Review — F1 23

Experience the 2023 season of Formula 1 and witness the return of the Breaking Point storyline in F1 23.

With rising popularity year after year within the sport itself, Formula 1 is more prevalent than ever. This increases the eyeballs and attention on the official games, with EA Sports’ F1 23 game being the main frontrunner. Let’s see how this year’s game stacks up.

😁 The Wonderful

• Authenticity has always been one of the game’s fortes and with all official tracks in the game from the day of release (in spite of some coming post-release in previous installations), all cars and drivers being beautifully presented, the full Formula 1 presentation and commentators, there’s no way you can’t feel immersed in this virtual world of Formula 1.
• The driving is ultimately what it’s about and F1 23 delivers. It manages to offer enjoyable experiences, going from beginner drivers on a controller to very simulator professional like drivers with a steering wheel. The customisation options to make it completely catered to your liking and expertise are wonderful.

🙂The Good

• Breaking Point is back after a year’s break (no pun intended) and it’s still a fun and quirky way to enjoy a Formula 1 fictitious story surrounded by the authentic Formula 1 aura. It builds further upon the first Breaking Point, which was included in F1 2021, which means the return of key characters as well as the introduction of some new ones.
• The game’s Career Mode is still very good, but is losing its wonderful shiny touch as its getting less and less innovations year over year. While the mode is still very good, it’s becoming a bit stale, making it feel like it’s slowly sliding of the track. Especially when it comes to very prominent new ‘team principal’ like matters, such cost cap, regulation changes, etc. Time for a revamp Codemasters!
• While the game doesn’t look mindblowingly spectacular, it does look very good, especially on replays when the game adds RTX lighting, making especially night tracks look incredible.

😒The Bad

• It’s very likely Codemasters’ hands are tied due to licensing issues, but the crashes (i.e. when cars collide) look very, very basic and unrealistic. At best, you’re losing a front wheel or a tire, but there’s no realistic collision engine or realistic car damage model. I sincerely hope there’s a way to slightly push the boundaries of what’s possible.
• The last few instalments of the F1 games have always been bogged down by online connection and netcode issues. While the issues are getting a bit better, it’s still nowhere near acceptable and it’s very clear that there’s a lot of patchwork happening on an outdated networking system.

😔 The Ugly

• Almost worse then ugly last year, slightly better but still ugly this year: F1 World. Codemasters (read: EA Sports) is desperate to push their RPG and cosmetic like elements into the game, hoping to find some of the Ultimate Team magic that exists in other sports titles. The smaller problem is that the feature itself is really not that interesting (but points for effort), the bigger problem is that they’re forcing it so hard down your throat that you’re literally constantly annoyed through menus and notifications to get into parts of the game that have nothing to do with F1 World. It’s a cheap-ass attempt and getting some traction into this part of the game.

Ultimately, F1 23 is a better version of last year’s game, which was already pretty good. Everything in its core that needs to be good, is good, with the exception of online play being unstable and the career mode getting a bit stale. Then there’s of course F1 World, which is a redundant mode and unfortunately takes away resources, preventing F1 23 to be everything the fans would have always hoped for.

4/5

Played on Xbox Series X and PC.
Xbox Series X code provided by publisher.