Formula Challenge (2004) - Every PC F1 Game
0Formula Challenge by Aqua Pacific/Trend/Oxygen Interactive/Trend, 2004,
This PlayStation 2 title was ported to the PC in some regions. It's also been released under the name of Xtreme Speed Racing.
There's numerous glitches on the PC version, compared to the PS2 original, notably despite the graphic files being present in the game install folder, the sun lens flare is just rendered as white rectangles and the interesting coloured skies (watch a video of the PS2 version) are not appearing at all! There's possibly other effects like smoke that are also missing.
This game also seems to crash to desktop every time you exit or finish a race, so it's a pretty bad port. One of the buttons in the menu has the caption "NEXTDEFINE"! Anyway, let's review each clip above:
1. Race Start (Monza): 0:00 Obviously there's no real-life tracks or cars in the game. The game also has dreadful on/off digital steering from the keyboard. Strangely, steering wheels and XBox controllers work in the main menu, but not in-game, leading to this horrible jerky movement. If you watch videos of the PS2 original, it's hardly any better though!
2. Spray Effects (Silverstone): 0:23 Again this isn't Silverstone, but a made-up track. The track layouts follow the shape of some real life tracks (like Catalunya and Brno, but they aren't very interesting or memorable. The only time you see a fly-by is at the start of the race. There's also no rain!
3. Tunnel & View (Monaco): 0:40 No Monaco or any real life tracks, but this huge hotel-like building does appear on a few tracks.
4. Wet Track (Spa-Francorchamps): 0:55 Here's the same huge building on another track! Amusingly, this car colours almost foretold what Haas would use in real life!
5. Pitstop (Interlagos): 1:10 Despite there being well rendered pitlanes, they're all blocked off by tyres. But as you can't damage your car, there's no point for them!
6. Huge Crash (Montreal): 1:23 Even collisions are somewhere in-between boring and suspicious!
This is part of the Every PC F1 Game playlist, which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYDobL0b26uiiYP8KdN3AwQmsu7ilzpxL