Oh man this one has so many awesome modes. I mean you got championship season where you play as one of the drivers, and you got pro season which is just that but without assists and also time trial and...

And agh....agh...

Of course there's the career mode right? The thing most play this for is here right?

Agh...

So anyway you have the multiplayer which is dead :D

Yeah...There's not much here, F1 2015 as a whole isn't a bad game per se, it's a good foundation for what an F1 game can be on what was at the time the next gen but that's all it is.

The one thing it does have over the previous games is that nothing is copy pasted from before, everything is completely new, new engine, new character models, new handling, the tracks are all redone...

The game is buggy so its clear they weren't fully aware of how to use the new engine, character models look awful by today's standards but the tracks are alright and it's got the best handling so far, a billion times better than whatever f1 2014 got I mean now THAT is a terrible game.

So terrible they put in the 2014 season into this game as a way to say sorry lol. That's really cool though and I wish it stuck around, having the previous season included too, but yeah that's not very realistic I guess. Side note but in the 2014 mode I like how they put a star next to Jules Bianchi's name as a way to honor him, it's very sweet.

Also this is the first game where each car has the handling characteristics of it's real life counter part, no longer just being a slider from good to bad. So the Mercedes clears the field by a lot, the Williams is a rocketship in a straight line, the Marussia sucks, the Mclaren Honda has the most pathetic top speeds you could think so (40km slower than other cars at monza fucking hell) while also being draggy as hell, etc...

So even with the lack of content and lack of quality in some of it, why did I clock in 35 hours in it?

Cause I like unlocking achievements and I liked the handling enough to do a full season as Bottas in the Williams.

Worth the nothing I payed for it cuz I got it for free a LONG time ago lol, think it was on humble bundle, so yeah as a free game can't say it's not worth it lol.

Anyway F1 2015 is a bit like the season of F1 it's based on, not exactly boring, had a few nice moments but super forgettable as a whole.

F1 2013 is pretty much what you'd expect, F1 2012 but with a bit more and honestly I'm fine with that, mostly because that bit more is brilliant.

The game does settle into familiar territory in many aspects, the career, season challenge, tutorial, scenario mode (previously champions mode) and time trial (not that you can do much with this mode) are all identical pretty much.

As for improvements I like that if you do the tutorial well enough you can start on a top team (Lotus). The handling is once again harder than in the previous one, continuing the trend of still being a bit arcade-y but becoming more and more realistic with each game. At it's best it feels amazing to drive and certainly is the best so far, something to expect from a racing series, the driving always has to get better.

But ok is there anything new here?

Agh there's these classic cars and tracks that nobody really cares about idk i mean who wants that...

So anyway most of my time was spend on those.

Okay I gotta say whoever came up with the idea is an absolute genius, classic cars representing the 80s and 90s era of F1 is amazing, they're so fucking awesome. AND classic tracks too like holy shiiiiiiiiiiit they really went all out. And you got a separate scenario mode for these classic cars AND they got one of the commentators from that era to commentate these scenarios oh man this is a wet dream for anyone who is nerdy about F1's history.

You got the 1986 Lotus driven by Ayrton Senna (the game says it was driven by Mario Andretti though idk what's up with that), Mansel's dominant Williams FW14B from 92, also the Williams of Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve from 96. Schumacher's Ferrari's from 96 and 99. There's some more, wish they got the mclaren mp4/4 driven by Senna and Prost in 1988 which is one of the greatest F1 cars ever, winning all but one race.

I mean it is hard to not notice that it's all Williams, Ferrari and Lotus cars which I assume is in a way perhaps for continuity, seeing these 3 evolve over the 80s and 90s...except Lotus wasn't much of a thing in the 90s so its all Williams and Ferrari cars (no Benettons rip). Also perhaps just licensing.

Still even with that nitpick it's hard to argue against this selection, only one that I say shouldn't be here is the 99 Williams which was a mediocre car that didn't do anything of note really, it was driven by Michael Schumacher's brother so...it's got that...Otherwise it's no different from say this years Alpine, supremely mediocre most of the time with some good results once in a while.

Anyway what about the classic tracks? Well they're pretty much perfect picks, funny seeing Imola being seen as this legendary track that isn't raced anymore now...Well it still wasn't raced this year but it's on the calendar ig.

Brands Hatch, Jerez and Estoril are also here. Brands Hatch and Jerez are fantastic tracks that are so fun to drive, just awesome, Estoril is decent too, love how it looks, very well done but i guess it's a weird pick idk nobody really talks about that track from what I've seen.

You can play on these classic tracks with the 2013 cars too which is awesome and also the 2013 tracks can be driven by the classic tracks which is nice.

This is prb the first F1 game where I didn't spend all my time in the career but instead another mode. I mean yeah career mode is the main mode but fuck those classic cars are fun. It's one addition it has over 2012 but it's such a great addition that I'm keeping this game installed just for them haha.

That's about it, mostly more of the same but slightly better + one amazing addition, another great entry in the series.

I'll be skipping F1 2014 btw, I tried it and it was so bad I unninstalled after 20 mins lol.

Aight this one of the games I own on steam. And also one of the best ones in the series, the best so far actually and not by a bit.

F1 2012 is where the series really came alive and codemasters made the formula (hA) properly work.

There's new modes, the best handling so far, improvements all around, none of the previous ones beat this one at anything really. Except maybe the main menu which has been simplified a lot? If you care...who does tho lol.

Anyway.

The handling finds a nice balance between the overwhelming challenge of F1 2010 and the overwhelming... easiness (if thats a term?) of F1 2011. It is very similar in feeling to 2011 but it feels much better, you spin easier but it's not bullshit like in 2010.

There's a tutorial which is nice and teaches you everything you need to know about F1 to get started. Is it painfully boring for someone who knows how to play these games half decently? Yes, does it matter? Eh.

What about the modes? The standard career is here and mostly unchanged, AI is easier (won the championship with Williams playing on the harder difficulties lmao) and aghhhhhh...more options for starting teams?

