The game features all ten teams and twenty drivers competing in the 2004 Formula One World Championship, as well as the eighteen circuits and Grands Prix that formed the championship, including the new Bahrain International Circuit and Shanghai International Circuit. It is the first Formula One game developed by SCE Studio Liverpool to contain a 'Career Mode', which allowed players to work their way through the Formula One teams over the course of a fixed number of seasons. Players would start out testing in a generic Formula One car, and if they did well enough in the test they would be offered a contract by a small team such as Minardi. Players would then work their way up the grid throughout their 'career' through a mixture of good tests and impressive race performances. This game also had Net Play available. This is the only F1 game in the series to be changed in terms of gameplay after the original release. In the original version, there was a bug which during the timing of AI pitstops all the field crawled at pit lane speed, then they sped up once a few of the AI cars had made their stop, and it was very common to be following a car which suddenly came to a halt and the player would end up hitting their rear and ending their race. Studio Liverpool responded to the fans' concerns about this issue and fixed this bug upon the release of the Platinum version. Formula One 04 was released in Europe and Japan. The game features all the drivers and tracks from the 2004 Formula One World Championship, but does not represent the replacement drivers that featured in the real 2004 Formula One World Championship, therefore Timo Glock, Marc Gené, Antônio Pizzonia, Jacques Villeneuve and Ricardo Zonta are not featured.
Development
Formula One 04 was announced on 21 April 2004 by Sony Computer Entertainment, and was the second game in the exclusive deal between Sony Computer Entertainment and Formula One Administration, following Formula One 2003. The game was officially launched in London ahead of the 2004 British Grand Prix with model Emma B acting as the face of the game.
Formula One 04 received "generally favorable reviews" according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Steve Boxer of The Guardian praised the graphics, the car handling, and the inclusion of all eighteen tracks but criticised the difficulty of the career mode and the lack of help in the car setup, stating "it is impossible to do anything other than tool around at the back of the field without tinkering with your car's setup - which is boring and hopelessly hit-or-miss without a virtual mechanic to assist you." In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 30 out of 40.
