Formula 1 2020 Is Your Gateway to Racing Glory During Covid-19
Pinnacle of Motorsports games is more fun to play than ever before.
With the Formula 1 season shortened, delayed, and completely altered thanks to the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic, fans are clamoring for ways to enjoy their favorite motorsport. Codemasters is here to save the day with the launch of F1 2020. Yearly sports game titles get monotonous, we didn’t even bother to review last year’s F1 2019, but this year’s game brings a lot to franchise. F1 2020 is the most accessible, content dense, and exciting entry in the series to date.
Of course F1 2020 hits all the required update bullet points. All the team and driver rosters are updated, all the tracks from the original 2020 racing calendar are represented, and the graphics, physics models, and performance of the game are all improved. The real draw of Codemasters’ new Formula One racing game is My Team and Casual Mode.
My Team is the new main single player component of F1 2020. Instead of the standard career mode that lets you work way through an F1 season as a driver, My Team lets you run an entire team and be the head driver. It takes all the team management fun of something like Motorsports Manager and puts it in the middle of being a Formula One driver.
Each race is bookended with management decisions. You have to choose upgrades to research, partner drivers to hire, and which sponsors you are going to partner with. It turns into a mental puzzle that involves juggling income, time, and race performance expectations.
My Team even forces players to consider team morale, with certain decisions increasing or decreasing the morale of various sections of the race team. If you spend all of your money and time working to improve engine performance, morale in the aerodynamics division could fall. This makes it harder to research and improve parts in that division later on.
All in, the new My Team mode got us far more invested in our playthrough. We spent so much time balancing our upgrades, pushing our team forward, and weighing pros and cons of all the various sponsor deals. All with the goal of extracting the maximum performance and income possible.
If there is a weakness in My Team it is the lack of overall customization. When it comes time to design your racing car for your new team, you have just six different liveries to choose from and the only thing that can be changed about them is their colors.
Forza Motorsport launched in 2005 with a deep livery creation system. If this sort of thing was possible on the original Xbox 15 years ago, there is no reason Codemasters couldn’t give players more control over the look of their cars.
The same complaint can be leveraged at the driver selection. When choosing your driver avatar, Codemasters provides a few dozen options that cover a large gamut of races, genders and ages, but there is no customization past that point. If you don’t see a face you like in that list, you’re stuck. Again, games offering customization to facial features and body types is not new technology. Codemasters has gotten a pass on this for years, and we think it’s time for an improvement here.
One area Codemasters did improve F1 2020 is the ability for newcomers to get the most from the game. The new Casual Mode makes the game more accessible by reducing option complexity and adding in tons of driving assists. It alters nearly every aspect of the driving experience to make is less punishing for new fans. Braking and steering assistance help keep the car on track, damage is off so any collision won’t end a race, and even the off-track surfaces are easier to drive across so when the tarmac it is easier to get back in the race. Formula One is a complicated sport at the best of times, so we love any mode that makes it easier for new fans to dive in.
For players of previous F1 games, the rest of the package is a minor update. We have the inclusion of some classic Michael Schumacher cars, which is an absolute treat, and the Formula 2 series cars return as well. Getting the chance to race on the new Zandvoort and Hanoi Street Circuit tracks that were sadly canceled from the real F1 calendar is also a joy.
If you already loved the F1 franchise of games from Codemasters, you will find even more of what you love packed into F1 2020. If however, you have always been turned off by steep learning curve, or you always wanted to get more involved into the running of the F1 team you raced with, F1 2020 finally provides you the tools and experiences you crave.
On the surface, F1 2020 seems like just another Formula One racing game, but the improvements made to the formula bring the game one step closer to perfection. With the exception of some customization options, there is little more we could ask for.
F1 2020 was reviewed using PC code provided by Codemasters. It was tested using the Project Stingray gaming PC.
Photos: Codemasters
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