Most of our F1 22 review comes to me at turn 8 in Canada. Two seasons into my career, having left F2 to join Alfa Romeo in the big leagues in 2022, I am in the running for 13th with Kevin Magnussen’s Haas. It’s a gray day in Montreal and we don’t have the right rhythm because 100% of our updates during the season failed and needed to be improved. I have a whole train of cars behind me, who obviously have the best speed, but the driving AI doesn’t allow them to overtake. As I lose another two tenths to Kevin at the exit of the corner, fighting for traction, it occurs to me that I’m not having much fun.
I could make it easier for myself, of course. F1 22, like all previous entries in the series, allows you to choose the difficulty of the AI, change the number of gears and start your career in the best team. So, theoretically, I could sit in a Ferrari and smoke a field of heavily discounted AI drivers for 20 seconds. And, in fact, in the interest of an honest review, I’ve also done it in the fast races. It’s just… it wasn’t much fun doing it either.
But let’s start with the basics. In addition to new cars reflecting the major rule changes of the real sport in 2022, the new Miami circuit, and some ray tracing effects for PC, F1 22 adds drivable road cars, as well as an updated main menu and a online multiplayer menu. It is now a 3D environment located in your home where you can customize your environment and display any cars or clothes you have unlocked.
Road cars are actually direct replacements for classic cars from previous games. Whereas before you could be invited to special classic car competitions between races in Career mode, you will now be required to complete Pirelli Hot Laps challenges in cars like the Mercedes AMG-GT or Ferrari Roma. These challenges range from drift competitions to cone tracks and reward you with gold, silver or bronze medals for beating time limits.
These events feel strangely limited and don’t involve simple, full-on racing, and while the driving itself is passable enough, it doesn’t have enough content to grab your attention. They don’t move under the pull or try to free their butts from your control, and most importantly, you don’t get much of a sense of weight transfer. Of course, such a thing would be a huge departure from the game’s underlying physics model, as F1 cars are incredibly stiff machines with very little weight transfer through cornering. Of course, it would take a lot of effort to create an entirely new physical model that convincingly represents the behavior of a road car, so I can understand why F1 22’s Aston Martin, Ferrari, McLaren and Merc don’t look like Assetto. Race Competition.
However, it’s less disgusting and more frustrating to see your hands not even moving on the steering wheel in the cockpit. After all, these Pirelli Hot Laps events are a sideshow, so F1 22 doesn’t live or die for you to enjoy. However, this is the main feature of the new edition of the one-year sports series with few new titles, so in these conditions it is important.
To the updated menu. In the game, it’s called F1 Life, and it’s kind of an upsell. I love the idea that the series is dipping into the off-road lifestyle and sticking firmly to my sim/racing sim hybrid fantasy, but it’s not even a hesitant step in that direction. Instead, it’s a revamp of the main menu, showing your avatar lounging on customizable furniture alongside some of the aforementioned road cars you’ve purchased and placed around your fancy playground. When you’re in the multiplayer hub, other avatars come into your F1 life and gather to admire your loot. There’s a trophy room where you can brag about your achievements, but between you and me, it’s more like getting you to buy pitcoins and spend them on Puma pants than immersing yourself in the F1 racing lifestyle.
A few words about it. There aren’t many clothing options to buy at the moment, and the ones that seem pretty basic: t-shirts, joggers, shorts, the must-have Beats headphones, and some hats. I hope there will be a lot more content after launch. While these items can be purchased with Pitcoins, which you can earn through in-game activities, you can also purchase Pitcoins with real money. So, as a long-time fan of the series with hundreds of hours in each game and a long-standing fantasy of extended lifestyle elements, I kind of miss F1 Life. It really looks like a customizable 3D menu.
Fortunately, the F1 22 feels better on the track. It’s done an excellent job of mimicking sports TV coverage and making you feel like an expert for years, and that’s truer than ever in this game. Clearly, great attention to detail has been paid to the occasional pre-race footage of this game, including a new spectator mode warm-up lap and new commentary from familiar voices from the Sky Sports report.