Then there's the new stuff, firstly the best addition imo which is the champions mode. This requires a bit of context of the actual sport. 2012 was a very special year for F1, there was tough competition all year and all the front running teams were on it. First 7 races, 7 different winners. A tight championship battle that went to the last race between Sebastian Vettel in the dominant Red Bull and Fernando Alonso in the dogshit Ferrari somehow putting that truck in the championship fight and losing by a few points.

Where does this inspire this champions mode? Well 2012 was also a year with 6 different champions on the grid. A historic grid for sure. So they made a scenario mode around it and it is fantastic. Agh it is perhaps a bit easy but honestly I don't mind. It's a brilliant idea.

You're put in interesting scenarios, you got new tires at the end of the race, make up ground. You gamble and put on full wet tires after a safety car, you find yourself struggling at the start then catching car after car as you're the fastest man on track.

Hamilton put on new tires and is hunting you down while you're on much older tires so you have to defend from him till the end.

And at the end you get a race with all 6 champions at the (at the time) new American track Circuit of the Americas. It's great.

The other new mode is season challenge which is a simplified career where you pick a target, beat them and you steal their seat. You do that 5 times throughout the season, races are shorter here which fits the idea, being more of a quick fire mode.

Besides that only returning features, time trial, time attack (time trial scenarios with medals), co-op career is here tho I think it was in last years game too, havent tried it cuz who tf am I gonna convince to drop 20 bucks on a key for this game lol.

Oh also it's the first game with like...good graphics, first one had decent textures but awful art style, 2nd had better art style but the textures kinda suck. This one's got both colour and decent textures lol.

So yeah, as an F1 game, it's the closest to a whole package that the series has come too so far.

Okay hear me out on this one, its still not good, or decent, but I think it's more enjoyable than 2010.

Firstly the handling and physics have been overhauled completely and the cars are much easier to handle...maybe too easy. Def too easy, you can just throw these cars around without issue and it feels very arcadey. Though its not like last years game was realistic, just hard, bad racing games often think that hard=realistic.

Is the other extreme any better? Some would say no, I say thank god cuz I couldn't handle having my car spin around with maximum traction control over pretty much nothing.

Safety cars, red flags, slipstreaming (can't believe this wasn't in the last one) are all introduced to the series alongside the kers system (little boost for 6 secs in every lap you can choose to use whenever). Also first year with DRS, technically in 2010 there was the F-duct that certain teams used but the game didn't feature it.

Other big improvement over f1 2010 is that you have more options for starting teams, you got the 3 awful ones and now also Williams and Force India, good additions. Both midfield cars, well irl the Williams was a backmarker then but the Force India was def a strong lower midfield car. I don't think there's any difference between the 2, it wasn't until 2015 that the cars got team specific traits so it's tier based I think. So HRT, Lotus and Virgin would be tier shit. Williams, Torro Rosso, Sauber and Force India would be tier whatever. You get the point, Red Bull and Mclaren top tier.

I choose Force India, started on the 2nd easiest difficulty and dominated, increased the difficulty a bunch till the 2nd hardest where I was still fighting for podiums.

I played until I got bored, didn't take too long, still it look longer than with 2010 so that's a plus. So what makes this ultimately mid? It's got nothing.

Career mode is here sure though I don't think it's very replayable unlike with the newer games, seems like it'll be the same experience everytime. Heard every season your car goes to the next tier but its not worth playing a 20 hour career mode like 4 times so your shitty ass Virgin car can fight with Red Bull.

Oh right there's upgrades in this (and last one tbf) but they aren't that interested, every once in a while during practice you have an objective, usually...well...all of it is just you doing a couple of laps trying to get a specific time. Then boom upgrade, it's whatever. Little motivation to keep going for me.

Outside of career there's time trial, grand prix mode, multiplayer ofc and...agh...the settings?

Not much interesting, which sucks cuz the next one has a lot of interesting modes and features. Oh well...guess this one's just mid.

Agh I don't get this one.

While codemasters first proper attempt at an F1 game sees them capture the atmosphere of the sport very well especially with the paddock main menu screen I cannot lie it was not enjoyable.

I think the biggest issue is that you can only start with the 3 new teams for 2010, HRT, Virgin and Lotus. These 3 teams were beyond awful, HRT could never trouble the top 18 let alone top 10, I'm pretty sure Virgin somehow managed to make a car that wasn't able to hold enough fuel to last the entire race and Lotus' biggest mistake was simply having a slow and terrible car.

These teams were good for the sport but in the game them being your only option makes the whole thing dull and the game never comes alive unless you are ready to put in the time and wait around for a couple of seasons of not being able to do much.

I didn't finish the career, gave up a couple of races in, wasn't enjoyable. In qualifying I could easily get into the top 10, putting together that flying lap eventually but in the races everything would go wrong every single time. It has the same issue F1 23 has somehow.

The racing most of the time is atrocious, in qualifying you're quick, in the races it's all about defending until a pit stop knocks you out of a top 10 finish, top 15, hell even a top 20 sometimes.

It's not that bad in F1 23, but here it is that bad. The pit stops ruin the experience, you can never really be the underdog getting the crutial point because when you enter the pit if another car or god forbit another few cars come in at the same time as you, you will 100% of the time have a 10+ sec pit stop, waiting around for cars to pass you and losing positions you can never get back. It's the Haas 2023 experience made into a whole game. So then you think fine I'll come in early and try to avoid other cars but then the cars terrible pace shows in the fact by the time a lap or 2 pass and they're coming in, they always come out way ahead of you. Seriously I couldn't believe my race in China where I was fighting with the big teams for a podium finish, come into the pit, come out 20th, and end up 15th. All that work for nothing and I had decent pace, made few mistakes, but they all were just way faster and there wasn't any point in trying anymore.

Lowering the difficulty only helped in qualifying really. I'll admit I was struggling with the handling and wasn't enjoying the very understeery feel of the cars. But fucking hell I wasn't doing that bad. In spain I was flying through the corners, it's a track I know I'm good at, I'm good at it in every racing game I've seen the track in...but that didn't stop me from fading away after the first pit stop. Yeah it's realistic but what isn't realistic is those 3 teams being the only choices, there's other teams that welcome rookies too, Force Indie, Williams, god damn Torro Rosso which exists specifically for rookies, Sauber even Mclaren if you want a top team example. I mean come on now.

