F1 2022 - PC version thoughts after several hours (both flat screen, and VR)

holoz0r(77)

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It wasn't very long ago that I played F1 21 on the PlayStation 5, using it as a break from Gran Turismo 7. Since then, I think I've found my sim racing home in the open wheel classes within Project Cars 2. Sadly, that game isn't available for sale anymore, due to licences expiring, so I am glad I listened to people who told me I should get it now.

I was marginally interested in F1 22, as I've come to understand and enjoy the sport an awful lot in the few months since I watched my first race. It is an interesting, strategic sport, with highly technical bits and pieces moving about to make cars go very fast around tracks.

They are afterall, the fastest cars in the world.

Initially, F1 22 got some terrible community reviews on the Steam store, with poor performance, and it got lambasted by hard core sim racers, too.

This review is based on the time I've spent with the game during the Free Weekend that ran (last weekend), and I played the entirety of the first round in a career, in its full length. This consisted of:

Free Practice 1 (1 hour)
Free Practice 2 (1 hour)
Free Practice 3 (1 hour)
Qualifying (30 mins) - I qualified 1st!
Full Race (1.5 hours)

I'll tell you the story of the race shortly, but first I want to tell you about the new features in this game.

First, it has ray tracing. This doesn't really add much of an impact to the game, as there aren't all that many reflective surfaces on a F1 car, or around a F1 track. I ran the game's benchmark around Monaco, and it isn't exceedingly obvious that water glitters and sparkles, and owing to the cars themselves typically having a matte paint scheme, adds little visual quality. It looks dull.

I preferred the visual style of F1 21, to be honest. When everything is whizzing past at absurd speeds, you don't tend to notice the details anyway, and while it does look pretty (and the details on the cars in particular are spot on) - the speed at which the gameplay propels you through doesn't let you stop to appreciate the sights.

Instead, what you have on offer is pure racing action.

I played with pretty tame settings:

Manual Gearbox
Steering Assist off
ABS On ( a feature real world F1 cars don't have)
Driving / Braking Line on
"Amateur" Difficulty

I used my Logitech G29 wheel and pedals, and I won't lie, I had a blast. I was braking for corners way too early, not carrying enough speed, and generally pretty clumsy when it came to navigating around traffic, but the game treated me well for a beginner, and it didn't take long to find a rhythm and start to put in consistent lap times that improved slowly.

Just don't ask me about adjusting braking ratios, downforce, or other car features while hurtling down a straight at in excess of 250km/h, because that is entirely beyond my ability.

The other thing that is beyond my ability is to conceive of the fact that character models and "story" (which was present in the last game through "Braking Point") is absent to some extent, with it instead being replaced with some between race features where you get to drive some super cars around F1 tracks, as well as there being a pretty clumsy and poorly implemented "F1 Life" thing, where you get to pretend to be a F1 influencer and deck out your rich-boy (or girl) apartment with your trophies, triumphs and F1 themed paraphernalia.

It adds nothing in terms of the drama and tension of F1 (on or off track) - and this is slightly angering, as I would have preferred(particularly in the full length race I completed) for there to be more cohesive and informative radio chatter from the race engineer, keeping you up to date about things through the course of a race.

Here's the story of my race. I drove for Ferrari. I qualified first, and got a terrible start off the line. I found myself in fourth, but some lucky weaving in traffic saw me get back to second place, where I battled with Verstappen for a few laps, before taking the lead.

Shortly after this, he retired due to a mechanical failure, and I was free to carve my own path through the circuit.

This all felt really immersive for the first few laps, with encouragement given over the radio from the race engineer for good overtaking, information on opponent positioning on track relative to my vehicle, and information about the gaps between me and my on track rivals.

Then began the long and lonely stint in first place, which I stayed in until about lap 22, when I decided to replace my soft tyres with some new hards, which were expected to last the rest of the race.

Looking at the pit menu while driving around the track is definitely not recommended, and using the voice chat (to use natural language) to talk to your race engineer would probably be a better choice. In any case, I must have fumbled the buttons, because I came into the pits P1, expecting hard tyres, and drove out of the pits on Wet Tyres (on a dry track) in P6, and over the next two laps, proceeded to lose a further 4 positions to P10.

I was angry, but to me it felt like an accurate simulation, owing to the many strategic blunders made by Ferrari in the current F1 season. Simulation good, right?

I jumped in the pits and decided to risk Medium tyres for the rest of the race, in order to help that make up time for me. It worked, but I found myself in P16. There were long stints between cars, and silence on the radio.

There was encouragement, again, as I worked through the field; but no information about how I was gaining on opponents, or in one case, no ecstatic praise when I overtook three cars in the space of three corners.

I fought long and hard, and managed to get myself back into P1, and eventually ended up winning the race by about 20 seconds.

Probably because the difficulty was too low for me; but it felt genuinely heroic, and felt like an amazing F1 race story. The commentary and summary at the end failed to capture the monumental nature of such a task, making it a little bit less special.

This is just one race, but it is enough to let me know that a game like F1 22 needs more work, particularly for people who like me, will play the game like a complete degenerate, putting myself in the shoes of a F1 driver and going through every session (even Practice, where you complete programs, to earn points allowing you to upgrade your car's function throughout the season) - with the highly technical development that comes along with that.

Even at half price (A$44.97) at the time of the free weekend, it doesn't seem worth it. It has one thing going for it, however, and that is the fact that it is the only option for officially licenced F1 with the officially licenced tracks for the 2022 season.

This means (eventually) that the licences will expire and EA will probably take down all the online functionality (of which there is much) meaning that in a few years, the game's online community will dead, and along with it the roster of drivers and cars that are present here, which is a truly historic one, seeing Vestappen win his second title (depending on whether the FIA remove his last season's title), Vettel's last season, and of course, a tennous future for the likes of Ricardo.

The additional PC features...

VR. VR makes it so worth it, but it feels that it is not yet a silver bullet. I wish the radio chatter was better. I wish the game was more technically accessible.

It makes me wish I had a better VR headset, it makes me wish I had a full motion sim rig, to leverage the telemetry data.

I have none of these things, and F1 22 is unlikely to give them to me.

I, as a result, feel so conflicted about this game. I want to love it, because I love the underlying technical and diverse nature of the ways in which people can appreciate Formula 1 racing. It is the best that is on offer, but it is not the best that it could possibly be.

I can only hope that the instalment next year will be better, and hope that it will retain the VR support. It is really is a burgeoning feature in a main stream game like this, and I'm glad it is present. I just hope that it gets better.