Rally, Touring cars, super bikes, trucks….. There's a racing game for practically every racing discipline on the 360 and unfortunately a lot of them suck. Hats off to codemasters then for producing some really good F1 sims on the console. F1 2011 is the second in the series and is basically everything you would expect from an F1 sim. Licensed drivers and teams. A full championship mode featuring full race weekends. your basic exhibitions and online modes. Time trial racing. A nice selection of licensed F1 tracks from this years championship. The game looks great also. Driving around famous locations such as Monza or Spa are made better by the details in all the race tracks. Trees swaying the in background, the detailed buildings of street races like monaco, it's all here and gives you a more authentic experience. The game also handles well and has enough options in terms of assists to help you progress as a driver. I do have to say I found this version quite easy in comparrison to some of the other codemasters F1 games, and while the computer AI can be changed, it was a little bit difficult to find that sweet spot. Aside from this nitpicking, its a really great F1 racer and you can have a lot of fun with this one. The thing is, there are 5 F1 games on the console, all of which are fairly cheap and while 2011 is great, it's not the best in the series in my opnion. Because of this, it's kind of difficult to recommend this one, as do you really need more than one F1 game?

Immediately off to a great start with this game, because the Steam overlay causes the game to crash for me, and the Steam overlay is the only way to configure my controller for the game. It also seems like the controller is simply not detected at all, because disabling Steam input entirely before even launching the game doesn't help either. Gotta thank ol' mate Razor 1911 for supplying me with a copy of the game that actually works on my system and detects my controller.

Unfortunately, the "working" copy of the game still doesn't really work properly, because I had endless technical difficulties. Everything from fluctuating low frame rates for no reason, to stuttering, to random freezing, to failing to load the save. After two hours of play, I still hadn't even started the first race of the season. Part of that is because I first tried the Force India car and hated it so I went to time trials to test out some others, but a lot of time could have been saved if the game simply functioned correctly. Ultimately, after trying everything I could find or think of, I concluded that there is no fixing this problem and I must simply quit and relaunch the game after each session to make progress. I also concluded that this is not a linux specific problem, but what is a linux specific problem is that wine sometimes decides my controller has suddenly disconnected, even though it hasn't, and the only way to reconnect it is to restart the game.

After some perseverance, I tested most of the bottom teams and also Red Bull, and Team Lotus was - despite being two seconds slower - way easier to drive than the Force India, so I almost stuck with them, but I ended up going with Williams because it's just a great car all around. It handles so well in this game compared to my experiences up to this point, even without touching the setup at all, which is nice because setups are even dumber in this game. Literally all you ever need to change for anything is the downforce, and Codemasters must have known that because the quick setup option in this game changes nothing but the downforce, unlike in 2010 where it changed most of the available options. I do like to change the front toe as well though because it makes the car feel more responsive even though it doesn't seem to actually affect my times.

Cars feel a little bit floaty in this game compared to 2010, but still fun and controllable so long as you choose anything other than Force India. Traction control got stupider though, because medium is no longer enough to save me from spinning constantly. What really shines here, though, is driving in the wet, because it actually feels slippery and noticeably slower, unlike 2010. Also unlike 2010 is how finished the game is. F1 2011 makes F1 2010 look like an early beta with how many features are included that the previous game lacked, including things as basic as starting lights on screen and a car info panel with actual info in it, and the desaturated yellow and brown filter is gone which instantly improves the entire game! That, combined with better graphics, better sound, a (mostly) better camera, a (mostly) less annoying pit crew, and a (mostly) better in-race interface make this game feel way better to play than 2010.

After getting used to the game for a few races, I have to say I prefer the driving experience in 2011 over 2010, even though I would still call 2010 technically better on the realism front. The problem with 2010 was how unforgiving it was, and since I was playing with a backmarker car, that gave me more trouble than it probably could have. There were a lot of tracks that I simply did not enjoy in that game, but here in 2011, I'm having a lot more fun on a lot more tracks, because the little bit of floaty looseness that the cars in this game have while still remaining fully controllable adds even more thrill to the driving than there already was, because it enables much harder driving much more often with less risk. Monaco was the point where it really clicked for me, because it went from a track I dreaded to a track that excited me. I even got to experience the other side of a blue flag for the first time here.

