Now that Codemasters is part of the EA family, many racing fans are concerned about official Formula 1 video games and the direction they are taking. We don’t think it’s EA’s fault, but F1 22 comes with new features that we don’t think are necessary in our favorite single seater game.
Let’s start with one of those novelties of the F1 game that we don’t think is necessary: the supercars (the supercars, to understand us). In F1 22 they are introduced as new garbage. The Pirelli Hot Lap Challenges and Qualifiers can be completed in one of ten McLaren, Aston Martin, Mercedes or Ferrari supercars (including the two safety cars). security car if you pre-order the game). In the challenges you have to overcome skids, medium speed zones, checkpoint challenges and more. You don’t get any rewards, except that you have to drive a few kilometers to unlock these supercars and use them in time trial mode, although later they will come in handy since they pay you in money or R&D points in career mode, so they are welcome.
These supercars are very complicated to drive and can’t compete with GT focused racing games like Gran Turismo, Assetto Corsa or rFactor. As we said in the beginning it’s a “gimmick” but not much more so we see no reason for it to be part of the game.
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But there are other novelties that are welcome, such as the New Miami International Speedway
in the F1 life We can see the collection of clothes, accessories, trophies and “awesome” supercars that we got. How can we get new clothes and accessories? Well, with microtransactions of course. We can unlock some things by playing or when we reach the podium, but usually they try to make us use our own money to make our “hub” look fancy. Luckily, these are just superficial aspects and have nothing to do with the game. For example, sports cars can only be obtained through play and not through purchase (you need at least five hours to unlock all super cars). Leave something Pirelli Hot Lap Challengesthe only thing keeping you from the game is if, like us, you’re obsessed with making the podium in every challenge.
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An immersive style of pit stops, formation laps and safety car calls where you have to deal with various elements of these situations alone, adding additional risk as every second you lose in the pits counts like everything else in F1. You’ll also be tested on the grid, where you run the risk of making mistakes that will cost you the race from the start. But for those of us who just want to drive the Formula 1 car around the track, the game has a broadcast option that leaves everything in the hands of the computer while you watch it exactly as you see it on TV would.
Finally, there is a change when the mode starts My Team. We can choose between Rookie, Rival or Favourite, which allows you to choose the budget and power your team starts with. Career mode has also seen minor improvements in expanding department events and career question threads. The changes are not big, but they are welcome.
The audio section brings the EA Music Playlist to the series for the first time, featuring a global roster of electronic music artists. This is a slight departure from the genre we usually listen to, so we appreciate that the themed music option is still there, which will also help streamers who have concerns about playing licensed music.
If you’re lucky enough to have your own gaming PC and a good VR headset, you’ll have a good time, as F1 22 includes VR support for the first time and unfortunately we didn’t have a headset when we did this review we can confirm that it sounds pretty good. We hope to come back later with our reflections on this novelty.
That new AI system It is the latest novelty that we will comment on today. If you select the normal racing style in the simulation settings, you will see the option of normal or fully adaptive AI, which offers a more detailed experience as the AI uses the players’ position on the track and adjusts their speed and competition based on that.
Finally, the really important thing: how does it feel and how do we feel about the game? As we mentioned before, there isn’t much difference to F1 2021 and it’s something we don’t really care about since the handling in this game was already good. Minor changes were made to the regulations and to improve last year’s feeling, but nothing major. The audio table is basically the same (except for the audio tracks mentioned) and there’s supposedly new commentary content for different regions, but things like engineering voices are stuff that’s releasing on day zero that we haven’t had access to yet.
There are many gamers who want to play F1 games with a console controller and lately they are lucky because the game works very well even without a steering wheel, but for F1 22 we recommend you to get yourself a steering wheel and pedals, though it is one of the cheapest. This is because this year’s title isn’t as comfortable if you play it with a controller and totally lacks the feeling that recent games have given us, especially F1 2021. It wasn’t until I connected the Logitech G93 steering wheel I’ve started enjoying the game the way it should be.
In general, F1 22 outperforms other games and episodes in some areas, but replacing Aiden Jackson, Casper Ackerman, and Devon Butler from the Braking Point series with supercars was a poor decision. Still playable, good content for those who are Formula 1 fans but could have used resources in other areas and enjoyed it better. That said, just because of the new regulations and the cars, we prefer to play this edition over last year’s, but no more.