The cars feel different, especially in the way they can now negotiate bumpy curbs without losing downforce to ground effect or turning (which is actually a bit strange given that 2022 regulations dictate that newer cars get much more downforce from the floor) and its high and low rpm jerks in a turn.
These control changes mean you can certainly use a lot of abilities carried over from previous incarnations of F1, but you can’t just rely on old muscle memory to define the purple sectors. With simpler wheel-input modulation, you can really immerse yourself in these wiry new cars, pulling them out of low-speed corners with smooth treads and smooth hands. Although there is no discernible dolphin effect, it feels different enough to be exciting. Going around the ends of the track again like a budding racing sim, knowing that catching the smell of rumble won’t turn you 180 degrees, is liberating. Turning after getting too ambitious on the worn hards of a fork is heartbreaking.
To be honest, I still don’t know what to do with the controller’s AI. I need more court time with them. In my first few races in Formula 2, there were several crashes and mistakes in front of me, regardless of my position, and they looked really impressive. Three cars enter the braking zone and break through, and so on – GRID handles mishaps to perfection. But in F1, the drivers seem much happier to stay in the boring caravan, and I’ve seen far fewer AI-related incidents.
That in itself isn’t a downside, although it would be a step forward to see more convincing mistakes from the AI drivers, but what really affected my enjoyment was the reluctance of the AI drivers to overtake.
It’s been a problem for years – you get 11 on the first lap because everyone drives like they’re on ice and risk the death penalty for overtaking. Then on lap two they magically get back to their true pace, but because you passed them in your Williams at the back, the Mercs and McLarens were stuck behind you despite their pace advantage. They run in long DRS zones, but you can almost always brake them again, and it’s almost unheard of for one of them to be sent to brake. As a result, on longer races you get stuck in a traffic jam and then lose a lot in the pit stops. And because they hit the gas and brakes in incredibly fast bursts (watch them in test mode), they’re incredibly smooth in the corners, but still need more stopping distance. As a result, he usually loses time with them in most corners and then brakes again.
I remember a gray weekend in Montreal where I was going to do everything in a P12 with a man who one day invited another cyclist to suck his balls live on television. It amazes me that no matter how much I invest in improving the car and earning championship points, I actually don’t have many. fun.
And despite the other issues detailed above with F1 22, lackluster new features and weird AI quirks, I put it down to two specific factors. Only one of them is clearly to blame for the game.
First of all, it is the gamepad control. I just don’t like racing with a pad because throttle and brake control is very important to manage on this year’s model and that’s very hard to do on a device with a small modulation range. Traction control is also vital this year so I can turn on TC and waste a ton of time with overzealous assist or try to control it with a gamepad trigger where 25% throttle and 50% throttle are separate about 2mm. Likewise, the steering feels stiff and sluggish when using the controller, and the kind of steering you typically do with it requires better throttle control to maintain traction and momentum than steering.
Second, and it’s not so much the fault of F1 22 as the previous 11 games and the nature of the current gaming industry, it’s the cumulative exhaustion of going through the experience so many times in previous iterations and so little significant new content in F1. 22 to do it. easier for you. It’s still great to have all the cars, tracks, driver skins, commentary, an in-depth career mode, and full online options. But we’ve been dealt with them many times, and we’ve spent many, many hours in those previous ecosystems. In the end, we are inevitably dulled by its charm.
And that makes this game difficult to review. Because it’s part of a series that includes some of the best racing games that I really enjoyed just two entries ago and have seen some really impressive yearly changes. Some of these features are still there: an in-depth car development system, a full team creation and management mode with lots of visual customization options, a full F2 grid to compete in quick races or start a career mode.
Some of them are gone too, like the classic cars and the cinematic story mode featured in last year’s Braking Point. But not only his absence affects my mood during the game. It’s the lack of drive, the feeling that I’m playing a game I already own and spent hundreds of hours last year and the year before with updated cars and tracks and not enough actual content.
F1 Review 22
Based on several fantastic games, and these qualities are preserved, but you already have them. The F1 22 just doesn’t offer enough to buy at full price.
Source : PC Gamesn