I like the idea of only having a few teams to choose from at the start, simply taking the red bull and running away with it isn't that fun but its infinitely more fun than being in a Lotus, qualifying in the top 10 every race then finishing 18th every race.

There's certain liberties you have to take with video game adaptations of sports, one of which is that underdogs should be able to win, at least on lower difficulties (or the lowest ffs). Here it's a bit too hard.

The driving is also extremely punishing, touch a kurb and you'll be violently spinning around every time. Easy to avoid on certain tracks but others not so, especially when the racing line pretty much tells you to ride the fucking kerb which then sends you into the wall AGH it's annoying.

The racing line in this game might just be the worst I've ever seen, genuinely never thought that'd be something I'd complain about but it tells you to brake like a million miles away from when you actually need to brake. Tells you to take lines that might just send you in the wall (fucking kerbs). I'd rec you turn it off but unless you already know the circuits it's prb not worth it either. I went in all confident without the racing line in the Bahrain GP only to find out it's a different layout, into a spin I went, then in a wall...That one was on me though, back then that was the Bahrain GP layout. So that wasn't an annoyance, the real one was during the race when I spun out, hit a wall, wanted to use a flashback and it only took me as far as when I was JUST about to hit the wall...great.

Agh what else is there...so racing isn't fun, driving itself is a bit of a headache (hard and very understeery blegh), the artstyle is an atrocity to mankind, in a sport that goes all around the world to different countries and continents, having every single circuit look the same is an insult (360 generation grey artstyle always looked bad and here it's just as bad as in any other game). But the menu is good so...yeah not enough actually who could have guessed.

Codemasters games around this time never did it for me and this one isn't much of an exception. I could forgive a lot if the driving was at least fun but I wasn't enjoying this one. Maybe I didn't give it enough time but you'd think 7 hours into a racing game it'd have gotten better at some point.

Just let me drive a car that isn't a year off the pace for crying out loud.

Ok so here goes my journey through every F1 game that's on PC and worth talking about.

Alright so F1 Challenge 99-02 is def a racing game classic and its existence is...very consumer friendly? We sure this is EA?

Fucking hell, so okay this is basically taking F1 99, 2000, 2001 and 2002 and putting them together into one single game. A Halo MCC of sorts for this series of F1 games, but working on release.

And yeah it's pretty great actually, very unique and fun to have an F1 game that covers multiple seasons of the sport. Especially in a sport as ever evolving and changing as F1.

Playing through the seasons you can see and feel the cars changing, getting faster, having more grip, corners that in 99 were more difficult you can attack with much more ease by the time you get to 02.

It's got a few things figured out better than even the newest F1 game, for once, they actually update the tracks woah. Unlike with the modern games it doesn't take years for a circuit to be updated to reflect how it is currently. Some tracks are updated in all 4 seasons included.

There's differences between Albert park in 99 and 02, Monza 01 and 02, etc...

Also the racing itself is some of the most fun in any F1 game that I've played, the AI will make mistakes and random bullshit will happen but this is accurate to the sport, looking at the results of an average race from the late 90s and early 2000s, you're lucky if less than say 6 cars don't DNF. So ofc in the game you'll constantly hear x driver is retiring, they've blown the engine.

Actually quite funny sometimes, very nice sometimes too, especially when someone in the points DNFs and that gives you an extra position, maybe an extra point, vital point.

During this era only the top 6 got points and the difference between 2nd and 1st was 4 points which was A LOT back then. It is a bit annoying coming from newer games where you can finish 7th and go 6 points thats pretty good to fuck 7th? damn no points ig but in the championship overall it closes everything up and suddenly you'll be fighting much more aggressively for every position since every point is important. How important you might ask? Well in my 2002 season I won the championship by a single point over Schumacher.

Mechanical issues can happen to you too, I had my 2001 championship fight pretty much ended after a collision resulted in my car stopping half a lap later, making me lose points that would have helped me keep the fight going in the final rounds. Could I have restarted? Sure, would that have been any fun? Agh prb not.

After you play F1 games as much as me, you get bored and tired of just putting the difficulty to where you win every race. Sometimes being in a midfield car fighting for points and the occasional podium is more fun. The 99 season was spent in a mediocre Benetton, taking me to a distant third in the championship with 2 wins and quite a few podiums. My 2000 season went much better, going with the BMW Williams team and getting the championship wrapped up before the last race due to my opponent having a mechanical issue while leading the USA grand prix, gifting me the win and the championship.

In 2001 I decided to go with McClaren and things didn't go very well, while I did take the fight to Schumacher for the first half of the season, retirements and bad results ultimately made me a very distant 2nd in the championship (skill issue).

2002 was redemption time, going back to Williams and winning the championship by 1 point as noted earlier, trading wins left and right with Schumacher, getting 8/17 wins, scoring points in all but 2 races where I DNF'd. It was the hardest of the seasons despite being in the 2nd best car, the reason it was so hard was because well the Ferrari that year was one of the most dominant cars in history. IRL Michael Schumacher was on another galaxy compared to everyone else, getting a top 3 result in every single race of the season, having the championship won with 6 races to go and him alone having more points than all the other teams. It is the perfect season, only thing that comes close would be perhaps Max Verstappens current season if he keeps it up (already won 10/12 races, 8 in a row, got 2nd in the other 2).

So yeah the ferrari was always on my tail and closing in and sometimes it was just as much about outsmarting the opponents as outracing them, a good tactic is to try and slow down the car behind so others close in, if they try an overtake and you defend properly they might make a mistake, others overtake and now you can pick up the pace more.

