Budget games are often difficult to review objectively; they come with the cut-price stigma that ‘it must rubbish because it’s cheap’, and have do at least some of the things that the big money genre leaders and licensed games do just in order to survive the development process… but here readers, is a classic example of ‘you get what you pay for’…

Okay, details out of the way first: RRP £14.99 (although you can buy it much cheaper), 1 or 2 players, 3 difficulty settings, 10 made up tracks, 10 made up teams (with drivers with names like; Steve Van Excel, Tob Stelter, Olof Woolfbrant and our favourite, Fabien Pornin). You can do a quick race or a championship; Championship races have a qualifying lap if you want it, otherwise you start at the back of the grid. You can have an auto or manual gearbox and alter the gear ratios (low, medium, and ummm.. high), and there are three views (toggled with the circle button) two chase cams and a pretty good in-car view – for some strange reason the rear view can also be selected here as well, or with triangle, or L2… THREE ways of selecting the rear view? EH...? But that’s not the strangest thing about Formula Challenge, oh no…

Let me tell you about he tracks, yes, the tracks. The tracks in Formula Challenge all look the same. The game is Renderware based, and Renderware has been the building tool for some excellent games over the last few years; GTA 3, Tony Hawks, Pro Evo Soccer, Mashed and of course Burnout 2 to name but a few. So why exactly does FC (can’t be bothered to type ‘Formula Challenge’ anymore) look like an early 90s arcade game? (you know, one of the ones that sits in the corner and smells of wee). Bland is too vibrant a word to describe FC’s tracks, they all merge into one another with their samey, detail-free scenery, flat, repetitious wallpaper backdrops and imagination-lacking design. As far as I could tell you don’t even get a contour (and I mean not so much as a mole hill) until the “USA” track that’s the second from last in the “Championship” – someone suddenly said “what about the hills?!” – So they bunged a couple in...

Leaping aboard your Formula 1ish racing car (the cars are quite well modelled, and are without doubt the best bit about the game), you’ll immediately be aurally assaulted by its engine noise - and not in a nice way. Sounding something like a mixture of an electric planer, a radio controlled aeroplane and the sirens that American Cop cars had in the 50s - it’s truly remarkable. Not an easy sound for the PS2 to produce I’m sure, so not wanting to overload its sound chip I turned the volume down – and the “music” is another reason to play this game quietly too. Sat there on the grid waiting for the lights to go out, or green or something (it’s hard to tell, because if you’re on the back of the grid they’re about 5 miles away), I naturally moved the steering left and right (us racers always do that, right?), and was amazed to see how non-analogue it looked; even with the most subtle of movements the wheels twitch and jerk like the driver is having a fit. Anyhoo – I zoom off from the start (the engine noise gets even worse) and pass about six cars as we enter the first corner. On the move the steering is just as twitchy, and it soon becomes apparent that despite Sony spending a fortune developing the Dual Shock controller and its analogue sticks, you may as well use the D-pad for this game, and the throttle gives the same lack of control. But heck, it doesn’t really matter because most of the corners can be taken by just easing off the gas anyway, you twitch around the corner regardless of the speed because there are no handling or physics to speak of, the cars grip totally, and some just corner better/go faster than others. Only going on the grass and then steering will hamper your progress (this results in a bizarre “auto spin”, which feels like a giant reached out and flicked you car through 180°). Entering corners is always an adventure because you really have no idea of what’s going to happen; sometimes the frame rate will judder, making cornering even more tricky, and sometimes it will stay constant – you never really know, it’s all part of the thrilling FC experience.

Or thinking about it, actually, that’s not the only thing that will hamper your progress, and saying that the game lacks physics isn’t true either - they're just a bit 'other-worldly'; if you ride the curbs you will enter a strange ‘moon gravity phase’ in which anything can happen – we’ve floated into the air, landed on two wheels and driven along for a while like a stuntman, been spun into a full backflip 360°, and even stopped dead (like the curb is a concrete wall) – you really don’t want to curb-hop in this game. The other thing that might stop you from winning is of course the opposition; they’re a competitive lot (often ramming each other and you too) all a bit mad (presumably they bought the game too) and even drive the wrong way round the tracks sometimes…

Crashes, of course, wouldn’t be so bad if they resulted in some spectacular damage (they don’t, sadly the cars are indestructible) or if there was a nice replay mode to relive some of the bizarre experiences that playing Formula Challenge will give you, but like honest politicians, there’s no such thing. And don't be expecting any of those fancy pit stops or dynamic weather either, who the heck do you think you are expecting luxuries like that anyway - Fabien Pornin?

Keeping with the trend, you get sod-all for winning a championship, no congratulations screen (just a picture of your car sat there, slowly revolving, waiting to be put out of its misery), there are no unlocks, no secret cars, no extra tracks, and thus no incentive to keep playing (unless you want to see what weird stuff happens next time you clip a curb). The two player mode suffers from even worse frame rate problems than the solo game, and even if you wanted to play it (you wouldn’t), I can’t imagine who you’d get to play it with you. A quick click around the net found us racers as good as GT3, Midnight Club 2, Burnout 2, Colin McRae 04 and Rumble Racing all now selling for under fifteen quid…

So is Formula Challenge the compelling, heart-stopping, authentic homage to the pinnacle of motor sport that the box says it is? – No don’t be daft, haven’t you been reading? For want of a better word it’s awful, and you’d have to be a racing game completist or mentally ‘challenged’ to buy it.