F1 Manager 2024 is Free on Epic

Friday, Prime Gaming dropped with at least something interesting this week. Monday, Contraband Police announced its new DEI program, bringing women with its “Crimson Fall” DLC, and idle clicker game Nomad Idle has a demo out now ahead of its March release. Tuesday, Wizard of Legend 2 now has co-op. On Wednesday, N64/Paper Mario-like Ruffy and the Riverside has a demo, and Kojima will talk nonsense about Death Stranding 2 at SXSW. Thursday, Split Fiction has a new trailer, showing Josef Fares can make anything co-op and I’ll still not be interested.

Moving on to the Epic Games Store, it is another double-bill to make my Thursday afternoon/night another nightmare. We’ll start with something that’s always fun to talk about, an Apex Legends cosmetic bundle. Focused around Loba, this bundle unlocks the woman herself and the “Torrent” Epic Skin. I really wish I had more to say on it, but the Apex Legends: Loba Free Unlock Bundle isn’t very much when you drill it down.

Nor is there for the last F1 Manager, according to reports late last year, which is fine by most accounts but not very interesting. It is like most of Liberty Media’s attempts to expand F1 outwards: The few things that do work like the expansion of social media and further involvement of the drivers and personalities are great. However, for all that’s good you get shallow attempts to put a niche within a niche, which only creates a further niche. F1 is popular, games are popular, and management games are seeing a resurgence, but mixing the three without a massive outcry for it doesn’t really work.

I say this as I love Frontier Developments, Planet Coaster 1 & 2 and Planet Zoo are great if you’re a creative management person, but it isn’t entirely the developer’s fault that F1 isn’t really a fantastic management-based IP. What is more Frontier’s (and Liberty Media’s) fault is trying to present F1 Manager 2024 similar to the TV product. Albeit with some My First Management Game style UI, which says the entirety of F1 Manager is aimed solely at the “casual” viewer/player. F1 is itself already very analytical, so without treating the player or the viewer like a child, it needs to convey the required information without making them feel dumb.

I know this shouldn’t be an entire review of F1 Manager 2024 and the series as a whole, but the reason it “failed” or is “failing” isn’t because of the developer. It failed because the people who want a management game in the F1-vein probably want something closer to Football Manager 2024 than a Fisher-Price toy. Its depth is about as deep as the drool that drips from Lance Stroll’s chin, which admittedly might be too deep for this analogy to work.

All this week, you can pick up F1 Manager 2024 and Apex Legends: Loba Free Unlock Bundle on the Epic Games Store until the 20th of February. Moving on to next week ahead of F1 testing and my will to live dying out, we’ve got another double bill and another “Oh, we’re getting that again?” For fans of 90s Nintendo-platform RPGs, Garden Story is a lovely little adventure about a grape being the guardian of The Grove. In the less wholesome vein, World War Z Aftermath is available again for those still playing Left 4 Dead, Scunthorpe United 2.