• Published:September 1st, 2009
• Comments:No Comments
• Section:Games, Racing, Reviews

While mere introductions may be satisfactory to Mr. Ramey down there, I’ll get the real content rolling with a little game review.  I suppose I’ll start off our content with a fizzle rather than a bang, for my first review is not exactly an amazing blockbuster.

I’m pretty much a racing nut, both as a spectator and a gamer.  I’ve sunk my fair share of hours into rFactor while seated at a desk with a steering wheel, only to be the constant subject of mockery by my roommates, friends, and other people simply passing by.  Naturally, I’ve been long in search of great racing games for the iPhone ever since I got one.  For a while, the scene was dominated by arcade-y racing games like Namco’s Pole Position: Remix or Gameloft’s various offerings, like Asphalt4 or Ferrari GT: Evolution.  While these were all fine and dandy, they weren’t really what I was looking for.

Enter Firemint’s Real Racing.  It was a long time in the waiting, but what finally came out was amazing. The controls, the artwork, the overall package, it was all incredible, and even at the premium price point, it was more than worth it in this racing fan’s eyes.  Real Racing scratched 99% of my iPhone racing itch.  The only thing that was left?  Well, my favorite type of racing to watch is Formula 1, and Real Racing lacked any sort of open-wheel option.  I needed to drive an open-wheeled car, preferably a F1 car.

My prayers were answered, sorta, as I found out while randomly poking through the App Store.  I’m not exactly sure what to call it, since on my Springboard it’s listed as Brawn GP, but in the App Store it’s listed as GP Racing.  Let’s just go with Brawn GP Racing:

On first glance, this is pretty much exactly what I was looking for.  By its description, it kind of sounded like Real Racing, but with Brawn GP Formula 1 cars (Brawn GP is a real team that currently leads the Formula 1 championship, for anyone interested).  Of course I bought it and started playing it right away.

When you first start playing, graphically speaking, it’s pretty good.  While not quite as polished as Real Racing, the full-3D graphics are nice, and the Brawn GP car is modeled accurately to the car’s looks in real life. The tracks also feature nice details, like landmarks based on the track’s location, grandstands, and other details that make them look like real Formula 1 circuits.  What really lured me in was the cockpit mode, which is the way I play all my racing games on PC.  Brawn GP Racing does a good job of making it look like you really are behind the wheel of the car.  If that’s not your thing, there’s always an option to view the car chasing from behind, which does afford you a pretty view of the car model.  The visuals here are certainly not lacking.  As far as sounds are concerned, I can’t tell you much about the included default music, because I it turned off the first time I booted up the game, and never turned back on.  I’m pretty sure it was a simple electronic/techno beat that you’ll often find in these types of games.  The only other sound in the game is that of the engine.  The rev-up and rev-down sounds are good, as are the gear changes–again, fairly realistic.  One problem is that the sound samples are pretty short in length.  While you don’t notice this as you’re going up or down the gears, on a straight, where you’re going flat out, you can quite easily catch the audio sample looping, a little annoying but nothing major.  Additionally, sometimes random sounds would just plain drop out, like the car wouldn’t make any down shifting sounds or it would only make sound when driving off-road but not actually on the track, and whenever this happens, a full reboot of the app is required.

While the graphics are pretty good and the sounds okay, the game starts to fall apart in other areas.  The most important thing Real Racing got right was the controls. Real Racing really handles superbly, using the accelerometer to turn the whole iPhone into a steering wheel, tap anywhere on the left hand side to brake, and tap anywhere on the right to accelerate (there are other inputs available, but that’s what I roll with).  While Brawn GP Racing offers a similar setup, the results are not anywhere near as good.  Here, again, you use the accelerometer to turn the car, but even with the sensitivity set to 100%, turning the car feels something more like steering a block of cheese than a Formula 1 car.  The wheels respond very slowly, it’s almost an art of predicting where you want the car to turn and doing it in advance, rather than just, y’know, when you want the damn car to turn.  The brakes and throttle are controlled via little pedals in the corner, and they far too often get “stuck” down, even when you take your fingers off the screen, you’ll watch your car zoom helplessly into gravel traps.  And yes, I’m quite sure I have auto-accelerate turned off.  And yet, while the wheel-turning itself may be super slow and unresponsive, the controls do let you turn the wheels completely perpendicular to the car, meaning you can make the car look pretty funny with wheels in impossible positions as you do circles in the grass.

The controls are possibly the most important part, and they’re pretty much terrible.  That’s the deal breaker right there, but if you’re looking for other lackluster elements to Brawn GP Racing, you won’t be disappointed in your disappointments.  There are only three available tracks, “London”, “Las Vegas”, and “Europe”, none of which are based on real-life circuits, and some of them are downright terrible, as you can likely see in the mini-maps on the screenshots.  A fourth track will supposedly be added later via update.  The only game mode is time trial, by yourself, one lap.  No other options.    There is an online leaderboard, as well as an option to Tweet and/or Facebook your lap times.  The game also includes Brawn GP-related media, which boils down to a fancy Brawn GP RSS feed reader and a photo gallery consisting of 12 random photos, for those times you really need to show off the sexiness of Jensen Button or Old Man Rubens.  Another annoying problem is the menu interface itself.  The developers must have somehow messed up the hitboxes on the buttons, as a lot of the time when I go to hit a button, I find that the game actually registers a press on the button below where I actually pressed.  Annoying at worst, but just another problem with this game that makes it feel like it was really half-assed.

At the end of the day, Brawn GP Racing isn’t the worst thing ever.  I admit I still play it a decent bit if I feel like just having a tiny bit of Formula 1 wheel time–that’s the kind of hardcore F1 guy I am.  It looks fine, and it sound fine, so if you just want an audio and visual F1 fix, it works in that regard.  But otherwise, it’s bogged down by other problems, especially the controls which can make the game really frustrating.  But even if the controls did work fine, there wouldn’t be much depth here anyway.  I bought the game when it was on sale for $1.99, and at that price I don’t really feel like I got ripped off, but again, I was really jonesing for some Formula 1 racing on my iPhone.  For $3.99, its current and non-sale price, I might have felt a little more gypped.  The worst part is, again, how half-hearted the entire effort is.  It seems the developer had some good ideas, and put some good initiative into making everything look good, but then they just kind of gave up and released it as-is.  Pick it up if you want to support Brawn GP, or if you really need to feel like you’re driving a Formula 1 car on your iPhone–sorta.

Vitals:
Name: Brawn GP Racing
Linkage: iTunes :: AppShopper :: Official Site
Price: $3.99
Developer: Brawn GP/Fish Labs
Genre: Games / Racing
Bottom Line: Good graphics and decent sound almost make Brawn GP Racing a decent iPhone racing title–but terrible controls, lackluster tracks, and zero variety in game modes, along with other random glitchiness relegates this game into a category that only the most hardcore Formula 1 enthusiasts will likely want to consider.