F1 2015: fast, complex and dead inside, just like the real thing
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Loading... - J. Oliveira
- 14 Jul 2020
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Codemasters' latest officially-licensed Formula 1 video game arrives with the 2015 season still in full swing. But with the sport undergoing an extended existential crisis, how does it manage to blend deadening accuracy with entertaining and exhilarating racing?
Official F1 games have always been founded first and foremost on the concept of accuracy. The idea that a video game played on a flat television screen can recreate the sensation of travelling at 190 MPH in a barely-functioning concept car, and all the hype, money and drama that surrounds the sport, is clearly as nonsensical today as it was in 1982, but that's the aim, and that's on what it must be judged.
In that specific sense, F1 2015 is the most accurate Formula One simulation yet. It is gorgeous, exhilarating and tense, but also devoid of personality, lacking in substantial entertainment-enriching innovation, is sometimes overly-complex and overall lacks a genuine sense of soul, or the sense that anyone involved is having anything approaching a good time.
The basics you would expect from previous games (and any F1 sim) are all there: 20 tracks from both the 2014 and 2015 seasons, all the cars, drivers and liveries, dynamic weather systems, a Championship season mode and customisable assists, setups and controls, all of which let you find the right balance of arcade gaming and virtually impossible real-life twitchiness for your own blend of skills, patience and time to invest in the game.
As the first game in the series to reach the Xbox One and PS4, there is also a visual upgrade which largely delivers the sort of new generation racing experience you'd expect -- though it comes off pretty poorly in any direct comparison with both Forza 5 and Project Cars. In particular the game looks excellent in low light and rainy conditions, largely because both to some extent obscure some of the more boilerplate scenery, static or curiously half-built bystanders and lacklustre textures.
There are nice moments, particularly on circuits like Monaco which are naturally more rich with detail, it all renders in 60FPS and some of the newer circuits are more colourful than you might remember. But it's not groundbreaking: what you get is a good-looking, sharp recreation of the F1 tracks you know, love and loathe. What you don't get is a bump-by-bump and puddle-by-puddle reproduction of those locations, as promised by Forza 6, or new camera modes to better reproduce the sensation of speed, as in Project Cars. There are also glaring rough edges, in particular the marionette-like look of the drivers cavorting on the podium which don't so much cross the uncanny valley as slam headlong into its depths in seventh gear.
In terms of gameplay, F1 2015 is a genuine step forward. The cars handle extremely well, with snappy steering and brakes, but even new players can jump in for an exciting experience with all the assists turned up. The difference between wet and dry tracks, new and scorched tyres and even different fuel loads is obvious without being cartoonish, and interactions with your pit crew are straightforward and clear, with regular and useful updates coming in over your radio that you can actually understand and adjust your strategy accordingly. The net result are races that are exciting in a careful, clear-headed way, lacking the hilarity of other less-serious racing games, but augmenting each spin around the track with a sense of intelligence.
The AI is also improved, with computer-controlled players able to judge when to defend against your latest reckless dive up the inside, and when to let you reap your own rewards and slam into the nearest barrier -- which, unless you're used to the handling, you'll do often at first.
There are obvious problems with F1 2015, however. Most egregiously, there is a serious lack of content on show. While the game has a regular and "Pro" season mode (the pro version ups the difficulty and restricts you to the most realistic camera angle), quick races, a formless time trial mode and online races, it lacks any in-depth career mode or ability to make your own story outside of the strict F1 story lines. The excellent classic car content from F1 2013 is missing again, and so is split-screen multiplayer. There are still no safety cars. It all feels raw and a little half-baked, as though there just wasn't enough time to get everything done -- which, given the decision to release halfway through the season and not at the end, as in previous years, is probably true.
The other, more-longstanding issue with F1 2015 is that the structure of its races are still too taut to make possible the sort of complex, intricate drama on which the sport currently relies -- at least on the days when Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg aren't so far ahead it barely feels worth watching. At this year's drizzly British Grand Prix, the entire race hinged on a lap's difference in switching to intermediate tyres while at Monaco, Hamilton lost a race based on a slightly miscalculated pit decision. The state of F1 today is that races are won and lost in these tiny, inscrutable moments which are not, often, very interesting to anyone other than die-hard fans. F1 2015 has to balance this nuance with the explosive action you want from a driving game, and ultimately it can't quite pull the magic trick off -- it's almost always too fun to be accurate, and occasionally is too accurate to be fun.
CONCLUSION
As an officially licensed sport sim, F1 2015 has a clear advantage over other driving games; it has real-life context, a honed race and season structure, and doesn't feel like a simulation of children playing with toy cars, like other recent driving sims. It's tight, exciting and very often compelling. But with a dearth of imagination, some strange omissions and an overall lack of joy, the game feels vaguely dead inside. On that basis, it is a totally accurate F1 simulation.
http://www.wired.co.uk/reviews/games/2015-07/f1-2015-review
