I’ll put my hands up and say it, sometimes I’m glad idiots will call people like me a shill. It makes those times when some call me too critical all the sweeter. I get called many things from both sides, I’m like the BBC but have some integrity to prove something right or wrong. Enough about those Epic Games Store articles with Civilization VI being free though, let’s be highly critical of something that is quite crap compared to what it wants to be.

I make it no secret, if I can’t have Burnout 3: Takedown remastered without microtransactions, I will drive at 200 mph on a street circuit in F1 2019. I wouldn’t say I care about Formula 1 as a sport, a thing to watch, or any of the usual malarkey, I just like driving in games. I especially like it when it is done right, either as a tool in an open-world to get around or when it is a simulator that allows you to ease into it. Burnout 3 was never those, it just made speed feel stupid, made crashing funny, and had a soundtrack that would influence my music tastes for a lifetime.

That is why after 150 hours in Formula 1 2019, many hours driving in GTA V, and hours crashing in Burnout 3, I feel I might just know when a driving game is good. Formula Car Racing Simulator is not good, in fact, I’d go as far as to say it is genuinely one of the worst examples of Steam giving anyone a chance at developing a game. It is every slap-dash Unity development con-job rolled into one awful bundle priced at a couple of bucks, all in the name of boring you to death.

Formula Car Racing Simulator at its heart doesn’t understand basic game design. It lacks plenty of things it needs from the start, including options to turn down the awful royalty-free music and gun sound effects used during transitions. In-game options include telling you where to stick your request for a proper options menu. You are given a picture of controls that you can remap outside of the game, in the usual Unity startup menu. Does the picture help? No, as it tells you to use space to fire your “NOS,” which doesn’t work. I’d see it being blamed on the keyboard, but it was new just last week.

In the actual game it gets a little worse. Cars sound like a 40-year veteran smoking a pack a day, trapped inside a diesel engine. Sure, there are complaints all over the shop about how F1 cars sound in the Turbo-hybrid era, or how Formula E sounds like a can of angry wasps. However, chugging off the line like a steam train is made even worse by the awful sound of a V-“every 60-year-old engine that coughs up blood as it sputters around the track” engine. The G-forces aren’t what pull you back in your virtual seat, it is trying not to have lungs that somehow survived the great war of attrition to spread whatever they have.

Handling is just as bad, as part of it doesn’t require input. I have done as Shrek once said and defied gravity, turning corners with nothing but acceleration and not turning the wheel but you still feel lateral forces. In some corners of the F1 calendar, that is fine as long as you place the car properly. Bumps, downforce, and the camber all keep the car where it is meant to go while in safe hands, albeit at 160 mph. At my fastest on straights or on corners, I don’t feel I’m going more than 20 mph. If I wasn’t holding down W to accelerate, I don’t think I’d feel in control at all, nevermind dodging dodgy AI.

As much as I will complain about Codemasters’ take on AI, there is much worse out there, and I think I’ve been scraping the bottom of the barrel while playing Formula Car Racing Simulator. Cars won’t just cut you off like it is a highway in Los Angeles, they will actively try and kill a man in an effort of gaining no track position. What the AI attempts to do isn’t defending their position, it is slamming a door shut while a puppy has its tail halfway in the door still. If you want to overtake them you are best giving a wide berth around everyone. Why? Because you can’t change the FOV since the options are, as mentioned, crap.

So, who is the game for? Well, to answer that, we have to look at something other than a mode with single laps around the world’s most boring formula racing circuits. Most prominently “Police Chase,” which is what Need for Speed did for a while before getting bored and dying. It is quite dull in every respect, as you try to catch up in the world’s slowest Ariel Atom. If I didn’t think the game as a whole was quite crap, I’d say this is one of the worst modes. It is sad to say, because it tries desperately to call these slow chases and hilariously awful crashes “Takedowns.”

The “crash mode” is what would happen if you made Formula racing three million times slower while it mated with Dead Metal from Robot Wars. Adding blades to the side pods and telling me to crash into other slow-moving cars makes me think the later installments of the Fast & Furious series are being played at 1/10th speed. It is much like the other modes, dull and trying a little too hard at being something amazing without realizing that speed is part of it. You can give me all the explosions, car flips, and everything else, it doesn’t matter if it is not at a proper F1-like speed.

The last mode adds a gun to the front of the car, and you’re asked to kill everyone in front of you in a bid to hit a high school. This is possibly the best-implemented mode; however, between physics not knowing thy name and everything else piling up, it doesn’t amount to much. In concept, everything there should be amazing and mind-blowing for an arcade F1-style game, but it is just not fun.

Is Formula Car Racing Simulator a good game? No, and is it worth the $3 it is on steam? Not really. Does it compare to other Formula racing games? No, no matter how much the developer wants it to be with the social media hashtag being “#F1Racing,” it comes nowhere near Codemasters’ F1 series, Sega’s Super Monaco GP, or EA’s F1 2000. It might seem like a compliment when I bring in games from the 90s and 00s, but when I’m looking at ZX Spectrum games and having second thoughts, the game might be quite bad.

A PC Copy of Formula Car Racing Simulator was provided by Enaayah Software Development and Services Private Limited.

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Formula Car Racing Simulator

$2.99

1

Score

1.0/10

Pros

• Shooting Mode is semi-interesting.

Cons

• Complete lack of options.
• Driving feels sluggish, and quite unlike a open wheel Formula car
• You can hear the gun reloading on transitions.
• The engines sound ill.