“And it is lights out, and away we go!” are words that I’m sure brought smiles to many F1 fans this weekend. Yes, for the first time in 2020 and the first time in several months, we’ve had a race in Formula 1. A proper one, as we’ve been reminded by so many racing series in recent days and weeks. No more of that “video game” thing these young whippersnappers have been playing. Yes, F1 might be turning 70 this year, but it acts slightly like it is stuck in the 1970s. Nevertheless, it is a new season and with it comes a new game as well.

Over the weekend I’ve been playing quite a bit of F1 2020, a game that is bringing a lot to the table with many different changes overall. Not only are we treated to the promised new team mode, but we’re also given some other new things too. This includes a wholly separate career mode, a casual fan-friendly option for single player, a hardcore “pro” mode, more detail in character creation tools, seasons that can be full length or not, which is an F2 suggestion I made last year, and a lot more. It would be easy to think lockdown and working from home led to an uptick in productivity this year. The question on many minds is, does it keep what is true to the series while also adding to it? Yes.

Take it for what it is, from whom it is coming from, and why, but I think there is a lot improved over the last year of Formula 1 between 2019 and 2020. Yes, it is another game in a yearly release schedule. Yes, it is coming from someone who has put over 300-hours into F1 2019, and I’m saying this because some of my issues from last year have been addressed. First off, I didn’t touch the F2 starter series for the My Career mode last year. I thought it might take away from the valuable time needed reviewing the main part of the game. I did touch the separate F2 career mode, however.

This year, when I started the My Career mode, I was pleased to see that instead of the short scenario stint that gives you two fake drivers to rival against, I was given an option. Last year I said something to the effect that I wanted to see a full F2 season that could be played out in full in the run to get a Formula 1 seat. You know what, they bloody well did it. You can now run either a shortened season, scenario-based progression which is the same as before without new rivals, a full season to spend hour and hours on, and of course, the chance to skip the lower Formula all together.

To make up for last year, I thought a taster would be in order, as there are lots to get through. It turns out that is not the only thing they improved on in F1 2020 either. In fact, the cars themselves feel a little faster, more agile, and possibly a little more F1 and F2-like. Skipping a little ahead, there are a lot of changes to UI and how things looked last year (and for a few years). With those changes to the UI come further changes to gameplay such as car setup, for example. Now with an overhauled UI, Codemasters have made slight adjustments to the setup screen. Some of these changes are good and some will take a while to get used to. In my experience, some cars (including older ones) have different placements of the custom setup option in the pre-set menu.

Within the new menu and under the tires section, you can now set the pressure of each tire. Before, you’d set the front and rear respectively. Now each wheel is independent of each other. My editor and those of you less insane than I, and a few others, are might think that this doesn’t matter. However, it changes a lot to the grip you feel from the car. Personally, I don’t feel confident enough to turn traction control fully off, yet with just the right setup, and just the right balance in the car, I feel like I’m sliding across the circuit with immense speed and power. It is almost as if I have turned off traction control, but I still have a nice balance of control.

Sitting somewhere between the casual and the hardcore sim-racers, I feel like I could hold my own. Though I’ll never try that, as people take online sim-racing far too seriously. Instead, I’m happy taking on the harder spectrum of AI in the career, championship, and My Team modes available, which also seems to have given a bit of an update. Your ERS mode has been changed from about six different modes to just four, with a new dedicated button for overtaking during races.

From press releases and such, we know some Formula 1 drivers were included in the development of the game to improve the “realism.” In addition to the cars feeling a little more slippy and fast on the circuit, the ERS seems to have been pulled along for the quick ride. No longer are you constantly faffing about with low, to high, to none, up to a hot lap, down to high, and switching to medium for a cooldown lap. In practice and qualifying, you are given all freedom you could wish for, but in the race, you don’t have full control.

For systems like this, button mapping is important. From last year I’ve been trained to hit LB or L1 on a controller to talk to the engineer, which is something that’s been switched to RB or R1. You might want to change that if you play multiplayer. Luckily I won’t be touching multiplayer so R3/RS it is then. I honestly have mixed feelings about this one, as the freedom to switch ERS modes up and down as I pleased to harvest or use more energy felt comfortable. However, the new overtake button makes tight racing more of a challenge and thus fun.

It may be as a result of the break I’ve taken from F1 2019 in the lead up to 2020, but the difficulty also seems to have shifted. It is either that or the performance, which isn’t always representative of the real-world counterpart, has slightly changed. In 2019, around “hard” or “very hard” on the difficulty spectrum, I could wiz away with a comfortable 20-60 second lead on P2.

In race one of my team’s first season in 2020, I was fighting like two cats over a mouse named Jerry. I said last year the difficulty is one you’ll have to play with for a while, and it seems true for what you want out of 2020 also. Whack it right up to “hard” for just clinching top spots if you’re like me, keep it around “medium” for comfortable victories, and buy an F1 next to Stroll for whatever that super scary one is that I’m not touching.

