Review — F1 22

A new era of Formula One is upon us, with a complete overhaul of the look & feel of the cars being brought into the sport. This meant Codemasters, now part of Electronic Arts, had a bit more work on their plate. And while the main course is still very much to be enjoyed, the whole dining experience still has a lot of room for improvement. Oh, and if you haven’t noticed, the game is now called F1 22 and no longer F1 2022 (hello there, EA Sports naming standards).

First things first: even with these new cars being brought to the table, the game still feels very much like the game you know from last year or the year before. For better or for worse to be honest, as this familiarity reassures that it’s still very much an enjoyable racing experience. Which it is. On the other end, it also feels very much limited in terms of innovation. Very few new features made it into this year’s game and the few that did.. well.. they’re not great.

Much wow.

The most obvious miss is something called F1 Life — meaning that you now create an avatar which you can style (mostly by using paid currency to buy clothes, hats, etc.) to your liking. Isn’t that enough? You have your own apartment you can decorate! Much wow. And surely enough, also here you can buy furniture with so called Pitcoins, only available for purchase with real life money. It’s hard not to be cynical and call out the Electronic Arts meddling sauce that is clearly all over this feature. The worst thing is: even if you would somewhat like the concept behind this, it’s so poorly implemented and integrated in such a half-assed way, that it literally has no place in this game whatsoever. The idea that so many resources went into this feature is mind boggling and proves that some decision making people at either Electronic Arts or Codemasters have no idea what Formula One is about — even considering the more mainstream crowd swarming into the sport.

This resource discussion becomes even more painful when you start noticing the lack of innovation as mentioned on features that DO make a difference. On top of that, the game has been shipped in quite a buggy state with already a handful of patches trying to get it into a more stable zone. And if that isn’t enough, complete features like the Story Mode of last year have been removed completely, with the main game modes of the game being My Team & Driver Career being a near exact copy of last year.

Underwhelming

Overall, F1 22 is wildly underwhelming and disappointing. But yes, the driving itself is still very decent, which makes the game still recommendable for fans of either the game or the sport. Or both. I fall in the latter category, meaning that F1 22 is still a game that I’ll play until the next game comes out. And yes, I’ll enjoy it. Especially as more & more patches come out. But it’s hard not to be critical about the path that Codemasters is taking. As a big fan of what they’ve done to the Formula One games for the last couple of years, I sincerely hope they step up their game and provide an experience that is great from start to finish.

3/5

Reviewed on Xbox Series X.
Download code provided by the publisher.