F1 2015 Review
Available on Xbox One, PS4 and PC | Metacritic 67/100 | 21 July 2015
What is it? The first game of the Codemasters official F1 franchise to hit this new generation of consoles.
The Codemasters F1 franchise was really starting to suffer from annual fatigue in the last generation, with each game only brining minor differences to the last, even with the big change over to hybrid turbo F1 cars. F1 2015 offers up better visuals and smoother frame rates, but is that really all? As a matter of fact, it’s sad to report that this new title seems to have less content than before. Besides being able to switch between the 2014 and 2015 seasons, the game is limited to two championship modes (normal and a hardcore version with no assists, full race length etc). Gone are the great career modes that had you playing out scenarios or doing driver tests, leaving you with nothing but practice > qualify > race over and over again as the standard fare of time trials, quick races and a multiplayer mode that is terribly hurt by bugs, but more on that later.
“…its current state should have the developers pretty embarrassed”
Actual gameplay feels really slick for the most part, but possibly as a result of the new hybrid cars, even veteran racing gamers such as myself found the cars just too much of a chore to wrestle without traction control on when using a controller, rather opting to up AI difficulty and keep the traction control on. The new visuals are a big step up from before though and look great, with the new console 60 frames per second feature being the biggest and really giving a very smooth feeling to the gameplay. The Xbox One version we tested does however look like its constantly slightly blurred out of focus, which we can only assume comes as a result of the sub-1080p resolution it runs (PS4 is set at 1080p).
There’s a major flaw in F1 2015 though… and that is that it’s incredibly buggy in its current state. We experienced everything from repeating on-screen text, assists being stuck on when they shouldn’t, flashbacks respawning us in the wrong places and more. Maybe it will be patched, maybe it won’t but we have to take it for what it is at the moment, and its current state should have the developers pretty embarrassed.
There’s a lot of potential for a great game here, but it seems we may have to wait for F1 2016 to experience it.
oVg Reality is an illusion July 17, 2015
Hence the reason why I only drive the Formula Rookie, C, B and A cars in Project Cars. The F1 games have always disappointed me after the game breaking bugs of 2011.
60fps PROJECT CARS for the win. Im not bothered paying all that money just for the Formula 1 roster and logos.
Nick de Bruyne July 17, 2015
I did actually play the two games back to back to feel it out and the truth of the matter is that F1 2015 does feel good when all is working, and its nice playing the actual teams and so on but yes, games like Project CARS are a huge stick in the mud for these guys now because they technically offer up so many of the racing experiences for the price of just one game.
Aries July 17, 2015
Whats with the visual/tech 1 star? Haven’t bought one since my PS3, was considering this for my PS4
Nick de Bruyne July 17, 2015
From a technical standpoint, while the game may look decent and run smoothly, it has a blurry sub-hd resolution that makes it look out of focus, but the MAIN reason for the low score is an insane amount of bugs dragging the tech score right down. Very, very buggy game
Aries July 17, 2015
That sucks, luckily getting Project Cars soon, waiting for delivery, so that should suffice, very into authentic though, so abit disappointed
Nick de Bruyne July 17, 2015
Project CARS is pretty fantastic (review is up on the site as well). One of the best parts about it is what was said below, it may not have lots of cars but it has so many disciplines and series’ that you really have so much ‘racing game’ to play with.
F1 2015 will probably be decent a patch or three down the line, but in its current state its got issues. Even once the issues are done though, its still a shame that its lighter on content than the previous games. Gameplay is really slick though when all is going well.
Aries July 17, 2015
Ive played project cars, and loved it, struggled alot but was worth it when I put in some decent lap times, and the sounds of the car engines is insane, once I get my copy, doubt I will go after F1, pointless spending on two racing sims where one is clearly better