Entertainment

F1 24 video game preview – a year of change-Steve Boxer-Entertainment – Metro

This year’s new F1 game from EA brings major changes to the cars’ physics and modelling, plus the chance to play as real-life drivers.

F1 24 – can there be such a thing as too much change? (EA)

This year’s new F1 game from EA brings major changes to the cars’ physics and modelling, plus the chance to play as real-life drivers.

Sustaining and developing an annual sports game franchise is a much tricker task than you might imagine. There’s the eternal dilemma of wanting to add new elements, which in turn encourage people to buy that particular iteration, which is always in conflict with the short one year development cycle. Then there’s the need to provide a reflection of the sport you’re depicting which is as accurate as possible. And how can you entice gamers who aren’t necessarily hardcore fans of that sport to splash out on your game?

At least Codemasters, the British outfit which has been developing F1 23 review – return of the racing soap opera (and was bought by publisher EA in 2021) has had a near-unprecedented amount of practice at negotiating that particular tightrope and, over the past 15 years, has established an enviable reputation for the quality of its racing games. That’s just as well, since Formula One is the undisputed pinnacle of motorsport, which means being the custodian of its officially (and very expensively) licensed game franchise comes with a lot of responsibility.

Our first look at this year’s effort came via an online press event helmed by Codemasters’ stalwart senior creative director Lee Mather, with the help of senior game designer, lead vehicle handling Casey Ringley, who started off as a modder before joining the F1 development team. The presentation was divided into three sections, entitled physics and handling; career mode; and updates to tracks, drivers and teams.

Before launching into the presentations, Codemasters aired the game’s launch trailer, featuring tracks including Spa and Monaco and promising premium technology updates and a new career mode. The tagline – ‘Become one of the 20’ – hints at how that career mode will differ from previously, with the 20 referring to the fact that Formula One has 10 teams and 20 drivers.

Mather and Ringley began by detailing a number of changes to the game’s all-important physics and handling models, which should result in the cars feeling markedly different to those in last year’s game. Given that those upgrades are designed to bring F1 24’s virtual physics closer to those of the real-life cars, this year’s cars should feel more like their real-life counterparts than ever before.

The first fundamental system that Codemasters has upgraded for F1 24 is the cars’ suspension kinematics. Mather explained that those changes should bring much more of an indication of the weight transfer that occurs in real-life racing, with the cars squatting under acceleration and diving under braking.

For F1 24, Codemasters has also revamped the tyre modelling, made the aero modelling more realistic, and upgraded the electric power management systems – making it easier to defend from the car behind by deploying electric power in certain corners, according to Mather.

Ringley, whose job places him at the sharp end of designing F1 24’s underlying systems, gave an indication of how the changes would translate to the gameplay. He explained that the new suspension kinematics model would bring changes to the cars’ camber, roll, anti-dive, and anti-squat characteristics.

Those, he said, have been married to more realistic steering geometry, and he added that in F1 24 players will have finer control over suspension tuning, resulting in cars that have more responsive chassis, ‘For example, you can now feel the suspension squat under acceleration, so the cars feel much more alive on track and give more feedback. The goal for all the changes that we made is to give the player better control.’

Along with the suspension modelling changes, Codemasters has also upgraded F1 24’s tyre modelling, bringing, according to Ringley, more realistic slip curves and contact patch modelling. The game also has a new tyre wear model – tyre wear being a critical factor in the current crop of Formula One cars. Accordingly, Ringley confirmed, the game also gives players more control over pit strategies than previous iterations.

Like the real cars, tyre temperature now affects tyre wear; Ringley asserted that the new tyre modelling would be particularly noticeable on wet tracks, and with the tyre temperature modelling in play, players might have to, for example, seek out wet patches of drying tracks in order to cool down old, worn wet tyres.

F1 24 – veteran fans should have a field day (EA)

The final piece of the handling jigsaw is an increased emphasis on chassis ride height. This is another critical factor for the real-world cars in this ground effect phase of their design rules, as tiny changes in ride height can massively affect their aerodynamic performance.

Codemasters has also revamped one other element that feeds into the cars’ general performance: the ERS (Energy Recovery System). Essentially, that’s energy recovered under braking and the like, which can then be deployed by the driver. Codemasters said that the changes to the ERS model will give players much more control over deploying ERS boosts, and that all ERS modes will now be available in the game in all sessions.

There’s an element of risk in making so many fundamental changes to the models that underpin the cars’ basic physics – one of which is that making the cars behave much more like they do in real-life could make them harder to drive than they have been in previous games, which could prove intimidating for more casual players.

However, Codemasters has an exemplary track record of both balancing the cars in their F1 games and catering for those whose driving skills aren’t so practised. At the time of the preview presentation, a closed beta of the game had been running, in which some anomalous handling characteristics had been reported. Mather and Ringley said that was due to some incorrect data having been plugged into the new systems, which had since been identified and corrected.

By the time it releases, F1 24 will have been through a huge testing programme to iron out such kinks, and Codemasters’ track record suggests that they will get it right for launch. If they do, we can expect F1 24’s cars to feel more responsive, alive, and affected by track conditions than any previous iteration of the game, which is an exciting prospect for Formula One fans.

