F1 2011 First impressions after playing the game

Johnson0311 · Sep 20, 2011

Well just finished my first race with Force India. Let me just say the new suspension system is a handful to get used to. I lost a front wing twice in practice. Lets just say if you activate DRS don't do it at a wrong spot or you'll pull a Maldonado and spin out.

So far managing KERS and DRS is tricky in practice and qualy. At no point was I within a second in the race but I qualified 18th and finished 12th meeting my objective.

The graphics don't appear that much better and the washout effect is kinda odd. Modders will fix that I'm sure fast enough.

Career mode is now managed with a laptop and no more ugly lady... Helmets are going to have to be modded in again.

No Senna for Renault.

Fuel mixture is kind of a neat addition and my gas light came on during the second to last lap and I was not in a position to gain a position so I just turned it back to normal.

Engineer seems like he barely talks at all now. To early to tell if this is good or bad. Seems like all sector times are good in qualy.

Massa was pole along with Button and Petrov. Vettell was an embarrassing 14th.

Any other questions let me know.

Also I'm playing with 20%

EIF · Sep 25, 2011

I've been critical of the game but after a bit more play I am warming to it more.

In some areas its a definate improvement on '10 but I some important aspects have not been improved and are actually worse.

Overall it's a fun game but feels superficial, I dont get the impression there is anything clever or sophisticated going on under the bonnet.

Anton Price · Sep 26, 2011

I've only played for a few hours and I have mixed feelings also. After spending ages carefully getting around a track on 2010 it seems now like I'm go karting around and not spining off when I really should be, the car seems very easy to correct itself when you make errors and once you get the hang of how the car handles when you activate drs I found that I could use it nearly most of the way round Melbourne. Hence on Professional AI I was amazed when I got fastest practice times and pole in a force India. However when it came to the race it wasnt so simple, which I was pleased with, I had to fight a bit harder for the win and maintain a one second lead so I couldn't get drs's by others. I'll continue on and see how it goes. Also they have taken out the press conference part and replaced it with a one on one interview, didn't feel right for a race winner.

Joe Lund · Sep 26, 2011

Tough game to get used to following 2010, handling is soo much different, been playing with the wheel setting and have noticed that the settings from 2010 do not work well, the new deadzone % is a good tool!

Iulian Cezar · Sep 26, 2011

Still have to buy the 2011, so a few questions that plagued 2010.

Is AI affected properly by fuel/tire or do I need to play with them off again?
Is there any annoying pit bug, where you get hold up for cars that are 100m behind you coming in the pits?
Is the AI still a perfect alien driver, or do they mistakes too? Do they spin off and crash by themselves or fighting for position?

Prolly I'l think of a few more questions a bit later and edit this post.

Iulian Cezar · Sep 26, 2011

Still have to buy the 2011, so a few questions that plagued 2010. Is AI affected properly by fuel/tire or do I need to play with them off again? Is there any annoying pit bug, where you get hold up for cars that are 100m behind you coming in the pits? Is the AI still a perfect alien driver, or do they mistakes too? Do they spin off and crash by themselves or fighting for position? Prolly I'l think of a few more questions a bit later and edit this post.

Iulian Cezar · Sep 26, 2011

Still have to buy the 2011, so a few questions that plagued 2010. Is AI affected properly by fuel/tire or do I need to play with them off again? Is there any annoying pit bug, where you get hold up for cars that are 100m behind you coming in the pits? Is the AI still a perfect alien driver, or do they mistakes too? Do they spin off and crash by themselves or fighting for position? Prolly I'l think of a few more questions a bit later and edit this post.

fatbloke666 · Sep 26, 2011

First impressions good.Changed kers button though found it awkward to use in default setting.One gremlin that did appear in my 2nd qualifying was my team mate was given a time of 1m 1 sec for a lap of Melbourne some 26 secs ahead of Hamilton who had a 1m 27 sec lap.thats how it finished with me pushed down to 9th.weird or what

Logain · Sep 26, 2011

For the first time in 15 years as a gamer, I traded in a game within the first week of release, F1 2011.

