BMW Sauber F1 Team Racing 09

For those of you who don’t follow Formula One, BMW Sauber is a team with a long history that's currently undergoing a period of upheaval.

BMW - which previously owned a percentage of the team - has sold and is pulling out of the sport as a result of the global economic downturn. What’s left of the racing marque has been purchased by a group of Middle Eastern businessmen, even though there’s no guarantee that it will be allowed to take part in next year’s competition.

What’s more, Robert Kubica - arguably the team’s best driver - has just announced that he’s moving to championship rivals Renault for the 2010 season.

So, the perfect point to release a racing title based on BMW Sauber F1 Team, then?

While the timing could have been better, those of you who were disappointed by Fishlabs’s Brawn GP will no doubt welcome another F1 game with open arms and Artificial Life’s effort is certainly quick off the starting line.

Not only is the game backed by some impressive features, including an eight-race Championship mode complete with full practice and qualifying options, but it also allows you to tinker with your car. Tuning extends to elements such as wing height, ride height and the type of tyre you wish to use.

Visually, things are a little less assured. Car models are decent enough and the trackside scenery contains a reasonable amount of detail, but the experience is marred by unfortunate graphical issues such as disappearing walls and other glitches.

The sound is also something of a mixed bag. Sampled engine noises are used throughout and do an excellent job of conveying the raw power of driving a Formula One car at high speed, though the audio clips are clumsily integrated.

For example, if you go flat out down a straight and then slam on your brakes instead of neatly shifting from one sound to another, the acceleration clip is abruptly cut and the braking sound is played immediately.

Presentation issues aside, BMW Sauber F1 Team Racing 09 does at least play convincingly. Steering is handled by tilting your handset, with acceleration and braking buttons found in the lower right and left corners of the screen respectively.

In keeping with the current F1 season’s technical innovations, the game also boasts a KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) button. Energy generated by breaking is stored up to give you a Mario Kart-style speed boost which can be used whenever your KERS gauge has charge.

For those who savour a challenge, BMW Sauber F1 Team Racing 09 is going to be particularly welcome. It’s virtually impossible to get anywhere near the front of the grid on your first few attempts: you need to learn each track inside out and identify the optimum braking zones before you can even hope to start contesting for that all-important podium finish.

Such a punishing degree of difficulty deters casual play. The fact that the controls are a little unpredictable doesn’t help - pressing brake often results in your car instantly coming to a complete standstill rather than the gradual stop that you would expect.

This makes guiding your carbon-fibre steed around the more treacherous segments of each circuit harder than it should be.

A lot of fuss has been made about the game’s additional modes: a pit land task, race director and a "donut" challenge. What isn’t made clear s that these have to be purchased separately from the game. Each costs another 59p/99c on top of the initial £1.19/$1.99 you’ve already laid out, which is a bit cheeky if you ask us.

To be fair, none of the modes really enriches the experience all that much: the race director feature is interesting, but it ultimately boils down to you telling each driver to speed up or slow down, and before long you’re hankering to get back on the track yourself.