Simulated racing games have been consistently good over the last few years, thanks to franchises like Forza Motorsport that have given the genre new depths. Many other studios have followed suit because these types of games are such fun to play. They allow players who are experts in the field to create a car build to their liking, plus newcomers can easily adapt to a more realistic style of gameplay. The annual Formula 1 game series is a great example of that by letting players shape the season the way they see fit.
Since F1 22 is out, it's become one of the major releases of July; F1 fans have something to play alongside the current season. The latest entry does bring a lot of new things to the series that fans will like. Although F1 22 is a great game, it's far from perfect. From gameplay to technical issues, players have been complaining about them being persistent and how they are negatively impacting gameplay. This list should give players a good idea of what the problems are and how they'll influence how they drive.​​​​​​​
5 Quick Practice
Initially, in the older F1 games and even in the real sport, constructors could have eight engines throughout the season. This would make tuning and customization a lot more streamlined. Currently, this looks different and is a lot more technical. Rather than having a whole engine to work with, players are now limited to a few components and managing the main power unit. This can limit a lot of what players can do with their car.
To make matters worse, players who would do the quick practice would think they're testing out their car on a track with new components. In reality, it's a different story and one that harms the player more. Because as players get their shiny new parts and test them, they would assume the practice doesn't impact the parts at all. It does, and it does quite a bit and quickly at the same time with wear and tear. This forces players to manage those parts more, which can be annoying, and see their overall performance drastically fall. S,o if players don't want to wear down in their components, doing the main races would benefit them more.
4 Teammate Upgrades
One of the main components of the sport of F1 is maximizing points, and that is done best by having two drivers. Since each team will have two drivers, they can output more points per race, including the qualifications rounds. An area that players may have neglected in last year's F1 21 was the My Team Mode, which is the career mode of the F1 games. This problem is a rather big one because it makes gameplay harder, especially if they are playing on a harder difficulty.
In this section, players can upgrade their AI teammate. This makes them faster, more alert, and overall better at racing. The issue is, no matter how much players spend on boosting their teammate, they don't see any improvements. So the teammate will always operate based on the initial stats. This is a massive issue because players won't be able to get maximum points since the AI teammate will always be slower than they are. Hopefully, in a later patch, this will be fixed since this aspect is crucial to winning a season.
3 Inconsistent AI
Just like upgrading the teammate, this is a massive issue that hinders gameplay quite a bit. In F1 22, the main race is set up based on qualification. So depending on where players and their teammate land in the qualifiers, that will be their position on the grid on race day. Now, the problem is how inconsistent the AI is, not just in this department but overall. However, it is less subtle in this area. Because players will be preparing for the race based on how each driver acted during the qualifiers, winning the race should, on paper, be easy.
In reality, it's oddly not the case. In fact, the AI acts differently in the main race, meaning they are faster than how they were in qualifiers. So players will be unprepared to deal with that change because now racers will be a tenth of a second quicker in many cases. In a sport that's like F1, that tenth of a second is quite a massive difference, and even more so on a quicker car like Red Bulls.
2 AI Overpowered On Straightaways
The best part about all the F1 games is how diverse and challenging each track can be, which in turn gives the game a more immersive feel. F1 22 increases all that for the better, but as this list goes, there are tons of issues. Most if not all the tracks feature straightaways, which are long or short straight lines on the track. These spots allow players to unleash the full potential of their car, which can make them faster. However, the issue is that regardless of how much players spend on their car, the AI is quicker.
If players opt to use some slower constructors like Haas or AlphaTurni, they'll have an even harder time. The AI being overpowered during these sections gives them an unfair advantage, especially if they are faster, because at that point, it may become impossible for players to catch up. The AI being unbalanced in this section can be relative because players may have a faster car themselves, which can make catching up easier.
1 Crashes/Freezes
These technical issues have plaguedF1 22 since its launch, with Codemasters working tirelessly to fix everything. At the same time, F1 22 does improve on the best parts of the last entries in many ways, first is by overhauling the engine to give a more realistic look, and second, by making it more accessible. However, even though the game is newer and with new tech, it faces newer issues. Many players across all platforms have been reporting F1 22 will only work for a few minutes and then crash.
Codemasters has released workarounds for most issues, though they still persist in the game after a while. This issue makes the rest of the problems on this list much worse because players will have to deal with unbalanced cars and drivers on top of the game itself not working. In turn, this could make both long-time fans and new ones step away from it.
F1 22 is available now on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, and PC.