Mather next highlighted F1 24’s career mode, as another key area of the game which has received a major overhaul, stating that the last time Codemasters embarked on such a comprehensive revamp of an F1 game’s career mode was in 2016. He said that in F1 24’s career mode, you will be able to ‘Play your way.’

The most obvious major change to the career mode is that as well as playing as yourself, you will now be able to play as any of the current drivers in both F1 and F2. If you want, you’ll be able to start off as an F2 driver (taking part in last season’s F2 championship before joining this year’s F1 grid).

One consequence, Mather said, of allowing you to play as real-life F1 drivers is that the game’s system of driver ratings becomes vastly more important and has been reworked accordingly. As before, your driver rating depends on how you do in the game’s rivalries and against your team-mate and will then play into the contracts you’re offered during your career. But F1 24 has a new way of rating you as a driver, via what Mather called Recognition, which takes into account how you do on track, how successfully you complete contracts and hit targets, how you deal with secret meetings and, if applicable, your performance in F2.

Mather claims that if you do well in the Recognition stakes you will be recognised as the team’s lead driver, so will have a better chance of developing your car in the best direction for you; if, however, your team-mate gets the upper hand, he might develop the car in a direction which doesn’t suit you.

Playing into that is a new feature for the game: secret meetings, which could take place either with other teams or members of your own team. These should add a level of intrigue – always a factor in real-life Formula One – as they can lead to more rapid career advancement, but if word of what happens in your secret meetings gets out (and Mather didn’t say how that might occur), that could have a detrimental effect on your career.

These secret meetings can also unlock secret upgrades and Mather added that the game will have new research and development scenarios which kick in when you finish the first season of a career. He also said F1 24 will have a new system called Accolades, which charts key moments in a driver’s career, such as their first pole or race win. It will be fun, for example, to play as Lewis Hamilton and see if you can win him that elusive eighth Drivers’ Championship; if you play as Nico Hulkenberg, say, the next Accolade for him would be a first race win.

F1 24 – play as yourself or a star racer (EA)

Elsewhere in F1 24’s career mode, Mather reveals that the contract system has been revamped so that you’ll be able to negotiate with other teams from an earlier point in each season, and that what you do on-track can then feed back into those negotiations.

One effect should be that if you have a terrible season, you’ll find yourself in more jeopardy of being demoted to a team towards the back of the grid. You’ll also receive on-track objectives from your race engineer – such as getting out of the dirty air from a car in front to cool your tyres, or putting in a set of quick laps in the midfield in preparation for an undercut pit stop – that plays into your driver rating.

The game’s Rivalries system has also been altered, expanding to three types: your rivalry with your team-mate, your championship rivalries, and an overall driver rating rivalry; all those feed into your career progression and F1 24 will recognise three intensity levels, namely regular, heated, and career-defining (when, for example, you find yourself in something like a Senna versus Prost battle for the championship).

Another major addition to career mode is the addition of a challenge career, in which you take on the game’s challenges but in a career style scenario. That will have an episodic element, with the challenges (which can be pretty diverse racing scenarios) being updated in eight week cycles. You will have a time window in which to do so and Mather says that Codemasters will get the F1 24 community heavily involved in the shape that each challenge cycle takes.

There’s also a new two-player career, in which you can play through a career either with or against a friend – again you can choose to be an existing Formula One or F2 driver in that. Unfortunately, the two-player career won’t include a split-screen option, since that would make the likes of secret meetings an impossibility.

This Formula One season is an unusual one, in that with the exception of the return of China (missing since the pandemic), the tracks are the same as last year. But Codemasters has taken the opportunity to revamp F1 24’s depictions of them, both in terms of bringing track configurations up to date and cosmetically improving them, so that they look more true-to-life. The two main tracks which have benefitted from that in F1 24 are both much-loved classics: Silverstone and Spa.

The former has been revamped to reflect track updates for this year, and the latter has been updated visually. Tantalisingly, Mather dangled the prospect of real driver voiceovers from the game, some drawn from trawling through audio footage from past Grands Prix: it will be fascinating to see how see work, and how they respond to on-track situations in which you find yourself when playing as those drivers.

There will also be some new My Team Icons – that is, much-loved drivers of yore. Most notably James Hunt, Mark Webber, and Nigel Mansell; Codemasters also showed a shot of Juan Pablo Montoya. We can reasonably expect some of those drivers’ classic cars to be in the game. And there will be a new Fan Zone feature, which should bring rewards if your efforts on track (either as yourself or as a real driver) lead to a wave of adulation from the virtual fans. Which, frankly, sounds a tad gimmicky.

More than ever, determining whether F1 24 has a chance of going down as a franchise classic will depend on what it is like to play. If Codemasters’ tweaks to the cars’ underlying physics and modelling have the desired effect they should be a lot more interesting to drive. Although, whether Codemasters will be able to reconcile greater responsiveness with the need for some players to use driver aids remains to be seen.

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