EA and Codemasters have decided to releaseF1 24the earliest that it has ever been released. Once upon a time, this game released in October, and now fans have a release after the Monaco GP in May. This also includes driver ratings that have been adjusted since before the season, as the team has been updating ratings periodically throughout the season for the last few years. WithF1 24, the development team has touted an overhaul of the physics engine and the addition of Legends to a revamped Career Mode that also includes the ability to race as one of the 20 drivers for the first time. The beckoning question is if these additions are enough to warrant jumping into the game this year.
Senna, Schumacher in the Modern Era
Career Mode has evolved with more than just creating a driver and running through multiple seasons while completing research and development to keep up with the pack. Players now have the option to choose one of the drivers on the grid or choose a legend from the modern era to participate. Names like Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher, Nigel Mansell are all selectable as a driver with allocated driver ratings for each driver. The driver ratings are key here, as the Career Mode revolves around reaching goals for the ratings to gain contracts and improve. The idea is to keep ahead of the teammate and develop more rivalries with other drivers. This Driver Recognition System also allows for secret meetings for contract talks during the season. Players have the option to start in F2 or go directly into F1.
Starting in F2 will allow players to earn a seat while jumping directly into F1 simply allows the player to choose a seat and a teammate. Not a supreme amount of innovation here. There’s no track test, no offers, not really anything rather than just choosing a team. Players will need to continue research and development while also accomplishing goals set by different engineers to further improve car performance. Sprint Race Weekends have also been added for this year to coincide with the actual F1 season. These are nice subtle improvements to the mode, but ultimately it’s a similar experience, albeit with more options, as there has been in the past.
There’s More Career Modes
A completely new Career Mode is the Challenge Career. This features shorter scenarios and less races with the goal of winning points for a spot on the global leaderboard. The reward? A spot on the global leaderboard. This is still a career with a community sense added, as each future one will be determined by player voting and real driver influences. There isn’t a sense of something deeper between each modes rather than doing R&D and progressing races. The Challenge Career looks to keep the experience fresh, albeit being mostly identical to the typical Career Mode.
There’s also a Two-Player Career Mode that has all the same features as the single player game, but it can be played cooperatively with a friend. Players have the option for different teams if they choose. F1 World also returns and it’s strange that access to standard races and online races are buried in this menu. Fanzone has been added that allows players to join a time-limited league as they select a favorite driver. This presents unique challenges and a global points system for selected drivers. There are some rewards for doing this, but the community aspect was the goal here. F1 World offers more dynamic modes of racing to change things up. MyTeam also returns with the option to include the latest Legendary drivers, but the experience remains the same.
The Lack of Content
The team at Codemasters and EA have brought some outside-of-the-box innovation in recent years for game modes, but these have all secretly went away. The supercars that were added (including the private events in Career Mode) are gone. Tack on to this the “Cribs” option to showcase cars and a house. There’s no narrative mode this year outside of a few sprinkles of one in the Driver Career. Legendary drivers increasingly grow in the series, but there’s a long duration now of not having classic cars in the game. While there might be online leagues on the main menu, the lack of depth to online races rather than just jumping into a lobby system for ongoing races is subpar.
New Dynamic Handling
Racing games come down to the actual racing on the track, and EA has introduced its largest physics and handling update toF1 24.The team worked closely with World Champion Max Verstappen on the new Dynamic Handling update to allow for a more predictable and realistic performance. New suspension kinematics provide a more authentic feeling to both the weight distribution and center of gravity of the car. This is felt going through corners at high speeds as the car can be felt leaning as it maximizes grip. Going through “S” corner sections point this out the most. This is also boosted by a revised spring and damper force on the cars.
The development team has also updated the Power Unit settings. Enhanced throttle mapping for more sequential horsepower increases with pedal pressure can be felt. Players can also de-rate power and recharge the Energy Recovery system by lifting and coasting. New modes for ERS were also added with the higher tiers draining the battery faster, allowing for more strategy in races. A new aerodynamic simulation uses Computational Fluid Dynamics for more realistic downforce effects. This, along with DRS improvements and new vehicle modeling, has changed how the cars feel on the track.
