F1 24 Review – As Innovative As the Monaco GP

F1 24 Review on PC

Game series with annual releases like NBA, MLB The Show, and FIFA (EA FC now) sometimes don’t get huge updates. So, I, as an average player, often wonder whether getting the new release is really worth it. Am I really going to pay full price only to get new kits, transfers, and animations? I think F1 24 falls into that category, with the upgrades on last year’s game being minimal at best.

Throughout the years, Codemasters’ F1 as a franchise has grown immensely, and there are more features now than ever. Time trials, co-op career, ranked multiplayer, my team, you name it. Every mode that you can possibly think of has made it to the game.

A novelty in this year’s release is that instead of always playing with your avatar, you can now start all those, including careers, with existing or retired legendary drivers. There are new faces this year, too, including Maldonado, Montoya, and Hunt (still, I have to deduct points because my favourite, Seb Vettel, isn’t in the game yet).

Also, there is a new Challenge Career mode, where you and many other players compete at the same time to win the World Championship. However, it is a single-player experience. This means everyone is playing the same races with the same driver in single-player mode, and the winner is whoever scores the most points.

The last new career mode added is a two-player one. It’s basically the same as a standard player career, though this time, you can race and experience all of it in the company of a friend. Naturally, icons, official drivers, and other novelties are available in the two-player career as well.

The new storyline systems will further enhance all of the modes, and both players and teams will encounter many dilemmas and custom scenarios throughout each season. These will affect you as a driver, cars, sponsors, your team—everything, really.

However, in my opinion, the most important parts of a racing sim aren’t the different game modes and dialogue options, but the cars, their handling, and realism. In 2022, all that was really poor. The car was too easy to lose control of, the rear end was floaty, and many players went back to playing F1 21. It was as if the developers were trying out different setups, unsuccessfully so.

Then, in F1 23, everything was fixed. The car went back to being snappy and as glued to the tarmac as it was before, and that has carried over to 24. By carried over, I mean that changes are hardly noticeable. As long as you don’t go with too aggressive wing angles, you will basically never lose the rear in the corners. Moreover, all of the setups you used last year should work for F1 24 as well.

Despite all the claims about improved and evolved handling, you will hardly feel any difference compared to the 23 version. I mean, this can be a great thing if you liked the more casual nature of the gameplay and the handling so far, but the thing is, I didn’t.

The problem I’ve always had with F1 games is that, unlike my favorite sim, Assetto Corsa Competizione, it always felt a bit arcady. It never felt as if the car that I drove really behaved like an F1 car would in real life, and I’m probably not the only one.

Still, no matter how I or any other hardcore racing sim fans feel, one thing’s for sure: there is no game out there that will bring you closer to racing an F1 car than F1 24.

Setting the driving realism aside, the visual and audio effects in the game have seen improvements, albeit marginal ones. Driver hair and faces now have much more detail. Also, we now have audio snippets from real-life races in the game that play at specific times, such as when there is a crash or when you pass the chequered flag. Unfortunately, that’s about as far as graphics and audio improvements go.

Lastly, I’d like to talk about the price tag. Seventy bucks has pretty much become the standard for a AAA title, and F1 24 definitely is that. All of the things we listed above, combined with all the features carrying over from F1 23, easily make the game worth even more than that.

However, if you own F1 23 and play multiplayer mostly, I don’t think this year’s edition will make you feel that your investment was worthwhile, as most changes are related to the career mode. I’d personally wait for a sale, but again, that’s me.

So, let’s recap. F1 24 is definitely an upgrade over the 2023 version, but not a big one. The single-player modes are getting the biggest overhauls, and if you’re a fan of those, you’ll love them. Everything else, though, looks fairly similar to what it looked like in F1 23, but with a new logo taped over it.