F1 24 PS5/PC review | Vic B’Stard’s State of Play
There is no sport quite as glamorous as Formula One. F1 24 complements the iconic motorsports championship with a similar level of polish and finesse.
Since 2010 Codemasters have been producing Formula One racing games for Windows PC, as well as Xbox and PlayStation consoles. Bringing over technology from its Dirt Rally games, Codemasters secured itself as the master of the racing game. Now under the wing of EA Sports, Codemasters continues its legacy with the 2024 Formula One season.
F1 24 is packed with ways to play. As well as the 2024 F1 season you can also race the F2 2023 season.
The career mode allows you to jump right into Formula One or work your way up from Formula Two. You can also set up your championship, choosing to have practice sessions and qualifying or just jump straight in. Then there are time trials and quick races and a whole raft of multiplayer championships and competitions.
The game adapts a role-playing game style of play with upgrades and accolades earned during races. This is particularly prevalent in the F1 World section of the game which features a campaign of sorts that allows players to experience the game’s many different modes from multiplayer to arcade races.
The standout feature of F1 24 is the way that it caters for a wide audience. Newcomers can enjoy the game with a gamepad just as much as those with a full racing set-up. There are a host of assists like racing line, braking and even steering to help newcomers get into the game. There’s also a flashback facility to rewind the race if you make a mistake.
The game plays well on PlayStation 5, offering console owners a full Formula One experience. The PC version not only performs well on a high-end gaming rig but also on lower-spec machines, including portable gaming PCs. F1 24 ran flawlessly on a ROG Ally. The game has full support for Nvidia’s DLSS, Intel’s XeSS and AMD’s FSR2 to get the maximum performance across a range of PC hardware.
PC gamers with VR kits get to play the game in the absolute best way possible, especially if you have a wheel as well. Codemasters do like to treat VR gamers with dedicated virtual reality compatibility in its racing games. The WRC rally game is next-level VR, as is F1 24. If you have a beefy PC and are a fan of F1 get yourself a Meta Quest 3 and prepare to be blown away by a racing experience that only be beaten by getting in the cockpit of a real F1 car.
The only issue with F1 24 is that it is a victim of its own success. Like all annually iterative games, F1 24 feels very much like its predecessor. It’s had a polish-up, particularly with the driver models. The tracks have been updated as have the teams, and, of course, the cars. When you are racing around the track, though, it still feels just like F1 23.
But that doesn’t make the game bad. It is superb. Sure, the menus and modes suffer from EA’s corporate fingerprints, but anyone who plays EA’s otherwise impeccable sports games will have long got over that. It’s just unless you are a huge fan, or you’ve not played an F1 game in a while it’s not exactly a must-buy if you’ve got F1 23.
Outstanding visuals, and a multitude of game modes (albeit tied up in a sometimes confusing menu system) make F1 24 the best Formula One game I’ve played. It’s accessible and feature-packed offering good value for money on any system, PC VR in particular.
Originally published at https://vicbstard.com on June 20, 2024.
