F1 22

 

I've been playing the F1 games since 2010 on the PS3. They release a new version every year, which I don't completely understand. I've settled on getting a new version every other year. I feel like that 2 year cadence is enough time for me to get a few seasons completed, and is enough time for changes to occur in real life (driver changes, car changes, track changes, etc.) to make getting the new version worth the money. I still struggle with this concept of releasing a new version every year, especially in the era of the modern console that regularly receives over the air updates. I look at a game like Gran Turismo 7, which commonly receives updates featuring new cars, tracks, and races, and question the utility of a new game every year when updates can be completed with simple downloads. F1 teams in real life recently revealed their liveries for the 2023 season, and to the games credit, those liveries were available to use via an automatic download, so I think the game is progressing in the right direction.

The biggest feature to come to this series in recent years is the team owner career mode. It started as being a driver career mode, where you drive for one of the existing teams on the F1 grid. In 2020, they introduced the team owner career mode, which allowed you to create and name your own team and join the existing F1 teams on the grid. This has been super enjoyable and my favorite part of the game. You can name your team, select your colors and car livery, and select your #2 driver. It hasn't changed much since the 2020 game, however, so I'm back into this conundrum of why buy this game even every other year? With that being said, there were a lot of updates to real life F1 between 2020 and 2022. The cars underwent major regulation and aero changes. They look quite a bit different with the front wheel fenders. Also, the schedule changed a decent amount as well. Part of this was due to new races being added, and part of this was due to changes forced to the schedule because of the Covid-19 pandemic. I have absolutely no use for the new tracks in Miami or Saudi Arabia, which are narrow street circuits similar to Monaco. Two of the new tracks that were added that I like are Imola and Algarve. I have raced both circuits on Project Cars 2, but never in an F1 car. I'm honestly very bad at Imola, but appreciate the track in general. I haven't had a chance to race at Algarve in Portugal yet in F1, but very much liked that track on Project Cars 2.

This game series had previously been developed by Codemasters. One of the big changes that has occurred since the 2020 version I was previously playing is that EA Sports acquired Codemasters . This was mildly concerning in that there was fear that EA would mess with the formula that proved to be successful for the game created by Codemasters. I'm happy to report that this did not occur. The '22 version of the game is essentially the same, with minor tweaks here and there. I do think the '22 game is a bit more difficult than the '20 game, however. I don't know if that has anything to do with the EA takeover, but overall isn't a problem. One of the best features of this game series is its ability to adapt and be malleable to many difficulty levels (as opposed to just easy, medium, hard, etc.) making the game as accessible as needed for various talent levels.