‘F1 2016’ Review: The Fullest F1 Experience Yet
If you don’t want to read the full review, you can find a video version at the bottom, complete with sexy 4K footage.
Finally. After a couple years of competent but disappointing titles, Codemasters has returned to form with F1 2016, creating the fullest and most realistic digital interpretation of a Formula 1 race experience.
Let’s start with last year’s title. F1 2015 was a shell of a game that gutted most features from previous titles and replaced them with little more than new visuals and physics models. It was a perfectly serviceable racing title, but it felt hollow. F1 2016 cures all with a massive list of additions, improvements, and fan-requested feature returns.
The most notable return features is the Career Mode, which now allows for greater customization of your driver and allows you to play for up to 10 straight seasons, allowing you to actually forge your own racing heritage across the years, just as today’s most successful drivers have. Making that racing career feel even more exciting and immersive is the addition of fully rendered between race segments that include agent talks, contract negotiations, and more. You can even see some of the most recognizable faces in the sport sitting and chatting in the background. Yes, that is Toto Wolff you see walking around behind you as you are discussing your contract to join Mercedes-AMG Petronas.
While the off-track involvement has been improved immeasurably, it’s the on-track action that sees the most rewarding progress. Starting with practice sessions, everything in F1 2016 has been overhauled to improve player engagement. Your practice sessions are no longer annoying lap sessions to be ignored after you know the track. Rather, each practice session has been split into a trio of compelling mini games that provide you with real benefit. Each practice session completed gives you upgrade points that can be spent increasing the capabilities of your formula car. Just like the real sport, every lap on the track gives your engineers priceless data that can be used to enhance your racing rig. I will admit that once you are a dozen races into the season, the practice laps can get a bit tedious, but the game makes you acutely aware that the other teams won’t be sitting on their laurels, and any missed practice session will put you behind in development when compared against the other teams.
F1 2016 also added manual starts, manual pit entries, and formation laps to the Grand Prix racing weekend. These three things alone make the game much more demanding of you as a driver, and elevate the immersion and sense of being a real F1 driver. The slow formation laps allows you one last look at the track layout and give you the chance to get some heat into your tires and brakes to make sure they are operating at peak efficiency. It also adds a surreal moment before the race starts. A touch of calm before the storm, and it serves to get my adrenaline pumping every time.
The actual racing experience of F1 2016 is just as demanding as players have come to expect. Over the course of a full race distance, you are constantly battling between fuel usage, tire wear, and pit strategies. Push hard for the first few laps to fight your way to the front and your tires will wear out, leaving you with no grip and little ability to defend your position. Do you take the risk of staying out an extra couple laps on worn rubber, or do you add an additional pit stop and see if you can use the increased grip to muscle your way back up the pack? Your engineer is constantly coaching you along as you play, helping you to make such decisions, but the AI programming here is pretty minimal. Basically, if tires are worn, you’ll be asked to come in. On many occasions I had my engineer ask me to come in for fresh tires with less than five laps left in the race. Not going to happen there, buddy.
Other great additions to this particular racing formula include full 22-car multiplayer race sessions with a Championship mode for the dedicated among you, and a new time of day editor allows any track to be raced at any time of day. Yes, that means you can race Singapore without the stars overhead.
Even from a sensation standpoint, F1 2016 feels like a major improvement over last year’s title. Every sight and sound is better than before. While built with the same engine, there is just a new level of polish and refinement that covers everything you see. The cars look a little better, the environments are a touch crisper, and the audio design is some of the best in the industry. I wholly recommend playing with a nice audio headset to really appreciate the nuance put into the aural experience here.
From a system point of view, I was able to play F1 2016 on both the Xbox One and the PC, and as you may expect the PC did provide the best experience. The Xbox One version plays great and holds steady framerates, but there were some visual hiccups and very occasional frame dip issues if there was a particularly gnarly crash ahead of me, sending shrapnel and dust everywhere. The console experience of F1 2016 is wonderful, but to really experience the best it has to offer, the PC title takes the crown.
Not since the exemplary F1 2013, with its inclusive race modes, entertaining physics model, and much-loved classic cars and tracks have I been so smitten with an F1 racing game. F1 2016 finally fixes the missteps and stumbles of the last few years to create a racing game that feels cohesive, challenging and true to its source. The AI, physics model, and visuals are the best yet, and the small touches and additions — like pit boards and formation laps — create the fullest F1 experience yet.
F1 2016 was reviewed on both the Xbox One and the Project Stingray PC using code provided by Codemasters.
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