Unfortunately, the reason I got to see that is because the AI is extremely stupid in 2011, sometimes more so than 2010, because they have no aggression in their driving at all and don't know how to overtake anybody. I almost finished the entire season with points in every race were it not for my rear left tire popping on lap 15 of 16 at Monaco - I still really hate the random punctures - despite being in a Williams, a team that only managed a total of 5 points in real life that year. The only reason for this is dirty tactics, because even though I qualified around 18th for every race, I always got off the line quick, burned all the KERS, and divebombed by way past as many cars as possible in the first turn or two, and then I simply never got passed. The cars ahead would pull away and disappear real quick, but the cars behind would stay behind for pretty much the entire race, because none of them are capable of passing in any conditions other than a perfect setup on a long straightaway, or if I made a huge mistake and ran a corner ridiculously wide. 95% of the time, I'm not even trying to block them, the AI just thinks that the car ahead of them is three cars wide or something, because this also happens with AI trying to pass other AI. As a result, I could consistently underperform and overdeliver. The game figured that out too, because it started setting my objectives way too high for my car, but I could usually push for them anyway. Which was actually a lot of fun, so I'm glad it happened in a way, but there's something wrong there. I probably wouldn't have finished every race in the points anyway because in later races, I would enter the pits in the top 8 and leave in the bottom 20 because the pit crew is almost as bad as the last game, and I could never recover from there.

Stupid AI aside, if you ask me, this would be a decisively better game than 2010 if it actually worked. Shame that the cool 3D menus had to go though.

(from my web zone: https://kerosyn.link/i-played-every-codemasters-racing-game-to-prove-a-point/#f1-2011)

Okay hear me out on this one, its still not good, or decent, but I think it's more enjoyable than 2010.

Firstly the handling and physics have been overhauled completely and the cars are much easier to handle...maybe too easy. Def too easy, you can just throw these cars around without issue and it feels very arcadey. Though its not like last years game was realistic, just hard, bad racing games often think that hard=realistic.

Is the other extreme any better? Some would say no, I say thank god cuz I couldn't handle having my car spin around with maximum traction control over pretty much nothing.

Safety cars, red flags, slipstreaming (can't believe this wasn't in the last one) are all introduced to the series alongside the kers system (little boost for 6 secs in every lap you can choose to use whenever). Also first year with DRS, technically in 2010 there was the F-duct that certain teams used but the game didn't feature it.

Other big improvement over f1 2010 is that you have more options for starting teams, you got the 3 awful ones and now also Williams and Force India, good additions. Both midfield cars, well irl the Williams was a backmarker then but the Force India was def a strong lower midfield car. I don't think there's any difference between the 2, it wasn't until 2015 that the cars got team specific traits so it's tier based I think. So HRT, Lotus and Virgin would be tier shit. Williams, Torro Rosso, Sauber and Force India would be tier whatever. You get the point, Red Bull and Mclaren top tier.

I choose Force India, started on the 2nd easiest difficulty and dominated, increased the difficulty a bunch till the 2nd hardest where I was still fighting for podiums.

I played until I got bored, didn't take too long, still it look longer than with 2010 so that's a plus. So what makes this ultimately mid? It's got nothing.

Career mode is here sure though I don't think it's very replayable unlike with the newer games, seems like it'll be the same experience everytime. Heard every season your car goes to the next tier but its not worth playing a 20 hour career mode like 4 times so your shitty ass Virgin car can fight with Red Bull.

Oh right there's upgrades in this (and last one tbf) but they aren't that interested, every once in a while during practice you have an objective, usually...well...all of it is just you doing a couple of laps trying to get a specific time. Then boom upgrade, it's whatever. Little motivation to keep going for me.

Outside of career there's time trial, grand prix mode, multiplayer ofc and...agh...the settings?

Not much interesting, which sucks cuz the next one has a lot of interesting modes and features. Oh well...guess this one's just mid.

One of Codemaster's early F1 games and there are many improvements compared to previous titles.

The game itself isn't a masterpiece, there are few issues, it isn't a racing simulation nor there are not any possibilities to make it due to certain settings, like the damage model is too forgivable and there aren't many difficulty settings that can transform it into a F1 simulation, so all in all we agree that this is a racing arcade.
The game also doesn't have wheel settings for a 900 degrees steering wheel, so there will be some small issues at the beginning, until you find the right adjustment of your steering wheel to make the game more realistic, but if you don't know how, there are some great wheel setups on some forums, which many of them, I tried and it did solve the problem, I felt the game a little bit more realistic then before.
The game also suffers from many frame drops, especially in split-screen multiplayer, it hardly keeps the 30fps cap, which makes the game a pain to enjoy while playing in rain or when there are many opponents on the screen. It also has some sound bugs, which cannot be explained, but it happens that while playing, you suddenly hear some weird sound like if you were on a completely other side of the track, it doesn't happen occasionally and it doesn't last long, but it breaks the already broken immersion.

All in all, a great game, great career mode, not so great graphics or perfomance, a game which needs improvements, but it is fun from the start to the finish line.