With the full game releasing on July 1, we had one more chance to give EA Sports F1 22 a try before launch. Our newest look at the racing game is all about F1 Life hub and the Pirelli Hot Lap mode, where you can drive expensive and charming supercars.
It might sound weird, but the biggest change we’ve noticed as we got access to this new build is the EA Sports component. This is the second Codemasters-created F1 game under EA, of course, but last year EA’s influence was just a logo animation before the main menu. This year, Electronic Arts is written all over the place, right down to the signature menu music, something you’ve seen happen in FIFA, Madden, NHL games in the past. Previous Formula 1 games never had anything like that before.
Living the F1 life
F1 22 has two different modes that are entirely new to the franchise: F1 Life and Pirelli Hot Lap. Both serve as a gateway for introducing supercars, coming for the first time in the modern history of Formula 1 games. F1 Life is not really a full-fledged game mode – it’s more of a hub where you have a house you can furnish by leveling up in a shared progression bar between every mode (race weekends, time trials, Career modes, and so on).
F1 Life allows you to put your unlocked supercars on display investing one Supercar Token (at least in this build, there’s no ability to buy any of these via microtransactions), and choosing slots where to showcase them at your in-game house. On top of that, you also have an avatar you can see inside the house, or at your friends’ virtual place, customize with clothes, glasses, watches, and more luxury items.
With this hub, Codemasters is clearly aiming at opening up the Formula 1 games to a wider audience, not necessarily identifying with the hardcore sport fan as in the recent past. The idea – and mind you, this is happening in the sport itself – is to get closer and closer to the glamor side of F1 through those luxury items.
It doesn’t seem impressive at the moment, nor something that could justify story mode Braking Point skipping this year’s game, as suggested by Codemasters. We’ll have to play a bit more of the game to see if all this is enough to attract and keep more casual players engaged, or build a deeper driving experience for the series’ aficionados.
Pirelli Hot Lap
Taking inspiration from the real-life events, the newest F1 22 build included Pirelli Hot Lap, a mode where you can drive supercars from brands including McLaren, AMG, Aston Martin, and Ferrari. The mode itself isn’t especially deep – you can’t play across full races nor you have dedicated career paths – but time trials are still there for you to enjoy entire Formula 1 circuits inside exotic street cars. It feels amazing.
Pirelli Hot Lap features select scenarios including, but not limited to, overtake challenges and drifting. You can choose among three difficulty levels, although even the highest doesn’t really feel massively proving – maybe just drifting between checkpoints needs a little tuning. When tasked with overtaking an AI opponent, you’ll be required to do that starting ahead of them, from the same point, and from behind – doing so, with a strict F1-like ruleset asking you to drive absolutely clean, is extremely satisfying.
Looking at Grid Legends and other racing games from the studio, it makes sense for Codemasters ro take that kind of driving experience and recycle it for F1 22. It’s a much more demanding experience here, of course. When starting a challenge, you need to dose the throttle so to have the right speed by carefully pulling the right trigger, and slowing down requires precise timing.
From this point of view, Pirelli Hot Lap is surprisingly fun to master, and something that really leaves you with the impression that maybe Codemasters wanted supercars to have a bigger role throughout the game than what ended up being. Speaking of which, it still hurts that, while 2022’s F1 safety cars will actually both be playable, you can only have them if you pre-order the Champions Edition or buy the DLC.
We also got to play a bit of the My Team mode, and F1 22 overhauls it with the premise of starting from three different points – whether established and rich, or a newcomer who has to fight their way up the food chain, you’ll have several scenarios here to play with. We’ll dig deeper into that when our F1 22 review is ready in a matter of weeks, so stay tuned for more.
Written by Paolo Sirio on behalf of GLHF.
