F1 23 review – return of the racing soap opera

This year’s F1 game has a great single-player storyline, some judicious technical and structural tweaks, and the brand new Las Vegas track.

In the real world, Formula One in 2023 has so far proven worryingly predictable, with the Red Bull car a class above the rest of the field. Happily, this year’s Formula One game, F1 23 – once again developed by Codemasters and published by EA, which bought the British developer in 2021 – gives fans the chance to redress that balance. In fact, it’s all too easy to jump into an inferior car, stack things in your favour, and leave Verstappen and Perez eating your dust.

Creating an annual version of a licensed sports game can be a thankless task, as any given year’s instalment can be dangerously similar to its predecessor. But Codemasters has clearly been busy the past year, since F1 23 boasts plenty that is new. Perhaps its most anticipated element is the return of Braking Point, its single-player story mode; Codemasters has settled into a two year development cycle with Braking Point, so we can expect that to be absent again next year, as it was in F1 22.

Under the bonnet, some pretty fundamental tweaks have been made, most notably to the handling model and the underlying physics engine. Meanwhile, F1 Life, which debuted in F1 22 as an aspirational taste of an F1 driver’s life (although its true purpose was to shoehorn lootboxes into the game) has this year morphed into F1 World, which now takes a hub-like form and acts as a repository for some of the games more extraneous elements, such as what were known as Challenges, along with a more tyro-friendly way into multiplayer racing.

F1 23 also offers the only chance anyone will get to race on the hugely anticipated Las Vegas circuit (which will be assembled in real-life for the first time in November) and includes Qatar’s returning Losail circuit, which debuted on the F1 calendar in 2021 but was absent last year.

Perhaps the principal reason for buying F1 23 (as with the FIFA games, even franchise devotees don’t necessarily buy every annual update) is the return of Braking Point, and if you liked the last one you will adore this year’s. It’s pretty meaty, with 17 (albeit shortish) chapters, and picks up more or less where F1 2021’s Braking Point left off, with many of the same characters – including Aiden Jackson, Devon Butler, and Casper Akkerman – except this time around, the action centres on a fictional new team on the grid, Konnersport.

It’s gloriously soap opera style nonsense, and cleverly lets you play as a range of key characters, both on and off-track. And given that it starts in Formula One’s 2022 season, it manages to combine a certain amount of recent nostalgia with some great what if scenarios. Its production values are through the roof and its protagonists get away with all sorts of behaviour that would never be tolerated in the real-life Formula One paddock; this year’s Braking Point is, in short, a triumph.

Braking Point’s storyline puts you in the driver’s seat at a pretty tasty and varied selection of tracks, which constitutes the perfect warm-up for F1 23’s Career mode. Wisely, that and the associated My Team mode – which casts you as owner of a new team, as well as its principal driver – are largely unchanged from last year. My Team’s initial scenarios, which let you choose whether to start from first principles or jump into a more established set-up, have been tweaked a bit but otherwise both elements are the same as before. Given that Career, in particular, provided a perfect facsimile of a real-life Formula One career, that decision makes eminently good sense.

F1 World, however, may divide opinion. F1 Life was clearly aimed at those who spend most of their waking hours on Instagram or TikTok, and F1 World still gives you a driver avatar and the chance to buy all manner of virtual clothes, customise your virtual apartment, and so on. But it also acts as a hub from which you can race against other F1 23 owners, either live or in the form of Drivatars, which mimic your online friends’ driving styles.

F1 World has its own progression system, in the form of Podium Pass XP, but this time you can’t buy your way up that particular ladder, but must instead participate in various ways. Primarily via a new mode entitled Series, which has some resemblance to the Challenges from previous iterations of the franchise, and offers a commendably varied raft of activities. But you must also head to F1 World to participate in one-off Grands Prix and Time Trials, and it acts as the receptacle for daily and weekly events, plus Ranked Multiplayer, for those taking their first tentative steps at racing online.

In most of F1 World’s activities and events, you drive a special F1 World car – pretty much a generic Formula One car – which you can upgrade as you level up on Podium Pass (a process which, in practice, happens pretty quickly since F1 23 throws loot boxes at you quite generously). In practice, the F1 World car feels pretty much like the rest of the game’s Formula One cars, albeit not as fast until you’ve levelled it up enough.

F1 World is actually well structured and makes an awful lot more sense than F1 Life did, but you do get the impression that the game is constantly trying to shepherd you towards it. Those new to Formula One games will find it handy, however, as it does lower the entry bar for playing the game online.

Once you build up your multiplayer reputation in F1 World’s ranked multiplayer mode, you’ll eventually be able to graduate to the game’s separate League Racing element – which is where you’ll find the esports hardcore. Beyond that, you can indulge in some sofa-based competitive action via the split-screen mode and, as in F1 22, you can pursue a two-player career with a friend.

Following Codemasters’ physics and handling tweaks the cars feel better than ever: thrillingly fast and grippy and, as in real-life, this year’s cars can take corners flat which in previous years required small lifts. Graphically, the game gets impressively close to photorealism and elements like the commentary and post-race interviews are immaculate.

But perhaps the most significant tweak, in gameplay terms, has been a redesign of the game’s underlying controller technology, which is particularly noticeable when you play F1 23 using a gamepad. At last, the right trigger gives you a similar level of throttle control to what you would get from a pedal setup (making tight, twisty circuits much less frustrating to drive) and the game’s force-feedback feels almost preternatural.

So what of the Las Vegas circuit? Well, it’s going to create quite a stir. It is, of course, a street circuit, with a couple of tight, technical sections where the barriers loom large. But it also has one pretty long straight and an absolutely almighty one. It’s very much along similar lines to the Baku track and should breed some exciting racing.

Formula One fanatics will be keen to buy F1 23 just to find out what the new Las Vegas track is like. But the good news is that there are plenty of other reasons to buy it. The cars it features have never felt better, Braking Point is an absolute blast, and even F1 World has graduated from an element of the game which could be comfortably ignored to one which is genuinely worthwhile. Plus, it’s undoubtedly the most accessible Formula One game ever, for those who haven’t previously discovered the joys of topflight motorsports.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £69.99
Publisher: EA Sports
Developer: Codemasters
Release Date: 15th June 2023
Age Rating: 3

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