" is full steering input, can one "add more lock?"

"Add more lock" is a common way to describe adding more steering angle.



Edit : Did my first F1 2013 career race tonight, all aids off, legendary AI and driving for Lotus. Qualified in P1 with a 1:24.xx and stayed in 1st during race until 2 laps from the end when I made a mistake at the 2nd corner heavy braking zone, tried to catch Vettel but then my fuel ran out at the end of the last lap and I just about finished 2nd.

It definitely is better than F1 2012, a lot better but it still has all of the traits I mentioned, I compared back to F1 2012 after it and 2013 is noticeably better, or should I say that when I compared back F1 2012 was noticeably worse.

If someone made a mod for Classic cars in Career mode I'd buy it for the PC.

 

[FrozenGhost928]

7 hours and 2 career weekends in F1 2012, played on legendary AI with all the aids off, driving for Williams. in F1 2013 I did the young driver test (with all aids off, everything setup from main menu) and then got annoyed that it was the same as F1 2012 driving model, then I moved to the Classic cars where I had a complete blast!

Look I'm not asking for complete realism, F1 2010 and F1 2011 were nowhere near complete realism, they were watered down semi-sims. But the main thing is that the basic characteristics of the cars and the way you drive them did not differ so much from a proper sim. The annoying thing is that even though the Classic cars are completely unrealistic and far far too fast they feel great to drive, I have none of the frustrations I got with the 2013 cars.

I would suggest Game Stock Car 2013 if you are into the sim experience. While the graphics are not great the driving is great and this game will cost you only $25. I also have F1 2012 and thought it was ok for what it was, which fell more on the arcade side. I will buy F1 2013 once the bugs are fixed and the price drops. Refuse to pay $64. Well maybe for GT-6

 

[MagpieRacer]

I think your playing a different game if you can't feel the cars twitching and the cars aren't doing what you want them to annd you think it feels the same as 2012.

 

[HKS racer]

Simple question how is graphics compared to GT5?

 

[paulpg87]

how wheels are supported? do they work well? thanks

 

[Mini Stiggy]

Simple question how is graphics compared to GT5?

Better

how wheels are supported? do they work well? thanks

My DFGT works well. It would be much harder with a DS3 I imagin, very twitchy.

 

[paulpg87]

Better


My DFGT works well. It would be much harder with a DS3 I imagin, very twitchy.

I have a DFGT too. I've read everywhere that is still hard to find the right settings (so i might ask you to share yours ) and than that there are some issues with FFB deasappering when you enter some corners. Do you experience any issues?

thanks again

 

[Mini Stiggy]

I have a DFGT too. I've read everywhere that is still hard to find the right settings (so i might ask you to share yours ) and than that there are some issues with FFB deasappering when you enter some corners. Do you experience any issues?

thanks again

I just use default settings and get used to it. The FFB sometimes (sorta)goes away at some low speed corners where you have to go full-lock, but once you do a lap around the track, you know what corners it does it on, and it doesn't slow you down at all.(That's my opinion on it)

 

[HKS racer]

Better

For real? If so I'm interested. But I have to say I had bad experience with previous F1's by Codies. I had F1 2010 and frame rate was very bad. F1 2011 was an aliasing fest, tried F1 2012 and found tons of aliasing as well.
So, can I ask you how is frame rate and anti aliasing?

 

[MagpieRacer]

On PS3 its usual AA as PS3 doesn't support it as well as the XBOX. They have done well to hide it as much as possible but you do notice it sometimes as you do on most PS3 games. Frame rate is much better as it stays level more of the time. Very minor drops from time to time but not as noticeable as 2012.

 

[Mini Stiggy]

Yeah, as said above, frame rate is much better.

 

[PepeMickey]

The only problem I had with F1 2012 was that you couldn't tell when your brakes were locking or the back end was getting loose, it was progressive enough though (better than GT5) but since there was no real feedback by the time you noticed that you were losing traction it was already too late.

 

[Imari]

Ugh, so I borrowed the game to try it out.

I bought 2010 and 2011 and liked them, but the difficulty of just being able to sit down and play without the game crash or some bug intrude or my save file corrupt itself got too much. I tried 2012 before buying, but too many of the same things went wrong for me to justify giving them my money.

2013 seems to be more of the same, unfortunately. When it works, it's really a very enjoyable game. Physics feel very pleasant, if not razor sharp. It's a very nice looking game. The additional modes are excellent. There's a nice feeling of accomplishment when you storm past half a dozen guys to take the win.

But I spent an hour and a half just trying to get some settings where my wheel felt right (Fanatec CSR). The menu setting labels are still arcane. The buttons on the wheel still don't work right, Shift Down paddle is confirm for some reason so I'm constantly groping around my wheel for the right buttons in menus. I've had it freeze up twice during scenario mode and once during Young Driver test, ditching my progress as it does.

And I ask myself, why bother? I just want to play the game, not try and work around all this BS. I want to drive, not play QA Assistant Simulator 2013.

I think my feeling is more or less the same as it has been since 2010: Pretty good game that is horribly crippled by not "just working". The races and scenarios are great, it's everything else that spoils it for me.

 

[BlacqueJacques]

F1 2013 works ok for me 👍

 

[xiSealHDz]

F1 2013 is much much better than '12.. Anyone who is thinking if it's worth buying it i highly suggest to do so..The handling is just perfect AI way better and the list goes on...

 

[HKS racer]

Ugh, so I borrowed the game to try it out.

I bought 2010 and 2011 and liked them, but the difficulty of just being able to sit down and play without the game crash or some bug intrude or my save file corrupt itself got too much. I tried 2012 before buying, but too many of the same things went wrong for me to justify giving them my money.

2013 seems to be more of the same, unfortunately. When it works, it's really a very enjoyable game. Physics feel very pleasant, if not razor sharp. It's a very nice looking game. The additional modes are excellent. There's a nice feeling of accomplishment when you storm past half a dozen guys to take the win.

But I spent an hour and a half just trying to get some settings where my wheel felt right (Fanatec CSR). The menu setting labels are still arcane. The buttons on the wheel still don't work right, Shift Down paddle is confirm for some reason so I'm constantly groping around my wheel for the right buttons in menus. I've had it freeze up twice during scenario mode and once during Young Driver test, ditching my progress as it does.

And I ask myself, why bother? I just want to play the game, not try and work around all this BS. I want to drive, not play QA Assistant Simulator 2013.

Ok thanks for the report. Lot of potential wasted, so I'm forced to avoid it like pest. What a shame. Damn you Codemestaers for releasing heavily bugged games. I will not bother. You must learn the hardway.