Your mistakes are also punished just as hard, go off track, hit someone, put yourself in a bad situation and you could lose your front wing, rear wing, maybe even one of your tires lol. I had a bit of a dramatic Monaco GP in the 99 season where I fucked up my front wing but since there were only 2 laps remaining I decided to stick it out and try to defend, Monaco is known for being a very hard circuit to drive and also overtake which was crucial to me getting the win despite my car not being able to take a fucking turn to save its life.

Though this game's driving actually is the most fun for Monaco, very smooth, very precise but still punishing, easy to go in with too much speed and end up understeering into a wall but when things go right it's one of the most satisfying things to get that one perfect lap.

Yeah agh I think I've been rambling on enough, this game is great, fun driving model, has that early 2000s racing game charm, interesting for F1 history nuts like me, nice progression over the 4 seasons. Cool seeing all these great drivers in their prime, and new drivers come in that ended up greats of the sport themselves (Kimi, Button). If you want an old racing game to spend 30+ hours in or are interested in an F1 game that covers older seasons, go for it.

Also should mention there's a huge ass mod for this game that puts in EVERY season, it has around 160gb iirc and is prb the biggest mod I've ever seen, ambitious beyond belief. All the circuits, all the drivers, the different cars, the handling characteristics of them, the sounds, everything, all included, sounds impossible but fucking hell it's real.

Anyway I'll stop now, good game.

How did this even happen? I never liked any sports games, nor racing games that have 'sim'-like elements (let alone actual racing sims), and I never cared for F1 as a sport either.

Yet 2 and a half months ago I tried an F1 game and got addicted very quickly, logging in almost 200 hours across 6 F1 games I now have on steam and instantly became a fan of the sport and its history alongside starting to follow the current season and watching the races live.

For the record this isn't the F1 game that started it for me but it's the most recent one and the one I put most time into so I'm just gonna review this one, this review will be more for the series as a whole instead of this iteration specifically.

On the driving side, the cars feel fantastic and smooth to drive, the controls are great, it’s the best so far for wet races in my experience and adjusting your setups can help a lot (just google setups for each race like I and most people do though cuz most of us have no idea how to setup cars otherwise).

On keyboard however you NEED the traction control assist to max otherwise you’ll be constantly spinning, I know these games aren’t made for keyboards but I’m doing well on them personally and can win against 60-70% AI, not to flex my non existent “skill” but rather say that it’s not as bad as people say, just change the keybinds to something that…makes sense (arrow keys turn and A to accelerate what???) and you’re set.

But there’s more to what makes F1 games great and it took a bit to really understand what grabbed me so much about this game series but I think it comes down to the career mode and how addicting and engaging it is.

There's 2 main modes, the My Team mode introduced in 2020 and the My Driver mode which is in every F1 game (besides 2015 for some reason).

Let's look at both. My Driver is the one where you get to be a driver in any of the current F1 teams and My Team is the one where you make your own team and drive for it, alongside managing it.

In My Driver your objective is more to meet the expectations of your team and get good results with what you're given. You go to a team like Red Bull or Ferrari and you're expected to get a podium and/or win every race, you go to a shitbox team like a Haas and simply scoring a few points is enough whereas a midfield team like Alpine is the middle ground where you're expected to do well but not to the point where you get fired if you don't win every race.

It's a pretty fun mode, this was more for my playthrough in 2018 but it applies to all the games, it's very fun to take a shitbox or midfield team and bring them to the top, it's one thing to win in a Red Bull when you're faster all the time and another to do it in a Williams which is a team that has been stuck to the back for almost a decade and hasn't been great in close to 3. It's more satisfying and harder. Makes you do the practice sessions more and try to get all the points you can for upgrades.

Wait...practice sessions? Now who the fuck wants to practice in a racing game? Just go fast and win the race.

Well it's different in F1, here it's in a way more like a competitive shooter where map knowledge (or circuit knowledge) is just as important as how good you actually are and a good strategy can go a long way. You have little practice minigames to help you prepare for the race. They range from tire, fuel and ers management (in short ers is basically your cars power and you can press a button to burn a lot of it very fast, there’s a limit on how much you use during a single lap and it recharges a little bit when you’re going slow or taking a corner) and also one’s for taking the corners better which is the hardest, also a qualifying one where you just have to do the best lap you can and it calculates where you’ll end up when you actually do the qualifying (one lap that decides where you start the race from), and one that calculates a more accurate race strategy for your playstyle.

These aren't 3 lap races (you can go for 5 lap races though they make the game a lot shorter and more boring), but can go up to an hour if you go for 100% length (can’t recommend unless you get really into it) and even in a 25% length which last around 20-25 minutes, timing a pitstop well can save a lot of time.

Go in early and try to make up time with your new and faster tires or go in after everyone in the hopes you can make up a 20-25 second lead by the time you come in so you can still leave in first at the risk of your tires becoming too slow and if not careful, actually ending up losing a lot of time. You can even go for a more aggressive strategy and choose to do more stops but with faster tires each time, this way you're always the fastest and can make up time but they're the most risky in my experience, being essentially suicide in anything below 50% distance.

These strategies are done before the race but can be altered, how big your pit window is matters a lot, if it's 2 laps you don't have much of a choice, just go in when it says, in 25% races this is fine. But in the longer ones you can gain a lot if the pit window is longer since you can time it with the drivers you're fighting and one thing I've noticed is that the AI will recognize that you're staying out more and then themselves will stay out for longer to chase you down, if their tires are doing well at least though they are usually.

In My Driver you also have to negotiate your contract halfway through the season and at the end, you can be fired if you've done terribly badly but you aren't gonna do that really unless you go to a top team and put the difficulty too high too soon.

You can get bonuses for yourself if you've done well and if let's say you're in a bad team and winning races, you can even switch teams though this is a bit hard as you also have to be good enough for the other team to not just take you win, but also throw out the driver you're replacing. Easier to just stick with your starting team in the first season and worry about team changes only if you choose to do a 2nd season of My Driver.

As for My Team, this one’s a more complex version of My Driver, love this mode, instead of you yourself negotiating for a better contract, you’re the one doing the contract now, since you have to manage your teammate, you can hire drivers either from other F1 teams or from F2 which I think is awesome, I ended up going for this guy called Oscar Piastri who was in F2 last year and is in F1 this year.

