F1 2009

There's a Fair Race Skill Balancing system - essentially the team's take on rubber band racing. "We like the idea of father and son playing together as team mates trying to win the championship together." Together, since on Wii you can race split-screen not just head-to-head, but in full-season co-op. Meanwhile, the PSP version will support four players via ad hoc.

And despite the conscious avoidance of TV-style presentation, Codemasters wants to capture "the full drama of the race weekend". Which means in practice that you can take part in all the testing, practice sessions and main event of a full racing weekend from Thursday to Sunday. Can't be bothered? Then skip straight to the Sunday GP, but if you dodge qualifying, you can't get into the top six on the grid.

One of the strangest additions to this season's F1, to the wizened gamer at least, is KERS - Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems. Strange largely because, in a fabulous case of life imitating art, it's basically the videogame nitro boost made real. That's going into F1 2009, although Codemasters is still figuring out how to reflect the disparity between teams existing from the season opener in Melbourne.

And if the F1 chiefs had only consulted Eurogamer sooner, we could have told them that night racing - introduced in Singapore - looks awesome on a telly.

"All the tracks, all the cars, all the stars," is the team's mantra. And you can race as any one of this year's crop of drivers, or create your own racer (limited to name, nationality and a choice of helmet). Outside the main F1 season, Challenge mode serves up 170 different tasks (10 per track), from "boss encounters" and fast laps, to scenarios and elimination races.

On Wii, all the standard control options are supported, including the Wii Wheel, Classic Controller, nunchuk, d-pad and Logitech steering wheel.

If all this detail is moistening your racing leathers, you're probably wondering how it plays. Well, we got a brief go on Monza which, while far from conclusive, was enough to form early impressions. First, it's fast. Very fast. Good, since this isn't Formula Sinclair C5.

With that in mind, on-screen indicators aren't massively helpful in their current guise, with corner arrows appearing too late to be of use, and the track segment visible in the map could do with zooming out so you can see further ahead. But plenty of time to change those.

Switching between driving aids makes a huge difference. With everything on, the main thing you need to worry about is braking for tight turns; with everything off we pretty much spun out at every turn, pirouetting aimlessly with the grace of a You've Been Framed clip. That's because we were rubbish, obviously, but does suggest encouragingly that's there's a steep learning curve for the hardcore to master.

The biggest letdown's the visuals. For all its speed, this is not a pretty game, resembling an average PS2 title at best. Switching to the in-cockpit view makes matters worse, with a stark lack of detail present on the dashboard and your driver's arms. And the game does struggle to keep up with the breakneck pace at times, the frame-rate stuttering here and there with or without other cars on the track. We didn't get to see that game running on PSP, but would assume that the smaller screen is a more flattering stage.

The team has to be commended for cramming in so much detail. We're not in a position to judge whether this translates into a deep driving model, but for now we're willing to give Sumo the benefit of the doubt based on past performance.

Assuming hours spent elbow-deep up an exhaust pipe actually makes a difference, it's a shame there are no online leaderboards included, which would have been the ideal way to parade your technical genius and krazy racing skillz.