The final big physics change comes with the tyre model as a new temperature model has been added. Tyres will present more variation in the carcass and surface temperatures, which all affect grip. It takes into consideration actual track conditions as well. The idea is for smooth drivers to be able to prolong tyre life. Tyres can actually be cooled on wet circuit parts after rain. Here’s the kicker, though – with all these changes, the car handling simply feels too easy. Does this allow for more aggressive racing? Certainly, but maybe because they went with Max for consultation and the Red Bull is so dominant, maybe this is just how those cars are?
Launching from the start is much more manageable than in the past allowing for easy gains in position. The game has been played with traction control both off and on medium. It’s hard for the cars to break loose. Tyre compounds seem to affect the amount of grip through the trajectory of corners. Drifting is a big thing inF1 24as it happens too much and can be saved. Is it satifying? Sure, but is that realistic? Going over curbs and bumps seem to have no effect, and again, this is on expert difficulty. Yes, over time grip can be lost, which only really changes cornering. Slow speed corners don’t require much fight at all to get up to speed. This could also be due to the new aerodynamic changes to downforce. Is it fun? Yes, but the skill gap has been narrowed for introducing casual drivers. Using a DualSense controller further assists due to the Haptic Triggers.
Bring Out the Fly Swatter
There are noticeable bugs that remain in the game. At no point should a driver be past another driver and get the option for DRS. Loading times into tracks take a good while, and it’s maybe due to checking in online for something that it really has no business doing in an offline single player race. This is probably due to the Podium Pass, as the game actually brings these results up first every single time rather than the standings of the race. There are track penalties issued where the track was not cut. There will be people online who cut the track at the end of a race and while they may have received a penalty, they were more rewarded for cheating.
It seems the skill gap comes down to knowing the entry point of corners as there isn’t much of a penalty for getting on the gas. The AI does some good things like locking up the brakes, but there were a good bit of times where the AI wouldn’t avoid a crash. The AI is also easy and requires some cranking up of difficulty where it gets to be too much. Some of these bugs were apparent last year and haven’t been remedied.
Drivers Ratings Revealed Alongside Early F1 24 Launch Day
Visuals and Audio
The development team did readjust the color palette, updated the circuits to modern day, recreated each of the cars with CAD data, added Ray-Traced Dynamic Diffuse Global Illumination technology and vastly improved all the faces in the game. The results are the best-looking F1 game to date. Cars are vibrant with accurate reflections, but more so, the tracks and their assets are gorgeous. Player faces are complete with animations, but there’s still a strange decision to have these low-quality character renders for the grid reveal. The cutscenes still struggle with frame rate with the occasional screen tearing, whereas the gameplay is completely optimized with no drops in frames. Everything about the game feels so smooth in action.
Real driver audio has been added to the game and it’s a fantastic addition. Verstappen cursed, but it was edited out, after wrecking. It would be nice to have more of this during gameplay, maybe talking to engineers about the race just to add more life to the race. The soundtrack is full of EDM, but more importantly, a new original soundtrack has been created to bring back the vibe of older F1 titles. Car audio is fantastic as catching the game in passing will trick people with the upped visuals.
Closing Comments:
The removal of content hurts this year’s official Formula One game.F1 24went in a bold direction with its physics, but now the game borders on a casual racer due to the lack of difficulty for simulating a Formula One car. Racing will be more aggressive because these cars stay glued to the track with minimal punishment for pushing the car. The graphics and audio options are where the game stands out the best. The ongoing bugs will continue to hamper the experience, so here’s to hoping these things are addressed. It’s neat to take one of the Legendary Drivers into the career mode, as Senna hasn’t been playable in years in the series. The changes to Career Mode are subtle, but a good bit of the modes come down to the same experience previously seen or just a mode to get rewards or a high score. Maybe the overhaul needs to begin with focusing on current-generation systems.
Version Reviewed: PlayStation 5
The official game of Formula One and Formula 2, Codemasters' F1 24 is a realistic racing sim that offers a single-player career mode and online features courtesy of F1 World.