Negatives: PS3 frame rate and graphics devolution, time trial is a joke, and buggy buggy buggy! CM dropped the ball on this one.

David O'Reilly · Sep 27, 2011

Report after 3 days of play only-say 6 hours
Big learning curve with handling and setups. Old rules don't apply, more rear wing seems like real world at last vs 2010 where you could use 4/1 wings.
Loving that I can be fastest in (lovely) cockpit view rather than slower.
Feeling much more real for me, more of a challenge.
Liking the mutiplayer and Ed (Milliband) the engineer telling me the car in front is conserving fuel or that I am quicker in sector 2 for example. He gets it wrong though. In a Wet race in Spa that dried out I tpitted from Wets to primes and leter he wanted me to pit again for options! No way Ed.
My PB in Spa on 2010 was about 1.47. First 2 hours in 2011 game I was at 1.54! With wheel settings (completely different), setups (ditto) and practice am now at 1.45 and liking it a lot.
Been blown away by mates with DRS and need to master that.
Worried about the 11/11 bug.
All in all i think I will get £35.00 worth over 12 months if not the first week.

Gary Bieber · Sep 27, 2011

I've only done one race in career mode so far, but already I'm hugely disappointed. I ran a long weekend, the Red Bulls and McLarens were never in the top 10 times for any sessions, and Hamilton and Webber both went out in Q2!? First race, things were going good, fighting with Rosberg for P5, close enough to him to use the DRS and go shooting past, much like real life. However, the very next lap with Rosberg right behind me and I'm thinking "ok, now he is just going to pass me right back", but nope, he didn't even challenge or keep up with me despite me being out of KERS and him having DRS available. Finish the race in 5th (in a Williams), Sergio Perez won!? Webber and Hamilton actually went backwards instead of gaining positions.

You know that saying "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" ? That's how I feel right now, F1 2010 was a huge disappointment, how was it I was stupid enough to buy F1 2011 and think it would actually be any better?

Edit: Now at Sepang on AI Professional and their lap times are already faster than real life quali times. D'Ambrosio in P6 with a 1:35.251, wtf! (RL, Button was P4 in qualy with a 1:35.200)

Oh, and the music actually got worse this year, didn't think that was even possible.

macroi · Sep 28, 2011

Gary W. Bieber said:
I've only done one race in career mode so far, but already I'm hugely disappointed. I ran a long weekend, the Red Bulls and McLarens were never in the top 10 times for any sessions, and Hamilton and Webber both went out in Q2!? First race, things were going good, fighting with Rosberg for P5, close enough to him to use the DRS and go shooting past, much like real life. However, the very next lap with Rosberg right behind me and I'm thinking "ok, now he is just going to pass me right back", but nope, he didn't even challenge or keep up with me despite me being out of KERS and him having DRS available. Finish the race in 5th (in a Williams), Sergio Perez won!? Webber and Hamilton actually went backwards instead of gaining positions.

You know that saying "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" ? That's how I feel right now, F1 2010 was a huge disappointment, how was it I was stupid enough to buy F1 2011 and think it would actually be any better?

Edit: Now at Sepang on AI Professional and their lap times are already faster than real life quali times. D'Ambrosio in P6 with a 1:35.251, wtf! (RL, Button was P4 in qualy with a 1:35.200)

Oh, and the music actually got worse this year, didn't think that was even possible.

Are you by any chance using the mod that makes all teams drivable in career mode? If so, it screws up the ai. I tried it for a while and had similar bizzare results like yours.

Gary Bieber · Sep 28, 2011

No mods installed at all. Race is at 20%, and that does seem to screw everything up since it looks like the top 3 teams tend to pit twice, while the middle and back markers are running 1 stops. That still doesn't account for their times in paractice and qualy being all out of whack.

