Officially licensed from the Formula One Administration, the first F1 game to feature the new 2000 season has arrived. We take it for a test drive.
Seb Grinke

It's clear that the PlayStation incarnation of F1 2000 is not intended to be a comprehensive simulation. While there are options to tweak your car and all the official rules are included, there's nowhere near the amount of detail you would find in Gran Turismo 2, let alone the definitive PC Formula 1 simulation, Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix 2.

Instead, EA have quite sensibly opted to present PlayStation users with a good-looking, fun F1 game that sits somewhere between the Ridge Racer series and the TOCA games. All the features you would expect to find in this kind of product are present. There are Full Championship, Single Weekend, Quick Race and Time Trial modes; you can watch the highlights at the end of a race; computer opponents make driver errors and have car failures; and important race information is communicated to you through pit crew voice messages. All the real cars, drivers and tracks from the 2000 FIA Formula One World Championship season are present and correct, and the customisable grid option allows you to follow the season exactly.

If that's not enough for you, there's more. Each race is presented with a voice commentary by ITV's Jim Rosenthal; you can turn on weather effects and watch your car spin out in the rain; there's a very good two-player split-screen mode including two computer-controlled cars; there's a 22 player Time Trial mode; and you can adjust pit strategies and the level of realism within the well-presented menus, and with the damage option turned on you can find yourself trying to race around the track with a wheel missing.