F1 2012

F1 2012 is Codemasters' third annual crack at the official Formula One license, covering the full 2012 season rosters and circuits. All 12 teams and 24 drivers are represented, and the 20-circuit calendar includes the then-brand-new Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. The core of the game sits somewhere between accessible sim and arcade racer: crank the difficulty and assists down and you are managing tyre compounds, KERS deployment, DRS activation windows, and brake balance on the fly. Leave the assists on and it plays more like a polished action racer with serious Formula One atmosphere. That slider range is one of the better things about it. Three new modes arrive alongside the returning Career and Quick Race options. Young Driver Test is a proper tutorial set at Yas Marina that walks newcomers through the basics, from steering in a straight line all the way to understanding how DRS and KERS work in a race situation. It is mandatory before Career, which annoys veterans but pays off for anyone new to the series. Champions Mode is the star addition: six world champions from the 2012 grid (Vettel, Alonso, Hamilton, Button, Raikkonen, and Schumacher) are treated as end-of-level bosses, each with a unique scenario and conditions designed to suit their driving style. Season Challenge offers a bitesize ten-race career where you can swap constructor mid-season by beating rival drivers, a direct response to feedback that most players only sat down for an hour at a time. One-Shot Qualifying, available across most modes, trims the qualifying format to a single all-or-nothing lap. The dynamic, localised weather system deserves a shout. Rain can fall on one sector while another stays bone dry, forcing mid-race tyre strategy calls on full wets versus intermediates versus slicks. That alone makes a wet race feel genuinely tense rather than a simple visual filter swap. The upgraded audio lets you hear surrounding cars more accurately, and the handling model received small but meaningful tweaks that make it the best-feeling entry in the early Codemasters F1 run. Gamepad play is solid. Wheel support, however, has a documented history of issues with oversteer on straights and unresponsive turn-in, and Codemasters did not fully resolve the complaints from the community. The honest downside is that F1 2012 also removed things. Grand Prix mode is gone entirely, practice was trimmed to a single one-hour session, and career mode locks race length to a minimum of 25 percent distance, which pushes out casual players who want a five-lap blast as their favourite driver. The online co-op championship is a genuine highlight on paper, but the lack of split-screen for that mode is a frustration, and the official online servers were shut down in March 2024, so offline and local play is all you are getting now. At a platform level the game scored around 81 on Metacritic and was broadly praised for refining rather than revolutionising, which is about the fairest summary available. For F1 fans who missed this era of the series, it holds real charm: Schumacher's final season, the seven-winner start to 2012, COTA's debut. For a couch night with mates, Quick Race with assists on is perfectly viable fun with a gamepad. Just do not expect split-screen co-op or live online racing. If you already own a later entry in the Codemasters F1 line, there is not enough here to pull you back unless the 2012 season specifically is the draw.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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