F1 Race Stars Preview

Have you ever wanted to drive round a track loosely based on real F1 race tracks, with a micro version of Lewis Hamilton in a kart-like F1 race car? Well, you're in luck because that's exactly what you can do in F1 Race Stars!

In the demo you are allowed to play on the Germany track with about a half-dozen selection of drivers, so instinctively I jumped straight for Jenson Button (mainly because he's really the only name I recognised).

Starting off the race, there was a very Mario Kart-esq feeling to the game and this pretty much stayed in my mind throughout. You've got power-ups, speed boosts and KERS corners (speed boosts on a corner that allow you to build up more of a boost). The power-ups are pretty generic; you've got a Red "Orb" (essentially a red shell from Mario Kart) which chases a player in front, Balloons (Bananas), Trap Bubbles (Fake Boxes), Boosts (Mushrooms) and so on. The exception to this is the is the Safety Car which, as many of you will know from F1, means that everybody has to slow down.

When your car is hit by power-ups it will take damage and slowly your car will become less responsive and the wheels will start to wobble and what not. To fix this, you have to pull into one of the many Pits dotted around the map. I really liked this feature and think that it is lacking in some other games.

Whenever a driver rides over a power-up or uses a power-up, they will say a catch phrase. After about 5 minutes this started to get on my nerves as I began to notice the catch phrases repeat over and over again. Hopefully, in the full game, they may give a bit of variation to each players catch phrase but I'm not holding my breathe!

The actual look and feel of the game is great, the cars control really well and the graphics make my eyes happy from throwing power-ups at other players to the weather effects. The drivers are very well made and look exactly like a caricature of their namesakes.

Overall, this game looks essentially like a near-carbon copy of Mario Kart with a few extra bits added to make it feel more like F1 but does this make it any less fun? Like hell it does! I spent a good 2 hours just going round the same track, testing out different drivings and ramming others off the road with power-ups! I cannot wait to get my hands on a full copy of the game and try my hand online!