Besides that you also choose sponsors which give you objectives and you get extra cash for completing the objectives, sponsors change every couple of races, there’s also a main sponsor for the whole season that supplies you with the most money and has a goal that goes for the whole season and you get the bonus at the end. The money you get goes into the salary of your other driver and upgrading the facilities that make your upgrades, these basically make your upgrades cheaper, faster, with less chances to fail, stuff like that.

There’s also little activities that you can do between races, “do” might be pushing it, you select them and they just sorta happen, you’re just choosing what bonuses you want, usually it’s between training your teammate and getting some sort of bonus for your team or facilities.

That’s most of what you’ll be doing outside of races, right ofc there’s also the R&D tree where you select upgrades and stuff, easy to understand, Power Train is about speed, Chassis is about the weight of the car, Aerodynamics are for downforce (how well you take corners and the likes) and Durability speaks for itself. Both your team and all the other teams will be developing their cars throughout the season, this is why doing the practices is important since these grand you most points, though for 50% and 100% races, I recommend doing the quick practices instead, basically there you have the time the practice lasts for and you choose which practice to do and there’s a % there n stuff, you click on it and then it’s just done, these can fail but rarely if you go for the 75% and 100% ones all the time. Very convenient for 2nd playthroughs and so on.

The AI in the game is pretty good but also way too aggressive in this game, in the older F1 games they aren't aggressive enough and simply putting yourself in front of them when you see them closing in is enough to make them drop back but here these assholes will just drive you off the damn road, though that happens mostly in multiplayer sessions in my experience, lots of races where me and my friends got destroyed by the AI just hating us and sending it in at turn 1. It is a bit funny there but when it happens in career it's a lot more annoying, thankfully you have infinite rewinds (or flashbacks in this game) so the game never becomes an extreme sweat fest where any mistake will cost you a lot. You can limit the flashbacks if you want but I don't recommend it, this is F1, points matter a lot actually and if you end every race dead last you won’t really have fun now would you? You can redo races but only right after, once you click on continue and hit the loading screen you can't anymore and whatever you did is set in stone.

This makes the races more tense, just like in real life one bad race can ruin your chances at the championship (or 22 bad races if you're Ferrari). One thing I like is how you tend to make rivalries as you play the game, there’s the actual ones in game with the rivalry system but also ones in your mind. You end up remembering the drivers as you play and know which are to be taken seriously and which aren't.

Ofc they all should be taken seriously (Latifi aside) but what I mean is, if you're P2 and in front of you is Max Verstappen (the guy who won the last 2 seasons and will prb win this year too), it's a lot more serious then if Esteban Ocon somehow ends up P1, because you know you won't be seeing him up there for many more races. Also when you see a driver you've been fighting with for half the season suddenly have an engine failure and retire it's a bit of a sign of relief knowing you can extend your lead over them (or close the gap on them if you're behind in the championship).

Safety cars are also interesting, can help or screw you over (if you active them, I do personally cuz it makes the races more interesting), basically if there's a crash where a car (or more) gets destroyed these come in and sorta guide the cars for a lap or 2 (or more if that's the case though that only happens irl I think) as the wreckage is being cleared up, during this time you can pit for new tires which is basically a free pit stop or it can help you close the gap on a car that's got a big lead as everyone is suddenly less than a second apart (you can see how this can also work against you, or ruin your race if it happens right after you enter the pit).

Idk this is the most engaged I’ve felt playing a racing game ever. Everything on and off track is great fun. Even the broken multiplayer is fun with friends.

AGHHH but EA kinda fucked it a lil bit with the stuff outside of the main modes. First of all there’s supercars…yeah supercars in the formula one game…and the handling is atrocious and the cars feel extremely slow in comparison so these just suck ass and should be ignored at all costs unless you want to get all the achievements or are desperate for a little extra cash in the my team mode. You can skip 'em though at least.

There’s also F1 Life which is basically you customizing your fucking main menu…lame. Buying sofas n shit in an F1 game, c’mon now…

Outside of those 2 it’s just things that are missing. Classic tracks and cars for one (classic cars are so much fun in former F1 games like c’mon just add em back), scenario modes too and I wish they let you make a custom F1 calendar where you can choose the order of the tracks, you can exclude tracks and choose between 10 16 and full (22) race calendars but that's about it, the order stays the same, so if you let Bahrain in, it’s always the first race.

Red flags would be interesting too, basically when there’s a red flag that means that a crash happened that was so bad they had to stop the race to clean it up (or if the conditions are not safe at all, ex: too much rain), imagine how tense races would be if a red flag went out and you had a standing start with just 3 laps to go, everyone just going at it to try and snatch a victory…Like in literally the Australian race this year, that was a gigantic mess but it made for a fun watch. What are they gonna do with that race in this game since the games these days also simulate the actual results afaik. Yeah red flags are a must for the next game.

Also the story mode from F1 21 didn’t make a return, unfortunate but I mean that mode was sorta boring from what I’ve heard and the story is pretty generic. Still there’s a lot that can be done with a story mode in these games, especially with the My Team mode, just make a story mode that revolves around a new team, this way you don’t have to exclude real life drivers from your story mode like in F1 21.

F3 could be a cool inclusion too but I doubt anybody even plays the F2 mode so what chances does F3 have? These modes are more fun in retrospect when you see which drivers made the move up to F1 more than anything which I assume is why the games launch with the F2 season of the previous year then add in the current year later on.

I want more former F1 drivers as selectable teammates, imagine being able to get drivers out of retirement like Sebbastian Vettel that just retired at the end of last year, these could mirror the real life comeback of the legendary Michael Schumacher to F1 in 2010-2012 with the at the time new Mercedes team.

Also I think it would be cool to be able to manage your own team whilst not driving yourself but hiring both drivers and choosing which to race as.

Are any of these gonna make it into the next game? Probably not, both codemasters and EA are greedy bastards and they’ll do the bare minimum when it comes to improvements and only add in things fans want when one of their games underperforms badly.

