Well they had a good base game going in F12021 and ripped features out of it, completely....
Been a long time F1-Codies supporter, stuck through many bugs & releases that were either great or sub-par.
But this is it for me at least. It pains me.
0. Yes, I like the EA-music part. Well done licensing tracks, that's indeed a good addition. The base game works like F12021 (if it doesn't crash at least) and handles fine. No problem with the formula cars indeed.
But at the moment, and I am a codies fanboy with a lot of hours - over 200+ on f1 2019/2020/2021 and over 150+ on f1 2012/2013/2015/2016/2017/2018... So yeah, I liked the series and put up with a lot of CODIES bugs, that were resolved quite quickly after launch mostly.
But, again, at this very moment, let's be honest & real...
1. It's full of bugs, crashes constantly, and it's not even on a different engine/platform.
(2. Career did not let you choose to start in F2 anymore, why that disappeard, I have no clue. For some players it seems to work, for others like me not.)
=> seems to be a glitch on my part, as others report it does work, so don't take this one
3. Claire, our interviewer, got axed too. While I agree she did too much of the same questions, it was a good base ot build upon. Sadly, however, this now is completely gone! Gone is the paddock atmosphere, the immersion of having to do interviews and stuff, and the pit lane areas. Isn't that the f1 life, no for EA it isn't it seems...
4. The F1-life doesn't add any any value whatsoever to this game, other than luring in players to buy stuff. But it is all useless in game content. This devalues the VIP & seasonal rewards, where you used to be able to get liveries, gloves etc - this now includes furniture and stuff... This is not the SIMS for crying out loud.
F1 life is being in the paddock, being interviewed, sitting in briefings/meetings and in hotels a lot. Some have a tiny appartment in Monaco, or live nearby the factory. This is not the life of an f1-driver 🙂... Look I get the pirelli hotlap-idea, that's good... but see point 5
5. If I want to drive supercars, I'll do that in another game. Why not introduce and invest in F3 or another feeder series. Because your handling model for these supercars... Well, it sucks! That coming from the studio that once delivered games like TOCA. These supercars drive nothing like a realistic modelling, and are way too complex too handle lol... Or bring back the classic cars. The model would be able to deal with it much better, and doing "demos" with those cars is part of the life as well sometimes, of an f2 / f1 driver. So that I would get.
If I want to race these "supercars", I'll gladly turn to other series that replicate it better, or if I want arcade there's forza. This is a rushed implementation and the physics don't hold up. As I said, this is not implemented well enough.
6. I have no idea why content you received keeps disappearing (eg items from the store), or awarded via the vip tiers or pre-order content & loyalty content. This is a known issue on the EA forums (ref: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues/F1-22-Champions-Edition-DLC-Content-not-on-game/td-p/11591401/highlight/false/page/2). Their response: "can't say whe it will be fixed". LOL.
7. EA Support, or lack thereof. I mean, get real community manager. We're doing all kinds of magic things to solve it. Read your bug reports yourself. No other games I play (eg F1 2021 from CODEMASTERS) has this issue with the same gear & setup.
8. It all feels very rushed & cashgrab. I had the same feels when Dragon Age & Mass Effect got taken over by EA, and that studio had to work on a game that failed completely 😉... Yeah. EA should let the development team do what it does best, and listen to the community.
Refunded this thing.