I'm about to go digging for answers for steering set up, I think I've tried every possible combination and nothing feels right. I just finished Monaco and I couldn't do one lap without hitting a few walls, never had problems in F1 2010.

AprilSwift · Sep 28, 2011

Disappointed again because of xbox to pc conversion

The graphics is still Xbox and the xbox characters is bloody ugly why dont they get away from xbox porting and just make a game for pc?

Rex Racer-X · Sep 29, 2011

AprilSwift said:
The graphics is still Xbox and the xbox characters is bloody ugly why dont they get away from xbox porting and just make a game for pc?

Money/resources, of which they have a finite amount to spend developing any given game.

Ricobran · Sep 29, 2011

If you spin-out it's a nightmare trying to regain control. I play with automatic gears, maybe it's different with manual, but there is hardly any gap between braking and going into reverse. So if you go into a spin, you start braking but if the car ends up facing the wrong way you go straight into reverse gear and end up accelerating the wrong way. Very annoying, especially if the spin happens at high speed.

Jan Köhler · Sep 29, 2011

Ricobran said:
If you spin-out it's a nightmare trying to regain control. I play with automatic gears, maybe it's different with manual, but there is hardly any gap between braking and going into reverse. So if you go into a spin, you start braking but if the car ends up facing the wrong way you go straight into reverse gear and end up accelerating the wrong way. Very annoying, especially if the spin happens at high speed.

Yep, this problem does not exist when usind manual gears. You have to shift down from 1st gear into Neutral and once more into Reverse. Then you must use the Gas pedal to drive backwards.

max99 · Sep 29, 2011

I have a list of bugs but one case descriptions and sound identical to 2010

Ricobran · Sep 29, 2011

Jan Köhler said:
Yep, this problem does not exist when usind manual gears. You have to shift down from 1st gear into Neutral and once more into Reverse. Then you must use the Gas pedal to drive backwards.

Unfortunately I don't think I will ever be good enough to play with manual gears. I will just have to make sure I don't spin.

AprilSwift · Sep 29, 2011

I gave it very low score because they didn't fix anything all they are interested in is making sure the game comes out late in the year so they could make excuses for bring out another one instead of a fix.

The drivers are really ugly

my dog freaked out when ever he saw the drivers eyes and tries to attack my very expensive 50" TV.

Yes my dog is a pit bull

he doesn't like the characters in the game they look ugly to him too i think?

I made a big complaint about the game last year because of the ugly characters. Instead of fixing it they took out the girl and hid the driver with a helmet - so now all we could see is the driver's ugly eyes.

I am too lazy to upload F12011 video because it looked the same as F12010.

I never seen the Safety car i don't know what i have to do to see it in the game every though there were so many big crashes in the game by the AI.

Score = 1 out of 10 for putting money & profit before customers and fixing bugs.

Worse of all the environment and crowd are still ported from Xbox so it looked junk and never ever gotten away from cartoon like graphics.

No matter what they do to make it look better, for as long as they keep porting xbox graphics to make profit the game will fail just like this one.

jsoccer9 · Sep 29, 2011

has anyone noticed that as the dfficulty of the ai increases so do the in-race options you are allowed to use. For example im not a great driver nor am i a good driver but i bought the game because i am an F1 fan. This is my first codemasters game and only my second racing game. So natrually i use a racing line, traction control and auto gears. People may say i suck at racing and i shouldnt be playing the game but thats not the point. The point is on medium difficulty (what i play on) there is no in-race fuel type switching, or picking the set of tyres you want for a pit stop (in race). Also i can not adjust the amount of fuel i want in my car and there is no waer on my tyres during the race. I am only allowed to use drs and not kers and all of these just take away from the fact that i want to drive the best f1 simulation game out there. When i select medium difficulty i want that to effect the race pace or quali pace of the ai and not the in race settings i love to use.