So has EA's F1 Championship Edition 2001 got anything special to offer? From the outset it appears not so, however after a bit more playing the game starts to shine, and turns into, albeit not a break through, but a good, fun ,and the keyword here is 'fast', racer.

If there's one thing this game has over other PAL titles is its speed, racing down a straight stretch of one of the 17 different courses on offer, the effect of travelling 250+ km/h is well realised. It is however other factors that don't quite let the game down, but don't do anything to impress or improve over older titles, which is a bit disappointing seeing that it is the PS2's first F1 racing game.

First impressions are that the game is quite easy, very forgiving handling, loss of control doesn't happen often, even driving on the grass doesn't effect your controls to much unless you really try to turn overly sharp. It seems to be a case of being easy to race, hard to win.

All the same circuits are there of course, so it's good to go round the same tracks again, being that is has been a while for this reviewer. There's a Custom Championship feature that lets you put the courses you want in any order you want, so rather then waiting till your half way through a season to race your favorite or maybe worst track you can get it over and done with first. Having done a few races with the default settings, we were keen enough to put 'damage on' which is probably the only effect that makes this game an 'sim' F1 game. And boy did it ever, a slight knock or nudge into the back of another car and it's practically race over, either one or multiple things happen, and it's been modeled fairly accurately.

Hit a car dead on and your front wing will come off (as will their rear spoiler), nick a corner with one tire and it will start to flap around uncontrollably, and unless your near the pits your going to find yourself well behind by the time you get round the track and get it fixed.

Speaking of the pits, they have definitely put a fair amount of work into them, with about 15 polygonal 'crew mates' working on your car, the only down side is there all pretty much the same colour with very little markings or differences between them. They do however go about there own jobs, with some changing tires, others refueling, etc and all in all a good extra.

More about the graphics now, all the effects are there, however not super impressive or as could be expected for a PS2 title. There is good draw distance, there is the usual rain, crowd and smoke effects but nothing that really stands out. There are moments of slow down, but it's never enough, even with 2 players, to affect the gameplay and feel of speed.

Now the speed, as mentioned above it's definitely a fast moving game, however, there still seems to be the occurrences (for want of a better word) of the fact that it seems so very easy to overtake cars. It's as if the back to middle of the race vehicles are stuck in second gear, and the ease of overtaking them on a straight is rather unrealistic. To be fair the developers had to make it so it wasn't to hard to get at least a top 10 position, vying for top 3 however is going to take some serious driving skills.

The opponent AI is about standard, they do occasionally crash and even take each other out which is quite amusing to see. But it's only the top few cars that will cause you real problems.

There is a built in replay mode, which is as simple as pressing a button to activate, where it will skip to about 15seconds before hand and do a TV Camera angle replay. This is a nice feature but won't be of much use, besides watching your excellent over taking skills when pulling into first place.

Controls are either the two analogue sticks, or d-pad and buttons, or a combination. There isn't any analogue button support, and even the sticks (especially the accelerate and brake) didn't have much noticeable 'analogue' feel to them, it seems it's either accelerate or break.

Multiplayer support goes right up to 4 players with the use of a multi-tap obviously (we unfortunately didn't have time to test it though). Two players ran at a good framerate, and there is quite a bit of fun to be had with a companion because of the forgiving nature of the game, which makes for some close races.