After recent F1 games took left-field detours into areas like story modes and supercars, EA and Codemasters made a concerted effort to keep their core player base focused on this year’s title.
F1 24 gets rid of some less popular features in a refreshing move to improve the more conventional aspects of F1 gameplay. This means that supercars no longer exist and the world of F1 has seen only minor adjustments.
Basically, though, you can divide the myriad of changes and improvements made to F1 24 into three distinct groups. The most popular of these is the driver’s career mode – which is noticeably different from how it was in previous games.
The long-awaited overhaul of the career mode
Much to the delight of many, the main focus of F1 24 was the overhaul of the driver career mode. This is the first major change to this side of the game since the My Team mode was introduced in F1 2020 some five years ago.
The rider career has been reworked to the point where it now represents a deeper career option and is distinct from my team, whereas in previous entries the rider career was actually just a slightly scaled down version of my team.
Before you even get into the action on the track, you’ll be greeted by a cutscene of your driver and their agent in Monaco signing your first contract. It’s the first taste of the new contract negotiation system, which has been improved not only in its presentation.
As a driver, you start with an overall rating – which can go up or down depending on your results. Teams expect improvement and part of your contract is a target rating that you must achieve by the end of the contract.
In our experience so far, we’ve found that improving your rating is fairly easy – and even a total increase of four, which is the recommended improvement goal in the game, is very achievable if you have reasonable results for your car’s pace. .
You can technically get into a position where a team doesn’t want to keep you beyond your contract, but that requires a significant drop in rating, which is unlikely unless it’s deliberately orchestrated.
While this lack of challenge may be welcome for some who don’t want to deal with the constant struggle to keep their place in F1, it opens up some moments of dubious logic that disrupt the illusion of being a Formula 1 driver.
EA and Codemasters made a lot of the “secret meetings” added to the driver’s career. However, just three races into our F1 career we were approached by Aston Martin to see if we would be interested in a change from Williams for the following year. It certainly suggests that career progression will be very easy, especially since we haven’t even earned a championship point yet.
The negotiations are also much more lengthy as the first meeting after Australia was just to say whether or not we were interested and the second was after Monaco where Aston revealed how many and what upgrades they had fitted to the cars and then asked if we were still interested in ongoing conversations.
Honestly, this protracted negotiation period is pretty realistic in a way, and it’s definitely a step up from previous F1 games. We also have to mention that we’ve only done a little over half of the career mode season so far, so we can’t comment on how these conversations will end.
But there are some curious omissions from what we’ve seen. First, there seems to be no way start “secret meetings” with other teams.
Also, negotiations are at the pace of the team you’re talking to. While talks lasting several weeks or months are entirely believable in real-life F1, the fact that these talks always go on for so long in-game and seem to get bogged down by the end of the year isn’t necessarily accurate.
Some sort of risk-reward for trying to close a deal early, perhaps locking out potentially better options that might come along later, would make the system much better.
We may have just had an extraordinary experience in our career mode, but we had realistic results at Williams and were in talks with Aston Martin almost immediately – yet none of the backmarkers wanted to talk to us. Maybe it all comes together at the end of the season, but that would kind of undermine the secret meetings themselves if you have more freedom of choice at the end of the year anyway.
Splitting car control changes
It’s worth noting that many of these changes relate exclusively to the driver’s career. While my team has gone through their own presentation changes, with some of the opening cutscenes being reworked and placed in different locations, it actually plays out almost identically to F1 23.
Another big change that EA and Codemasters have pushed heavily in their marketing is car physics and simulation. This includes a new suspension kinematics system as well as updated tire and aerodynamic models.
All of this has come together to create a driving model that is easier to navigate. Compared to the F1 23, there’s more grip on the rear end and catching slides is easier, so running without the traction control assist will be viable for more players than before.
It’s worth noting that the car’s handling was widely reviewed by major F1 gaming influencers last week when a demo version of the game was made available.
We agreed that the cars felt too unnatural, and that the physics were designed primarily for controllers – hurting the experience for players using the wheel and pedal settings to do so.
However, after playing F1 24 in both preview and launch-spec, there are changes between them. The mid-corner understeer that was a big contributor to the unnatural handling feel isn’t in the final game, and the initial turn-in isn’t as crisp as it was in the demo.
This won’t entirely change the belief of more avid gamers that the physics have been watered down in favor of making the game more accessible to controller users.
But if you’re one of those, or would just appreciate the game being easier to pick up and play and keep the car pointed in the right direction, then you’ll be more at home with F1 24 than EA’s other recent F1 games.
Other changes
Other minor tweaks include some much-needed updates to tracking models.
Silverstone, Spa, Jeddah and Lusail have all been removed and updated – the most visible improvement being the track markings on the outside of the Eau Rouge.
If you’re racing as one of the real F1 drivers, either in regular Grand Prix mode or career mode, you’ll hear them commentate on their performance with clips from real radio chatter. There’s also a wide range, depending on whether you performed above or below expectations, or even if you were knocked out.
There are also some context-specific ones, tied to either a particular circuit or a precise result. For us, the 1-2 finish with Ferrari was linked to a radio message from Leclerc specifically mentioning that we had achieved 1-2 – so the radio calls were quite cleverly and thoroughly integrated.
Added to this is engine braking as a tunable car setup option and challenge career which offers a condensed career mode experience and the inclusion of in-race objectives such as keeping the tires within a certain temperature window. or overtaking a car within a certain number of laps. These are all welcome inclusions.
summary
But the key question is whether F1 24 justifies the £69.99 it retails for on consoles – or even £89.99 for the Champions Edition.
F1 24 has a number of key differences compared to last year’s game, and for career mode enthusiasts, there’s plenty to keep you interested.
However, for many the enjoyment of the game lives and dies with the control model and this was a source of much frustration among many in the pre-release community. It’s been improved since that initial wave of resistance, and Codemasters promises more improvements to make it even better.
As it stands today, for those who use a controller, want a game that’s easy to control, and who mostly play the career mode, F1 24 should appeal far more than any F1 game since EA’s involvement with the series.
But it really depends on how excited you are about the changes to the driver career mode, and if a more forgiving direction is where you want the car’s control model to go.