F1 22

F1 22 maintains this series' run as the most fully-featured and accessible mainstream motorsport sim on the market, but the flashy new F1 Life mode feels largely pointless.

F1 22 is an iterative entry in the F1 series that focuses heavily on an authentic recreation of a new era in the sport, with fantastic results on the track.

And yet for all that there's a nagging sense of overfamiliarity, of running the same races in slightly more bloated cars in what's now a slightly more bloated game. F1 22 is a remarkably broad game too, it should be pointed out - one that can be enjoyed by the growing audience the sport now enjoys. It's a remarkably familiar one too, mind, that through no fault of its own never really feels like the measure of last year's model - a predicament the sport finds itself in now, as it struggles to match the fireworks and fury of the classic that was the 2021 season. In that way, perhaps F1 22 is a little too authentic for its own good.

Another superlative career mode, but the avatar customisation and tacked-on supercars feel like bullet points.

The verdict, then, is that F1 22 should appeal to hardcore fans, who expect true-to-life fidelity in the vehicle performance, as well as more casually interested newcomers approaching this video game with a spectator’s curiosity. That blend of depth and accessibility is a hard needle for any sports developer to thread, and it rarely results in a transformative work. F1 22 isn’t one, but it didn’t need to be one — creating new cars, and the organic challenge of learning how to drive them on the limit, was transformation enough.

Supreme playability is sidetracked by a new mode designed to let players live the gilded life of an F1 driver – and start paying for it

F1 22 is the best game in the series, but not by a distance. The improved handling and supercar challenges are cancelled out by the lack of a story mode and the superfluous new F1 Life mode, making for a game that gives as much as it takes away.

Overall, F1 22 is another high quality simulation of the motorsport, with great handling and detailed, engrossing career modes. While the presentation is strong and the game generally looks and sounds great, some aspects like character models just aren't quite where they should be, and F1 Life doesn't add all that much to the experience. We encountered more bugs than expected, too, although we expect patches will iron those out in due course. It's got it where it really counts, then, but some extra polish would put it higher on the grid.

F1 22 is another super solid entry in Codemasters' superlative run of racers. There may not be any really pressing reason to pick this one up if you own last year's game, but besides a lack of new ways to play and an F1 Life mode that's all a bit pointless in the end, this is still the pinnacle of F1 video game action that fans of the sport will no doubt be enjoying until F1 23 drops.

F1 22 is still worthy of picking up if you don't own a VR headset, if only to experience the new car designs, new circuits, updated team rosters, and re-mastered sounds. Outside these flashy new features, the core of the game is unchanged from previous versions, for better or worse. As with many other EA annual titles, I wish more time was spent improving the guts of the series, particularly the AI behavior, instead of adding social features such as F1 Live, but the new VR implementation gives me hope. One can dream, right? Now excuse me, I'm due for another front wing replacement. Elbows out in turn 1, drivers!