F1 2020 lets you live the whole dream with “My Team”.
Photo credit: Codemasters
F1 2020 is probably the most hyped sequel of the series in a long time. New tracks like Zandvoort and Hanoi Circuit as well as the highly anticipated “My Team” mode in which you manage your own racing team, have raised the fans’ expectations. We have been able to get a look pre-release into F1 2020 and can assure you: It makes a lot of things right.
My car, my mate, my brand
“My Team” is the heart and masterpiece of F1 2020. You create your own Avatar and Corporate Design, choose an engine partner, team-mate and eventually your first sponsor. You definitely can spend a lot of time in the new mode before even hopping into your cockpit for the first time. However, you are going to be incredibly proud when you see your car finally rolling out. From this moment on you will be in charge of every aspect of your team: Marketing and content, research and development, and of course racing.
You can adjust and upgrade nearly everything on your car (given enough construction points and money) or analyze your practice sessions in every detail. In the end you might find yourself more occupied with preparation than with the races.
In between racing weekends you have to give interviews. Your answers can affect your reputation with the fans, within your team or boost a certain departement’s engagement. If you banter another driver you can ignite a rivalry which can boost your publicity. Those interviews are not very impressive, but a funny mechanic to enhance your immersion and get into your role. After racing weekends you recieve acclaim points and increase your acclaim level. A higher level grants access to more sponsors.
More inclusive than ever before
If you don’t want to do all the managing stuff, you can start a classic career and concentrate on racing. Or you race it out in one of the many other modes such as single Grand Prix, time trial, championship or invitational challenges. Multiplayer fans, too, get everything they hoped for: Changing online live events, online custom leagues as well as ranked and unranked races. On top of that, the splitscreen celebrates its comeback for the first time since 2014.
A lot of simple tutorials make sure that newbies get quickly familiar with the game as well. Generally F1 2020 puts lots of effort into being as accessible as possible. There are many driving aids, which can be separately switched on and off according to your skill level and help you getting into the steering of your car step by step. If you are totally new to the series, you’ll find a brand-new casual mode which breaks down the whole game settings and physics to the basics. This should prevent anyone from being frustrated and appeals to those who just want to experience the F1 atmosphere casually.
The physics have been improved once more. According to franchise director Lee Mathers, Codemasters was able to access more feedback than ever from professional F1 drivers. This was mainly possible because of their participation in the Virtual GP series: “(…)this year is some of the big steps forward coming through how we calculate the inertia of the wheels and the tires. You’ll feel the cars have a much more solid and planted, grippier feel to them. That’s something we’ve had really good feedback on from the Formula 1 teams already this year.”
Indeed, differences between tyre-setups feel a little stronger than last year. F1 2020 still doesn’t fully reach sim level though.
It’s about what’s inside
OverTake tested F1 2020 on a regular PS4 and was a little surprised about the cinematics. While the gameplay looks quite similar to F1 2019, video sequences show rough character models, washed-up textures and bad anti-aliasing. This even gets worse in splitscreen mode. However, due to these drawbacks the game runs with a quite constant framerate around 60 FPS. Developer Codemasters has already announced to provide a day one patch on July 7. This might solve those technical issues already.
From a gameplay and content point of view, F1 2020 is already one of the biggest and most entertaining iterations of the series. Especially “My Team” which is pure delight for fans. Due to more options than ever before you can make the game your very own experience and dive deeper into the world and history of Formula One than in any other edition. New tracks like Zandvoort and Hanoi Circiut are fun to race and complete the package alongside many entertaining modes that offer enough variety to keep you motivated for a long time. Last but not least the “Schumacher Edition” will touch every heart of Michael Schumacher fans. By providing his most iconic cars from Jordan, Benetton and Ferrari this edition truly offers a jump back in time.
