BY SEÁN KENNEDY
2022 is an extremely important year both on track and in-game for Formula 1! On track, the new ground-effect regulations for the new generation of cars are crucial to improving racing and the overall quality of “the show”; while in-game, this is the first Codemasters F1 game completely overseen by their new overlords EA, following their $1.2billion buyout in early 2021.
F1 22 is the official video game of both Formula 1 and Formula 2 and is available on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Our test was done on an Xbox Series S since thankfully there are no generation-specific features and everything available on new consoles is also available on the last generation too.
As with every annual update to the Codemasters F1 series, F1 22 features updated physics models, this time specific to the new ground-effect cars. It also features updated layouts for previously in-game tracks like Barcelona and Abu Dhabi, as well as new tracks like Miami. This is also the first F1 game to feature support for Virtual Reality headsets which I cannot wait to have a go of some day!
Now that we’ve got all the preamble out of the way lets get into the crux of the review: is F1 22 actually any good?!
SOLO
Most “solo” features are the same as before – create your own Grand Prix weekend, or tackle Time Attacks against ghosts of your own best laps and those of other global players.
A fun new feature for this year is “Pirelli Hot Laps”, which offers custom laps in the Supercars you can unlock for “F1 Life” – a nice touch, which includes F1’s Mercedes & Aston Martin Safety Cars. Challenges include average speed runs, drifting, checkpoint challenge, autocross, time attack, and rival duel – all taking place in various cars around various in-game tracks. A fun addition but nothing that really adds much to the F1 experience – and all the supercars feel identical
CAREER MODE
New race options for F1 22 will give you more control over the in-game race day, including options for immersive, broadcast-style Formation Laps, Safety Car periods, and Pit Stops. These are all excellent quality-of-life improvements and help add to the authenticity of the experience.
Career Mode now allows for a Two Player Career allowing you to take on the career mode with a friend either competitively or cooperatively so if you have friends playing the game, this can be a fun way to spice up your gameplay and add a bit of friendly CarLando style competition to the game
BUT it’s the single player career we’re all mainly interested in and thankfully F1 22 carries over last year’s excellent options of a “Driver” career or a “My Team” Career.
Driver is the classic career type where you play as the driver, choose to start your career in F2 or jump straight into F1, sign a contract with one of the existing 10 teams and fight your way to the top
My Team, first introduced last year in F1 2021, allows you to create an 11th team on the grid, and actually play as the team’s owner AND driver. You design the team’s colours and logos, and manage various aspects including improving the facilities to improve the car and fight to the top. You can sign any of the other current drivers, some F2 drivers, and some “legends” drivers like Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna and Jenson Button.
In both versions you’ll be able to create your driver Avatar and once again the “audio name” is sorely lacking! My surname is Kennedy, it’s pretty damn common, and yet it’s not in this game! Odd since this is a feature EA have done WORLD’S better in FIFA for years, seems very very odd they wouldn’t have ported that over already!
In My Team, you create your team, give it a name, pick a Title Sponsor, Choose your Engine Supplier and teammate. Ferrari are the best engine in this year’s game, unsurprisingly, although the choice of 2nd drivers is noticeably shorter than last year; with only a few F2 drivers, and a few legends options to choose from, and no female driver choices. Which is a huge own goal from EA as they could have and should have included drivers like Jamie Chadwick, Jessica Hawkins or Sofia Floersch.
You’ll start your My Team career, same as last year with an interview with Will Buxton and an unveiling of your car, before starting the career!
Once you’re in the game, everything is pretty much identical to last year, and this applies to both modes! You still have 3 practice programmes per weekend which will earn you resource points and development boosts, and you can set the car up. Car setup is slightly updated with a bit more freedom with things like front & rear wing levels – and the “default” setup for each track is now a bit more accurate to how you’d actually want the car setup! This is great for more casual players as the car will almost always be setup properly for each track by default.
F1 LIFE
Within F1 LIFE is the customisation of your character, including their look, the race clothes they wear, custom car liveries, badges, colours, etc – which originally was all just under “customisation” in 2021. You can also edit “your place”.
Character avatars are still WOEFULLY under customisable. And i get it, you’re wearing a helmet most of the time – but if EA are going through the effort of adding all of this extra “out of car” stuff, why haven’t they incorporated FIFA’s or MADDEN’s player customisation which has been extremely in-depth for well over a decade now?! You can also pick your Driver Number here.