Still, while F1 22 is not the best in the series, it’s still a great game at it’s core and while some of the new stuff they’ve added is trash, at least it’s not pushed down your throat and can be ignored.

F1 2020 is probably the best one but since its removal from steam the price for it has gone up and it’s not worth it, so just buy this one on sale if you want to try an F1 game (usually 9 bucks on sale) or buy F1 2018 from a key seller for like 3 bucks. Either way when it comes to F1 games you can still get, this is the best you can get for a fair price. Mainly I’m just biased because this is my first current F1 game but I don’t see what’s so awful about this one, I enjoyed it just as much as the others and I’m looking forward to playing it more until 23 comes out.

Okay but this one is kinda way better...if you install the mod that lets you teleport to events instead of having to drive to them.

I'm sorry but driving in the open world is the most boring ass shit, there is nothing to do really, there's a few hidden races and that's it (you can just google em anyway).

But yeah with that mod this game keeps the same great pace of the first one where it's just event after event without much in between time. I do miss being able to select the difficulty for every event before starting it though.

After the hell that was Underground 1 on hard I just put this one on normal and it was...I mean rather easy truth be told but I didn't feel like risking it, few circuit races in the later stages that were a bit hard but outside of that only the drift events ever gave me any trouble and those only because I am oh so bad at drifting without hitting anything, seriously I hate that you just lose the whole drift if you touch anything.

Once I needed 60000 points to win an event and I got like 58k instantly in one awesome drift and it felt great AND THEN some stupid ass traffic car touched my car ever so slightly and then boom it was gone. Annoying.

Still at least it's not evil like the first. The customization was amazing and really in depth, I like that the game requires you customize your car to progress through the game. I think it's nice to force the player to use certain features to progress when y'know...those are part of the selling point.

The economy is much better than in Underground 1, there I had WAY too much money all the time and nothing to spend it on, here I ran out of money like...twice in 22 hours but still. I had just enough to get everything I needed.

Open world is nice, more tracks I feel than in Underground 1 though the shortcuts are absolutely a huge step down from those found in the first. Not that that's a huge issue but rather an annoyance given how great they were in the first one. Oh well.

The like...URL events, god damn those are out of place, so this is game about underground illegal street racing...but the main events are like profesional race tournaments or something. I don't get it, they got extremely boring in stages 4 and especially in 5 where you have like 9 of them to do and they never end.

Also the ugh...Street X events sucked at the start, disliked them until stages 4 and 5 actually, by then I had more speed and they become more than just...drive in the most boring ass circle 4 times to win.

The rubber banding isn't as bad, I didn't feel there was much actually, especially compared to Underground 1 where the enemies would rubber band all the way to some other dimension on easy lmao.

It is a huge step up but not in everything, still the game made improvements where it matters most and while not flawless and again, more fun WITH the fast travel mod. I still had a blast with it, took me only a bit longer to beat than Underground 1 (that one took 21 hours, this one 22).

A classic that def holds up, if not in pacing or structure, at least in the great handling and customization and honestly I feel that's enough to make this game still amazing almost 19 years later.

I swear for the first 75ish races this game was like a 10 for me...

AND THEN

I don't know what the actual fuck happened but this game started being so damn hard and the AI would cheat like crazy. I had no issue with the first 75ish races on hard, quite fun, not too easy but not too hard either, but past 75 shit got absolutely insane and I couldn't even win on easy WITH the best car in the game AND all the best upgrades.

Race 95 was fucking evil in particular, 6 laps with the worst rubber banding in the game, yall I lost first position in the first lap and then driving almost perfectly by lap 6 I was still in 2nd place cuz that fucker would zoom past corners at 300 km/h somehow.

There was another that was 7 laps which was evil as well though less so.

So yeah laps 75-101 were atrocious...

AND THEN IT GOT EASY AGAIN RIGHT IN THE LAST 10 RACES.

WHAT THE FUCK. WHAT DO YOU MEEEEAAAAN?

Seriously it's like hours of hell the game started to feel bad for me and just went okay okay fine we'll let you off easy at the end

Somehow this game is supposed to be like 13-17 hours, this one took me 21 hours to beat ffs.

Maybe I'm just bad but I swear I was not driving that bad. I just had shit luck I guess, which sucks a lot cuz this game really is fun in a way all the modern ones aren't. I was playing nfs payback just to say I beat it but this one I was doing purely for fun y'know?

Like it was genuinely fun. The handling is really smooth and feels great, the graphics are nice to look at, the customization is pretty good, the cars are cool, even the city itself is nice and I didn't mind the repetition at all I just felt like I was getting better at them the more I played em since I knew what shortcuts to take and which not too, learned when to slow down and how much, stuff like that, it's cool (though should say it's not an open world game, there is an open world here but you can't free roam cuz they couldn't finish it in time I believe so it's just standard races)...

I just wish this game didn't turn evil out of nowhere for like 6 hours lmao.

Still liked it overall I guess.

My takes have really reached rock bottom with this one ngl, bad enough that I enjoy the one that's pay 2 win but also considering it the first good one since Carbon?

Hear me out I guess...Yeah the progression is awful, I hate the card system, the only decent aspect is the fact you get a card for every race which means you upgrade your car at a decent rate in theory, but in practice by the late game you really do have to start trading cards and opening up loot boxes because otherwise that last off road faction will murder you.

I reached the point where the only way to keep up was to spend 9 minutes waitin around for the store to reset so I could buy new cards to get my car level a tiny bit higher so the next race was manageable.

Buuuuuuut I can't lie the handling is pretty okay, much better than 2015 and open world wise this is the most diverse one yet probably and it's nice to explore and some of the races have pretty cool layouts, especially late game, and I did enjoy the variety in missions and the 'set piece' missions.

This is the first game since The Run to try to go for something cinematic I feel and it does it well enough, not to say the story is good, better than in The Run for sure but nothing to write home about, still its competent which is more than you could say for most NFS games, a few decent characters, really Mac is the only truly likable one (he's the bri'ish one) but oh well the others weren't exactly insufferable.

