REVIEW – The new cars and the modified physics that go with them are the only significant changes from last year’s installment (which I didn’t have to write about), so I’d recommend it on PC for that reason alone.

Maybe on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series, I could say it’s worth buying, but if I had the 2021 installment, I’d strongly consider skipping it.

First of all, they threw out the Braking Point story mode (where it belongs), which was a scripted piece of crap, because we could win all the races we had, the race was somehow so close that it was all decided in the last race, and since F1 2021 didn’t tell us how many points we had, it was all fake crap and over-dramatized. I’d throw all these idiotic story modes in the sports games in the bin, along with the gambling, which F1 22 fortunately left out, but knowing Electronic Arts, there will almost certainly be an Ultimate Team money pump here, too. Yeah, what’s instead of Braking Point? There are hypercars that you can drive around the tracks in the form of challenges of some sort (maintaining average speed, keeping a given time while going through all the gates, that sort of thing), and there’s the F1 Life trash where you can set what stuff you have. It’s pointless, and I think it’ll be gone from the next episode next year. VR support! Don’t be gone after one year!

The drivability of the cars has been modified significantly. Now we certainly have to watch out for warming up our tires after pit stops (where we have to turn in time for the shorter wheel change because of the interactivity; there’s that TV-like formation lap, and maybe Safety Car can be like that too). Our car is more prone to oversteer, i.e. the backend can spin if we’re not careful. You have to drive cars differently, and that’s good. AI is also more prone to making mistakes, which is also lovely. They’ve changed the voice of our engineer after nearly a decade: instead of Jeff, it’ll be Marc (I think his name is with a C) growling in our ears during races. Understandably, the new track from Miami is in the game, the drivers and cars are from 2022, there’s F2, there’s multiplayer, and the MyTeam career mode is still there, where you can build your team from scratch to championship titles. Still, we can also start our new team from midfield and as a frontrunner, where again we have to choose everything from engines (ex-Honda, or not ex, because Honda is slowly sniffing around F1 again, so Red Bull Powertrains; Mercedes; Renault; Ferrari) to sponsors to our other drivers. You can even drive to the title as a driver for another team (if you’re not running MyTeam); there’s a victory walk-up animation. That’s about it.

And what hasn’t?

Now I’ve had enough: Codemasters and Electronic Arts are simply garbage for not mentioning on Steam or the EULA that they have this unnecessary, machine-taxing copy protection. And they’re still pushing that wretched Denuvo on PC! The older parts have been nicely removed from Steam (2019-…) without removing the DRM. Oh, sorry, just threw a geoblock error when checking 2019. Game preservation, anyone??? Planned obsolescence: they leave it like that on purpose, so you buy the newer one. But that’s not the only thing that struck me: MyTeam generally hasn’t changed anything. Sure, the components are different, and the menu looks different.

Still, we do the same for the free practice programs, there are sprint races, and there are various commentators (not just Croft and Davidson), but there is still a frequent 0.001 difference between first and second on the grid. Why??? It was there last year! How come this thing couldn’t still be fixed? Why can’t we have a say in our teammate’s strategy? Why does Marc say the SAME thing letter for the letter that Jeff says? Then what was the point of replacing him? Graphically, I don’t think there has been any significant change (well, there is ray tracing, but not everyone can afford it), and why is it only running on DirectX 12? I think this game would have run just fine on DX11 and thus on Windows 8.1/8/7. This is part of planned obsolescence. No RT on the console during races, but both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series keep 60 FPS smoothly, but with Performance mode, you can run 120 FPS on the PS5/XSX pair, though on the latter, screen-tearing can happen because V-Sync is somewhat weak there.

As many championship titles as Schumacher has

No kidding: it deserves a seven out of then. That’s what F1 22 deserves. It’s the first episode where Electronic Arts has significantly influenced Codemasters, but they’ve given us mostly the same as a year ago, with the obligatory changes. It’s a good game; I’ll give it a 7 for that reason, but I think F1 Life was absolutely redundant, and there’s no sign of any significant improvement. And I think it’s all downhill from here. The games industry needs to be set on fire to start fresh.

-V-

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Developer: Codemasters

Style: Video game adaptation of Formula-1 released every year

Release: July 1, 2022.