Overall, the feeling of racing still feels fun. Throwing multi-million pound (or dollar) cars into corners that would make your Honda Civic yelp for Skid McMarx always will be. It all feels just right, as you put the setup of the car on the brink of the Venn diagram of driveable and skittish. Yet still, it doesn’t make boring tracks interesting when you are driving alone around them. Yes, I’m talking about the new addition of tracks: Hanoi and Zandvoort.

Neither track is one that we’ve seen in races and yet we likely won’t see them in races this season (at the time of writing). Jan Lammers, sporting director of Zandvoort, didn’t want to run the race without fans to supplement the expense. It is sad really, the new addition to the game has quickly become a bum clenching favorite of mine in the past few days. It brings the bank of turn 15, which on my first go-round caused an incident of crying and “I don’t wanna!” You need to know you’re heading into turn 4 and 15 with all the grip and power to come out with only a brown mark in your pants. I love it!

Hanoi? Not so much. A very flat, boring, yet high-speed track, that provides very little in the way of interesting driving on the new Vietnamese capital’s street circuit. With possibly the longest “straight” on the calendar, straight-line speed would provide great overtaking, with very little in the way of high octane racing in-game. Of the two tracks added, there is more character in Zandvoort, with kinks, bends, banked turns, and all the skid marks I promised to clean up once I was done with it. Yet Hanoi feels like another Hermann Tilke mishap, a Yas Marina 2.0 if you will.

Nonetheless, my umbrages of last year seem to be addressed: F2 not having much to do with your F1 career, and difficulty seemingly pulling its finger out. One thing I didn’t even think of last year was save systems, something you could mistake for only being provided one of them per gameplay mode. Turns out for the Career you could have several running at once. Now it is a little clearer that you can have different seasons running independently of each other; You just need a new driver and/or team. It may be a little clearer, though some might not care about that.

One thing I do care about was the issue I had with multiplayer, since everything is either “couch co-op” fighting games like Overcooked or online multiplayer, which I don’t care enough about to fight with people. Now, we’ve learned the thing we had for the last three generations of consoles, split-screen multiplayer. I’ll probably never touch it unless I convince my dad – the only F1 fan I know – to drive a car faster than a pensioner on a motorway. However, it does add more playability for those that live together or play together on occasion.

I think that is what makes for a better experience this year. There is more for you to play with depending on your mood, all with different experiences. If you want, you can play just the F2 series in the Grand Prix mode, play in a classic series, do time trials, run and drive for your own team, all with what feels like tighter title contention for positions in the races. Respective of my gripes with last year, I think Formula 1 2020 an all-round improvement.

That said, I do find the My Team mode lacking a little depth that I’m used to in these types of modes. My closest example would be WWE Smackdown Vs Raw 2006-08 with its General Manager mode, with the ability to micro-manage single days throughout the year for individuals on your roster. To me, My Team feels like a lightened version of this with simple graphs, easy to understand metrics, and scheduling and budgeting for the team. It feels less like a business management side and more of a flashy mini-game expanded on just enough to make it work. It isn’t the worst example of this type of game mode, but it could do more overall.

The last thing I’ll talk to you about before I wrap up is audio and audio mixing, it a god awful. It may be fixed in a patch either before or after release, but at the current point, it is some of the poorest work I’ve heard. For example, on the opening of races with David “Crofty” Croft talking about the individual track, there are jets that fly overhead as part of the grid display. Every time, so far (several races), I’ve had them fly overhead of the camera and cut out before the usual fade of the Doppler effect. This isn’t a one time issue.

Jeff, the engineer in your ear, sounds like he’s been recorded on a lower-quality microphone in a poorly sound dampened room. Lines have come up in subtitles that aren’t said aloud, as another example of audio or audio-adjacent issues. It just feels like a dramatic dip, not just between consoles as I’ve been reviewing this year’s game on PS4 rather than Xbox, but the year alone. Both games I’ve run through surround sound and headphones plugged into the controllers, and yet seemingly it is the PS4 and Formula 1 2020 that sees a drop in audio quality.

In conclusion: Formula 1 2020 kept the formula of fast cars around tight tracks, wide tracks, and all, adding a little bit of “realism” where needed. It is a far-sight better than last year, which feels barebones in a retrospective comparison. With changes here and there it has improved on what needed, though at the time suffers as UI changes have lead to inconsistencies of the car setup displays in the pits.

A PS4 review copy of F1 2020 Deluxe Schumacher Edition was provided by Codemasters for this review.

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Formula 1 2020

$59.99 USD

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Improved driving, making it more "realistic."
• Clear multi-save options on both career modes.
• Zandvoort is a fun new addition.
• Closer driving than the year previous.
• Improve accessibility for those that want a casual single-player.

Cons

• Persistent audio issues
• A slight lack of depth to the My Team mode for my preference.