I like in the last mission how the leaders of the factions from the early parts of the story come in to help you meanwhile the ones from the late game try to sabotage you, it's a cool moment I guess. Drift events are rarer in this game and much much better since drifting feels nice in this one. They're also much easier and simpler, simply reach the amount of points needed then finish the course and done.

Drag races are here and... idk if I've mentioned em in any of my NFS reviews but yeah they all suck and even here they still suck but in this one they are prb the best they've ever been, in the sense that I only hated them a bit instead of a lot.

Visual customization is nice in this one, though that's the case for most open world NFS games (Most Wanted 2012 aside, fuck that abomination anyway) and the car selection is alright.

I like that there's different car types for different events and you can switch when starting an event, so your racing car won't work for drift events or vice versa, this is a good system, especially when considering the alternative which is NFS 2015 where you basically had to fast travel to your garage constantly to switch between drift tuning and grip tuning which itself was hard for someone with no knowledge of how cars handle and what the fuck those sliders do, simply dragging it from 'grip' to 'drift' and having that determine all the sliders seemed like a good idea but finding a good balance is hard anyway.

So yeah I'll take pressing E to change to my drift car over that...

Overall good improvement over 2015, not perfect but I can't lie to myself I enjoyed it a lot, if only the progression wasn't so fucked.

I'm...conflicted.

On one hand, I should hate this game, on the other I kinda like it but I did give up a 2nd time on playing through this game so I can't say I love it or anything.

First of all, one of those games you need to mod to enjoy, the UNITE mod is required to be able to enjoy the game cuz the handling is terrible without it.

The story is ass but I did find myself laughing at it...so that's a bonus, look it's a story in a racing game if you expect anything good you are clearly new to the genre.

The graphics are prb what redeem it and I know there's a debate on whether graphics do matter or not, I think they do but it depends on the game, usually they don't matter but great graphics can enhance a game and terrible ones can ruin it. An example of both can be found in this very franchise, with NFS Undercover having graphics so bad the game is just terrible by default cause of it (the other million issues don't help) and this game looking so good that it almost tricks you into forgetting about all of it's flaws.

Honestly my main issue with this game really is the drift events, I hate them, I seriously hate every single one of them, and there's SO MANY. I swear to god there's more drift events than races in this racing game, if there aren't though then it def feels like there are. For every race you have to do there's 2 drift events, there's so many different types too it's fucking bizarre I mean jesus.

Normal one where you need to hit a target, both alone and with someone else. Then there's the one's where you're competing against others, which themselves have: ones with multipliers, ones without, theres ones where you have to stay close to the others for your points to count, its...a bit much.

And the drifting sucks in this game, not as much as grip (which is genuinely a joke and not a funny one) but not too far either, legit this shit just made me quit the game. I want to like it and part of me does like it, when I'm doing a race and things start getting close as the end approaches it reaches a level of enjoyment I haven't felt with a nfs game since idk carbon, not that that says much, most nfs games after carbon are bad or terrible or just kind-of okay in the case of Hot Pursuit.

Still given that the priorities seem to be anywhere but where they should be, with awful handling and having it's worst event type be the main one... amazing graphics and atmosphere can only do so much to redeem it.

The fact it's also always online and thus doesn't let you pause the fucking game and also sometimes lags is only the final nail in the coffin for what could have been one of the best NFS games but instead is the most disappointing one

The NFS series really just went to shit after Carbon huh?

I mean ProStreet already was rather bad and to call it an identity crisis might be putting it mildly but then you hit Undercover which has one of the worst art styles I've ever seen on top of having every issue from previous open world NFS games amplified to 11.

There is just SO MUCH BLOOM, you only need to see one screenshot of this abomination to see how bad it is. Just imagine having to play all 10-12 hours of this game with that art style, truth be told I couldn't be asked, after 2 races I looked for mods to make it playable. Landed on the reformation mod, which improves the graphics a lot and also the handling. The game was decent fun for a bit, okay fun might be much but it was a bit enjoyable for what its worth, still there's only so much a mod can do to improve a game thats bad at its core, cop chases like in carbon are still more trouble than they're worth, the story is predictable, bad and forgettable unlike the one in carbon and most wanted, the open world is huge but empty and bland (the mod added in better call saul billboards though, has nothing to do with anything but I thought it was funny), the handling is fine with the reformation mod but like...if you're playing this let's be realistic you probably don't even own it and are gonna pirate it...so at that point just play carbon or most wanted, 2 games this game wishes it could be like.

While I lasted longer in this game than ProStreet idk which game is actually better, the boring dull one with input lag or the boring dull one with awful visuals.

I stopped playing this one 6-7 hours in when I noticed I was barely halfway through and the missions started to really suck, taking down cars is so unfun it hurts, especially with how the AI is programmed to just turn around if you surpass it for even a second making you instantly lose them basically.

Ugh...by this point the NFS series was in dire need of some innovation, or at least some new ideas, or some ideas which this game has a few off but they are really uninspired, you're undercover! But it plays exactly like if you weren't undercover so what's the point?

But hey next years Shift had a new idea: what if ProStreet but again and with an interior camera...

Okay I'll skip to Hot Pursuit and hope for the best

Somehow has the opposite problem of Most Wanted, where Most Wanted would have been a 10 if it was shorter, Carbon would have been a 10 if it was longer.

Okay so I started playing this game last night, at midnight, I was really enjoying it, like really really enjoying it, I thought to myself this was the peak of the series, it had improved on just about everything (cop chases aside but thats not the focus of this game so oh well).

5 hours later I noticed the time and thought okay I'll finish this boss race thing and go to sleep and honestly I think the game heard me because that was the last race before the credits rolled. To say I was disappointed is putting it mildly.

Ofcourse I knew this game was short, but I didn't think it would be this short, hell someone that's actually good at these games could prb do it in an even shorter amount of time than 5 hours without even rushing. All you need to do is beat all the bosses, not even control all the territories or do even half the races.

