Championship Racing 2012

Most of us can, if we desire, knock a football around the park, or indulge in a couple of light sets of tennis. However, only a tiny percentage of the population will ever find themselves behind the wheel of an F1 car.

There is a good reason for this: Formula 1 is too fast. The reactions required to successfully pilot those delicately engineered and brutally powerful machines border on the superhuman.

It's one of the reasons why game designers have had such difficulty creating a realistic portrayal of the supercharged sport without making the experience unplayable for anyone with sub-Jedi reflexes.

Championship Racing 2012 is a perfect example of this problem. It's a game that sacrifices control for a sense of speed - a decision that will quickly leave you disenchanted.

Visually speaking, Championship Racing 2012 is more OutRun than Forza, although that's not inherently a bad thing.

In fact, the sharp city backdrops, polygon tunnels, and colourful sprites look rather impressive whizzing past on your mobile screen.

All 20 tracks from this year's F1 season have been recreated, and are subject to fluctuating weather conditions. Rain will force you into the pits to change your tyres, whereupon you complete the process by playing a quick, rhythmic mini-game.

The presentation on the whole is very strong, from the tracks themselves right down to the achievement notifications that pop-up when you've passed 100 cars, or completed your first championship.

However, no amount of aesthetic gloss can disguise the problem at the heart of Championship Racing 2012: the controls are a bit of a mess.

To keep you from skidding off every track at the first corner there's an inordinate amount of steer assist at work - so much so that you barely feel like you're navigating the chicanes and hairpins at all.

For the most part, your job is to ignore the geography of the track and focus on overtaking - a task that's made incredibly difficult by the ludicrously erratic AI. All too often you're forced to look on in bemusement as rogue competitors glue themselves to the nose of your car.