Developer: Codemasters Birmingham
Publisher: Codemasters
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
F1 2014 – Review
The official Formula One season has ended! What to do now? Watch the previous races again? How about you race them yourself! F1 2014 is here and it recreates all real tracks and teams from the past season. Hop into one of these hyper-cars and make your favorite driver proud.
Story
There’s not much of a story to be found in F1 2014. Close to that topic though is the sense of immersion and progression you get as a player, making your own story. There are some things within the game that really add to that, mainly during preparation and races, like how you sit inside of the F1 car and the menu pops up on the screen attached to the car. It’s small things like that that help to overcome otherwise tiresome menus. Sadly there is no greater sense of involvement, not even in the career mode. While the game does it best to give you some sort of way to glue everything together through an email system, it’s just not enough to keep your attention for very long.
Graphics
F1 2014 was developed for last-gen consoles. That’s very obvious, especially when playing on PC. While on last-gen consoles the game looks alright, it lags far behind other current racing games on the PC. Graphical fidelity aside, the tracks are built to reflect the real ones and they do. So do the cars which feature all the latest design tweaks that the real cars have. A strange problem with the side-mirrors though as they don’t seem to be able to render the whole view and the actual image you see in them is of a lower quality.
Sound
The most important sounds in the game have to be the sounds of the cars themselves. Comparing them to the real ones, they do sound quite realistic. Only interrupting the wonderful F1 sound is your team leader over the intercom giving you advice about things like tire warmth, pit stops and lap times.
Gameplay
Launching F1 2014 for the first time, you’ll get thrown right into the action. After creating a driver, it’s time for an evaluation test which is basically a hot lap which will help you decide what difficulty to play the game on. While it’s great to get right to business, you don’t get a chance to change options when first booting the game, which is frustrating as the game launched in a very low resolution. The game did however detect my connected steering wheel right of the bat.
I did encounter issues with my wheel however (Thrustmaster T500RS) and research online revealed mixed experiences. Barely any force-feedback was to be felt while driving. Some wheels seem to be working fine however and different platforms seem to be giving different results as well. Annoyingly within the menu controls were marked with numbers, which are not marked that way on the controller or wheel so that caused for some frustration trying to change controls or while simply trying to navigate the menus. Oh also, there is no mouse support whatsoever in the PC version. While for some that might sound trivial, for others it’s unacceptable on a PC game. Improved this year are the driving aids and how you can customize them to your liking and driving level. Even as a very inexperienced racer, you’ll be able to dive right into the races and for the pro racers you can turn all driving aids off.
In the single player portion of the game, you’ll get to pick between Grand Prix, Career and Proving Grounds. Grand Prix is what the name suggests, a quick race or one full Grand Prix (practice laps up to the actual race). Career is what you’ll pick if you really want to get the full F1 experience. Different with the 2014 version however is that you are now able to pick any team right from the start, you don’t have to work your way up anymore to get access to the famous teams. While the game feels more accessible this way, there’s not a lot to work for. You’ll have to set your own goals or maybe play the Season Challenge mode in which you select a rival and upon beating him 3 times, you get offered to join his team. These are 2 modes that should be merged and with some more interactivity would lead to a far more involving overall experience. There’s also the Proving Grounds mode if you’re looking for a fast challenge. It offers scenarios like trying to finish on the podium after 2 cars in front of you crashed or try to keep your opponent behind you to maintain your current position. Also available are Time Trials and Time Attacks. Oddly, the Classic Mode introduced in the previous F1 game is nowhere to be found this year.
There is multiplayer to be found within F1 2014 as well. You get the option to play online, in a LAN or split screen, which is a nice touch. Within the online mode you can choose to play a quick race or go for a championship, although I doubt that many people will be up for playing a whole championship at once. The amount of people online in general also seemed low but you should be able to find a race with the assist enabled that you prefer.
Conclusion
F1 2014 is a great racer at its core but the lack of new content, removal of features that were introduced in earlier titles in the series and general lack of passion make the game feel bland. The career doesn’t draw you in like it used to and other game modes don’t offer a lot. F1 2014 feels like it has lost its way and like a placeholder for a next-gen version. Let’s hope Codemasters steps it up again for F1 2015.
F1 2014 - Review,
Related Items
2 Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
[…] are things we wanted badly when reviewing last year’s version of which you can check the review here. Included with the game is the 2014 season rendered in the new […]
[…] the yearly iteration of Codemasters’ F1 games. Nonetheless, with the many issues surrounding the 2014 edition, this one had a lot to make up for. Luckily, with Codemasters finally stepping into the ‘next […]