Yeah if you do everything the game will be longer but, speaking for myself, once the credits roll I'm just kinda done with the game and ready to move on, even if it's short and I want more, there's no reason to keep going, I've already seen the end I'll just get bored.

Story is whatever, it's fine, characters are still cheesy and hard to take seriously but in a funny way. Probably more interesting than in Most Wanted but not as iconic. The driving is a bit slower I think, at the start it is but you start reaching higher speeds relatively fast and it doesn't feel that much slower. Handling is just right, car progression is nice, you unlock stuff by finishing certain races. I do have an issue with this however, I wish that when looking at a part for my car, it would let me jump to the event that unlocks it, instead of having me search for it which just results in me giving up and just hoping I unlock it eventually. Not that big of a deal but it would have made things nice, even if admittedly the game would have been a lot easier that way.

Open World is a bit pointless this time around, I was in 2 cop chases the whole game and honestly they were a bit frustrating in this one, felt like the game was always spawning cops in front of me whenever I would almost get away and make it impossible to escape. The game doesn't really feel like it's build with cops in mind, they were just added in because it's the sequel to Most Wanted and thus needs cops.

The drift "challenges" were nice, the one in the canyon was a pain in the ass but the rest were really fun although very easy. The boss fights (?) were an interesting idea, with them having 2 phases, first one you need to tail the opponent and you get points for that, closer you are the more points you get. And in the 2nd phase it flips around and now you are the one being tailed, the points from the first phase carry on but now you're losing them and the closer the enemy is the more points you lose, get more than 0 points by the end and you win I guess.

They're fine all things considered. They all take place in the canyons for some reason, I guess they work well enough to not make the game any worse, but they don't make it much better either truth be told. Boss fights in racing games feels like a puzzle with no solution, I've yet to see one that's actually good (though I'm still new to racing games so maybe I'll find a good one eventually) but eh credit where credit is due, they were actually trying to make interesting boss fights in this game, better than in Most Wanted where they just put you in multiple events back to back and that was kinda it.

The territory system is a neat idea that doesn't really become as interesting as it should, best way to enjoy that part is by downloading the battle royale mod, it's not an actual battle royale like fortnite or pubg or whatever. It just makes the game's territory system not scripted and thus things become more interesting as all the factions seem to be fighting themselves instead of you fighting all the factions. Also adds in a lot of stuff I believe, makes the game longer and harder. With that mod the game prb becomes a 10.

Though the game itself doesn't get any extra points for a mod made over a decade after the game released, obviously.

Had they have gotten another year or at least a few more months, I feel this game could have really been a masterpiece, not that being simply amazing is bad, but you get the sense it could have been more and the devs really wanted to do more but didn't have the time.

It's sad but at least they did manage to make something special with this one. Things are only going down from here.

Most Wanted has honestly aged better than it has any right too.

I mean the artstyle in particular should look like absolutely awful now a days, especially after the whole brown and grey aesthetic of the 360 era and this somewhat being an early example of that, and yet it does fit with what the game is going for and doesn't look that baaad. With the hd mod the game looks good even.

The cutscenes are unbelievably cheesy and the characters are really over the top. But they have a lot of charm that make them extremely memorable and while the game was never gonna make you take seriously a story where the main villain tells you about how they're gonna steal your car and then your girl (lmao), I doubt it was really meant to be taken seriously, granted it was 2005 so who knows, but I find it hard to believe there wasn't at least a bit of irony in these cutscenes.

Honestly I wish there were more because everytime there is one it's like an event because you know things are gonna get funny.

The one thing that kinda sucks is the amount of filler, we all remember the cutscenes, the characters, the blacklist, the cars, the customization and ofc the driving but I doubt anybody wants to remember the endless amount of samey races that just kinda pad out the time, tracks being reused but flipped around is a bit neat in the first few hours but gets tiring by the late stages.

The one thing that saves the filler from ruining the game is that the driving itself feels so great that even the filler is somewhat fun. The game feels really fast, going 150 miles in this game feels faster than going 200 in other racing games.

The game can feel intense at high speeds especially when your opponents can also reach those high speeds and they start catching up to you.

Speaking of intense, the cops in this game holy shit. Hands down best cop chases in any game ever. GTA got nothing on these, during level 4-6 heat cop chases things get so engaging, especially when there's like 5 cop cars behind you and you see 2 of them in front of you ready to hit you at max speed. Escaping these high heat level pursuits feels like a real achievement and make the game what it is just as much as the driving itself.

Iconic game all around, 100% worth the time even if it's not a 10, maybe if a few hours were cut it'd be a 10 for me at least.

It takes place over 100 years before the last 3 CoD games before it and fuck all has changed.

I thought of this when that infamous train sequence took place, it was like a whole minute of meaningless spectacle that could have fit in literally any other CoD game and adds fuck all to the story.

It's another example of CoD treating its players like idiots. THEY'LL GET BORED ITS BEEN 5 MINUTES SINCE THE LAST EXPLOSION. TRAIN GO BOOM!

But...ugh I can't hate this game as much as I may want because this game gets a lot right, it's like AW, it has all the pieces it just can't put them together due to the studio refusing to take a risk and do something more. The last mission especially rubbed me the wrong way because of how much fucking potential there was. It could have been one of the most disturbing and impactful moments in any CoD game and truly elevate this game from mediocre to good but no. Instead the character just says that he's seen some shit and the concentration camp you visit feels like a pg13 recreation of a real one which I can't believe I just wrote down but it's real. They imply a lot but don't show shit, when you arrive there I genuinely got goosebumps and thought this was gonna be it. But no it wasn't.

I liked the squad mechanics, they made the game quite easy but they also worked really well in the story. When one of your squadmates is either dead or missing you really feel their absence in gameplay since you can't get...say ammo or health packs as easily anymore. The execution was really barebones but I liked the idea.

Otherwise what is there to say? It's another Call Of Duty game, you shoot the nazis and they die, the story is mediocre but the characters are pretty alright, theres some great moments in between all the mediocrity and by the end you're left kinda meh on it.

It's not as bad of a game as some say but it's super mediocre. Just play WAW instead.