Codemasters has a depressingly poor track-record of leaving these games with the same issues and then starting work on next years title, but they all end up similar, so I wonder what they'redoing all year and if they deserve my money.
You have to put in your details before you're allowed to reach the menu, which is a terrible idea if user data is lost (reinstalling the game, or theCodemasters has a depressingly poor track-record of leaving these games with the same issues and then starting work on next years title, but they all end up similar, so I wonder what they'redoing all year and if they deserve my money.
You have to put in your details before you're allowed to reach the menu, which is a terrible idea if user data is lost (reinstalling the game, or the dreaded savegame corruption that plagued previous titles). There's no mouse input, and even the button layout is awkward, like taking 43 button presses just for a time trial on Abu Dhabi in a Williams. Why is the PC version so expensive when it's a lazy console port that crashes even after the release patches?
Since F1 2010 the physics has been problematic, but F1 2018 was fun in being able to counter-steer to save potential spins early, yet F1 2019 goes back to the problem of no-grip spins that can't be recovered. Games are supposed to be interactive and skill-based, where's the fun of watching my car spin until stopping and not being able to do anything about it? I was excited to try the F2 cars, but they just understeer horribly and have weak brakes.
I tried an online race, the penalty system is still terrible, like getting a time penalty for "corner cutting" after someone rammed me over a corner. For some reason everyone in my race seemed to lose connection one by one. There's an inbuilt league system, but it has a license mechanic that tracks your attendance percentage and safety rating, which will be useless due to the connection problems and the hopeless penalties.
The AI isn't too bad, and singleplayer races are an important part of F1 2019. I'm sure many people like doing short races, yet you can't set the race distance between 5 and 15 laps (no options between 5 laps or 25% race length). Time trials are slightly better than F1 2018 in terms of less stuttering, but there's still the distraction of having "new leaderboard" or "new rival" or "new setup available" text appearing mid-lap while you're trying to concentrate.
I tried it with 3 wheels, failing completely to get the DFGT steering degrees set to 360 so it matches the game, but eventually managed to get the G29 working at 360. Logitech is probably to blame for those particular problems, but Codemasters are equally as bad at keeping their end running, with F1 2010 and F1 2013 missing from the Steam store (and probably not working). The Thrustmaster T300 seems to work fine atleast.
The thing that really irks me with F1 2019 in particular is the pricing. How many years have the customers had to endure the same issues in these games, cars falling through the track; trouble with settings; program crashes; savegames; penalties; physics; disconnects, and Codemasters keep getting the F1 license and they keep setting the price high. But now they're selling skins...
I remember seeing customisation done right in Need for Speed 3 back in 1998 where you could pick the exact hue of your car, and again later in Race07 where SimBin gave you car templates to draw your own car skins you could share. But in F1 2019 where they could have done something groundbreaking there's silly things - like the only choice of a racing suit being blue or green, while others suit colours have a pricetag of £0.99 each.
The reason I think skins are appreciated in CS:GO was because they were community-made, with a cut to the community creators, and the skins could be traded if the owner got bored of them. Stickers complemented the skins and gave them personality. Codemasters had implemented paid skins badly in comparison.
There's day-1 DLC, microtransactions, and even a pay-to-win style early access version if you paid more money (allowing you to gain valuable experience over the players that went for the cheaper version before the "release day"). It's clear that Codemasters priority is to squeeze as much money as they can out of the F1 license and then start working on the next title, leaving the last one in whatever state they released it in. F1 2019 feels like the cheap experience of a free to play game, yet has a high (underserved) pricetag.
Also, the blatant corruption of "critics" being friendly with publishers and being the only ones allowed to review the game even while the customers are playing it before the "release date" has not gone unnoticed. The "release date" is just a meaningless excuse to charge more money to play early, and then not allow genuine reviews by the customers during that period to criticize what turns out to be flawed product during a time of potentially high volume sales.
There's an inconvenient number of negative reviews by paying customers for the Codemasters F1 games, and there's a striking discrepancy between the customers average score and the "critics" average scores across them.… Expand
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