Ferrari World Championship

No-one likes having their dreams shattered, especially when one of those dreams is driving a Ferrari F1 around some of the world's most celebrated circuits. Now imagine getting behind the wheel and finding out that handling the red beast was as exciting as driving a Daewoo to a gardening centre on a wet weekend.

Gameloft's Ferrari World Championship promised much and has certainly been party to what could be considered a fairly hefty amount of pre-release hype for a mobile game – this is the title meant to finally translate the feeling of burning up the track to your mobile phone. In truth, while when compared against other similar racers it fares adequately, it never really manages to live up to its top billing. It's a disappointment.

From the outset, Ferrari World Championship actually rolls up in impressive fashion. Calling on every ounce of Gameloft's experience, the game's presentation is exemplary; menu screens are simple, refined and self-explanatory, with tips adorning the loading screens (as is customary these days) just to make sure your eyes remain fixed to the game at all times.

The game's music is also fairly tolerable – a rare trait if ever there was one, consisting of a few almost 1980s style electro compositions. But it's once these first impressions are over that Gameloft's foray into the world of Formula 1-esque racing begins to fall apart. Races themselves are quite sterile encounters, with 22 Ferraris lining up on the grids of nine (but increasingly similar looking) tracks.

Massa and current Formula 1 World Champion Raikkonen are the only recognisable drivers here, but their names fade into obscurity when the lights go out and the engines roar. That's because the game's 21 rivals all behave like drones, scattering themselves across the track with little care for any notion of racing lines or defensive manoeuvres. Indeed, in the game's easiest mode – Amateur – most players will have passed the majority of the cars in the field by the first or second corner, spending the rest of the race a lone figure at the front of the pack.

In truth, it's hard to see how the developer could have made the game any easier – at least in terms of Ferrari World Championship's two default modes: Amateur and Professional. In the former, all players have to worry about is steering, with advisors from the pit lane obsessively giving counsel about 'keeping the right trajectory' – that means following the racing line, to you and me, itself marked clearly on the track.

Ramp the game up to Professional, and little changes. Players now have to take charge of braking as well, using the '5' button. However, corners where the brakes actually come into play are few and far between, with racing itself remaining almost identical – the only noticeable difference is that opponents are slightly harder to catch.

Any notion of competition with these very opponents feels tagged-on at best, with players having to finish in the top three to progress to the next circuit. In essence, this means that the other 19 cars on the track are simply there as decoration – the occasional flash of red gripping the screen as you lap those at the back of the pack during your conquest from the front. For a game that attempts to offer authenticity, making 19 of the 22 finishing positions on offer redundant does little for its credibility.

Graphically, the game also seems to be below par on the version we tested. While the car models are adequate representations of a Ferrari F1, everything else on screen seems to have been sacrificed; the track itself is pixellated and smudged, while a sense of speed is conveyed through random white lines that swarm towards you when the car picks up speed. In reality, however, they simply look like momentary scratches or glitches.

All in all, Ferrari World Championship is a game that fails to hit any real heights and, at its best, delivers what is only a passable attempt at bringing the sights and sounds of the premier form of motorsport to the mobile. Though not broken in any sense, Gameloft seems to have lucked out when it comes to courage, serving up a racer that makes driving a Ferrari a surprisingly mundane affair.

Ferrari World Championship

Anyone expecting the thrills and spills of driving a Ferrari F1 will be disappointed by this docile offering, despite some of the best presentation seen on mobile
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Keith Andrew
Keith Andrew
With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font. He's also Pocket Gamer's resident football gaming expert and, thanks to his work on PG.biz, monitors the market share of all mobile OSes on a daily basis.