Beyond customisation of your character, though, this new feature has been criticised by some as very much all flash and no substance. Does the ability to unlock a “super car” to put in a fake house really make an F1 game much better?
Sadly, this is exactly how I feel about this feature and unfortunately this feels like the first in what could be an all too drastic EA-isation of the beloved Codemasters games!
If nothing else, this actually feels like an extraordinarily backwards view of what F1 is. Long gone are the days of drivers being hard-partying playboys who cared little for racing and only wanted to show off their immense wealth with yachts and super cars.
TIME ATTACK
Some fun new additions to the game are the ability to actually do hot laps and mini-challenges in the Safety Cars, and the “Super Cars” you can unlock for your “My Place” hub. The safety car idea is pretty cool but beyond that this is such a useless feature and adds absolutely nothing to a Formula 1 game.
Particularly for those of us who are fans of games like Forza or Gran Turismo which include far more accurate and realistic sims of these McLarens and Astons. It definitely feels like a very late tack-on to the game and I’d much prefer to see classic F1 cars or tracks back! I’d much prefer to tackle Istanbul Park in the 2009 Brawn BGP001, or Donnington Park in a McLaren MP4-4.
NEW CARS
Now this of course is the reason we’re all here for this game – the new cars! How have EA & Codemasters managed to adapt the new ground-effect era of cars to F1 22? Well, thankfully, you’ll be delighted to hear, really well!
First, to address the elephant in the room, NO, the cars do NOT experience Porpoising within the F1 22 game. For hard core fans, this might take away a bit of authenticity towards the simulation of the racing, but actually, it makes total sense why they have not made it a feature of the game.
Firstly, by Silverstone, every car seems to have gotten a handle on its Porpoising – granted it’s not a very top-speed-y track like Baku but with the exception of Mercedes, most teams have dialled it out of their cars fully several races ago.
Secondly, while yes there are a lot of hard core sim racers who will buy this game, the VAST majority of customers will be causal players and for them, having the default setup on the car lead to bouncing and 0 pace would entirely ruin the experience for them! That said, the ground effect has been properly incorporated in other ways! The cars now feel FAR heavier and clumsier around low speed corners due to the lack of downforce from the wings this year, while on the flip side they feel noticeably faster and more stable at high speed – Jeddah for example is considerably more fun in this game than it was in F1 2021 last year. An option to add porpoising as part of “expert” mode would probably have been a good idea though, for those who really want to see how blurry Lewis Hamilton’s view of the tracks has been this year.
Codemasters have also included additional potential fault areas of the car which can go wrong during the race, and a huge factor this year is the floor. If you mount a kerb too hard or get hit up the side, you will wreck your floor and lose a heap of performance – which, as we literally just saw with Max Verstappen in Silverstone, is very realistic!!
Other aspects – while it is easier to follow, as it should be, it is noticeably more difficult to make an overtake down a straight without DRS, due to the massive decrease in turbulent air and tow-effect from the ground-effect cars.
Overall I think code masters have done an excellent job on this year’s cars, especially considering they had to do MOST of the coding of the game’s physics before the cars had even hit the track this year, with only limited time after that to tweak the physics to match real life! No doubt F1 23 next year will be a bit improvement with more time to hone the in-game physics, but this is an excellent start!
RATING
I’ve said this every year, but this is comfortably the best F1 racing game of all time – as you’d expect. But more importantly than that, EA and Codemasters have done an excellent job adapting a very tricky set of aero-rules that the teams themselves have said are tough to simulate. Highlights from last year like My Team carry over and some fun new additions like lapping the safety cars are welcome too. Cars feel great, new tracks are fun, and the game is as visually stunning as ever!
However, Classic cars are still sorely missed, as is the option for female teammates in MyTeam. “F1 Life” is a very gimmicky tack on that adds nothing but bloat to the game, and some key EA tech features like character design & a wider choice of names is an odd omission. Finally the lack of even an option to include porpoising in “expert” modes for true sim feel and E-Sports is a missed opportunity.
A final negative – it’s a bit personal and I’m probably the only one who’ll notice. I set my character for my “Driver” Career as being Irish, why wouldn’t I? Yet when I set pole in Silverstone, Jeff came on the radio to say “well done getting pole in your home race”. Come on Codemasters, you’re better and more educated than that!
9.5/10