F1 22 Review – Porpoising Issues

A new era of Formula One this season sees the teams and their new cars taking on the calendar with intrigue and suspense.

The same can be said for the new era of the F1 Games being fully under the EA Sports banner, intrigue and suspense to see how this racing series would transform under the shadows of this mega-corporation.

But I am told to inform you that like its FIFA counterpart, this edition feels stagnant even with the new coat of paint and handling models being far more tricky than it should be, coupled with its botched launch window, this feels more lackluster than memorable.

So what went wrong?

Presentation

For starters, I will admit that the F1 Life thing is quite a neat addition to make your avatar more personal, with your hub world in a way filling up with either AI drivers or even your own friends/ people you met on multiplayer races hanging out.

And it does bring some life into this game about racing cars, the music selection in the menus is perhaps a hit or miss for some but it does also give out the FIFA vibes in a positive way.

Yet, I do feel the hub does have the reaction of both Codies and EA wanting to fill in the gaps that you see in their Podium Pass (F1’s version of a Battle Pass), and I guess it is nice to see your “room” is plain from the start to having a poster of last year’s Antagonist on your walls later for some F1 Games inside joke.

Rolling on the audio side, the new option to make the cars sound as similar as in the broadcast of the actual races is amazing attention to detail that Codemasters has added in. Not to mention a new engineer and commentator team making this game, audio-wise, quite refreshing.

But sadly, the inclusion of a select few supercars that you can only hot lap feels useless, considering some of these cars are in Codemaster’s other titles like GRID and they can be raced against each other. Perhaps an update in the near future will allow us to race them with friends but so far, it feels like a wasted potential for adding actual cars for a handful of modes.

Gameplay

So here lie most of the issues for this game, since the actual F1 is going to a new phase of cars with different characteristics to promote better racing. Which ironically is the antithesis of the F1 games in the previous generations being fun to race with. This in return, makes the car more boaty to drive with, due to the handling model replicating the Ground Effect but makes it harder to control the car.

And even the game’s baseline setup (aka the ones on the cars already) is useless in combating the boat-feeling of these new machines, making it rather difficult for casual players to enjoy the driving unless you download a setup from the top drivers.

Besides the handling being borked, there isn’t much to do even with the additions of the Supercars, besides it being rather similar to challenges we have done on classic cars in the previous years.

But there are some positives, like the AI making more mistakes and races you side-by-side on more corners now. And the introduction of driving yourself onto your starting grid and perfectly timing your pitlane entry does help with the immersion factor. Hopefully, these two will be carried over onto the new game engine next year.

Content

I admit that from last year’s review, they need something to add to make the game feel refreshing but alas, its copy-pasted nature feels very adamant about its parent company’s ways of doing FIFA these last few years. And while the MyTeam and Career mode has more interactivity with more R&D events, it’s still the same as it was back in 2020.

Multiplayer mode promises Crossplay for the first time with both PC and consoles but weirdly enough, as of this review, even Crossplay with both Steam and Origin players aren’t live yet and will be enabled in autumn. Why didn’t Codemasters do it like their recently released title, Grid Legends? 

Who knows, but judging by their launch state being abhorrent, I do understand the need to delay crossplay till everything is settled later on. But at this juncture, even league racing like F1 Esports is taking a break because you really do not want to play Multiplayer competitively with this many issues.

Personal Enjoyment

Perhaps, it is the stagnation that’s setting in for the F1 game, which has had a solid base that doesn’t need much reiterating, for better or worse. I do feel the burnout of playing another F1 title after doing competitive racing with the two games previously and this one, at my first ever drive-through, feels awkward and awful to drive.

And although I do settle into the car after 5 to 6 hours in, it doesn’t leave a bad impression on the new cars, when more indie titles like Automobilista 2 also have the exact same car, with the exact specifications, but feels more fun to drive. Maybe making the default setup easier to drive could solve this issue.

Verdict 

F1 ‘22 has been a hit or a miss for this series about the pinnacle of motorsport. The kinks that have been ghosting the series since last year should have been fixed but then again, it could be worse because they are still the benchmark for other licensed racing titles to stride for.

With any luck, the bugs will get fixed and we will then get the game that many F1 fans wished it was during launch but for now, let’s just keep doing practice laps.

Played on PC, Review copy purchased by the reviewer.

F1 22

A hit or a miss for this series as the kinks that have been ghosting the series since last year should have been fixed but yet it still persist.

• Presentation 8

• Gameplay 6.5

• Content 6

• Personal Enjoyment 7