EA/Codemasters F1 2021

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Rodster
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EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by Rodster »

https://www.planetf1.com/news/f1-2021-r ... -revealed/

Of course there's a new story mode called "Braking Point" if EA has anything to do with it. There are some new features worth noting:

1) The updated Career mode will feature Real-Season Start, allowing players to begin at any stage of the season with real-time driver and constructor standings.

2) Portimao, Imola and Jeddah, three new circuits to the game, will be available to all players as free post-launch content.

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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by pk500 »

Portimao! :D What a fantastic roller-coaster of a circuit. Have driven it in other games. So underrated.
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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by Dave »

pk500 wrote:
Fri Apr 16, 2021 10:44 am
Portimao! :D What a fantastic roller-coaster of a circuit. Have driven it in other games. So underrated.
Now I keep thinking PORTIMAO sung to the tune of "Panama"

One nice thing about the EA acquisition is that the game should have a 10-hour trial period at launch.
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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by dbdynsty25 »

Dave wrote:
Fri Apr 16, 2021 11:06 am
pk500 wrote:
Fri Apr 16, 2021 10:44 am
Portimao! :D What a fantastic roller-coaster of a circuit. Have driven it in other games. So underrated.
Now I keep thinking PORTIMAO sung to the tune of "Panama"

One nice thing about the EA acquisition is that the game should have a 10-hour trial period at launch.
That's great, since I usually play F1 for about 10 hours each year it comes out, even tho they are phenomenal games usually, for some reason I just get bored of open wheel circuit racing. lol

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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by Zlax45 »

Dave wrote:
Fri Apr 16, 2021 11:06 am
pk500 wrote:
Fri Apr 16, 2021 10:44 am
Portimao! :D What a fantastic roller-coaster of a circuit. Have driven it in other games. So underrated.
Now I keep thinking PORTIMAO sung to the tune of "Panama"

One nice thing about the EA acquisition is that the game should have a 10-hour trial period at launch.
I have actually been to the city of Portimao and highly recommend that area of Portugal!
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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by GB_Simo »

Dave wrote:
Fri Apr 16, 2021 11:06 am
pk500 wrote:
Fri Apr 16, 2021 10:44 am
Portimao! :D What a fantastic roller-coaster of a circuit. Have driven it in other games. So underrated.
Now I keep thinking PORTIMAO sung to the tune of "Panama"
I've substituted one particular track into a song so often that I'm now pretty much convinced the Beach Boys had success in the late 80s with a song called Pocono. They get there fast and then they take it slow.

The story mode thing interests me. I've never minded a silly little story in a racing game - the first couple of ToCA Race Driver games were good for that, particularly the second one with its mock documentary series playing out in the background - and would have liked Codemasters to put a bit more effort into F1 2019's characters, rather than taking them through a limited F2 scenario and then forgetting Devon Butler ever existed. It sounds like Devon returns this year, which is fine with me - there's the potential for an entertaining pantomime antagonist in the style of Stellan from Race Driver 2.

I note that the EA backlash has begun already on social media, led largely by folk who didn't notice that the F1 series had microtransactions in it last year too. Never mind.
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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by Dave »

Holy sh*t, STELLAN!
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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by Rodster »

Supposedly, the story mode i.e. "Braking Point" is pretty good, according to the Eurogamer review. However, I was getting my hopes up thinking we would get a 10 hour trial and i'm not seeing it in EA Play. It is for sale on the XBOX store as the game was released a day early on Steam.

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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by DChaps »

Have been playing on Xbox One X today and just constant, constant disconnects. Hopefully just first day issues.

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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by GB_Simo »

DChaps wrote:
Fri Jul 16, 2021 5:01 pm
Have been playing on Xbox One X today and just constant, constant disconnects. Hopefully just first day issues.
When it's working, are you finding it significantly improved over 2020, mate? This is the first time in a long time that I've managed to successfully hold off from a day one purchase, having got the sense from preview footage that this year's model didn't have a huge amount to differentiate it from last year's.
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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by Zlax45 »

pk500 wrote:
Fri Apr 16, 2021 10:44 am
Portimao! :D What a fantastic roller-coaster of a circuit. Have driven it in other games. So underrated.
Debating on this game...this would be a selling point
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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by pk500 »

Did I read correctly that Championship has been eliminated from F1 2021? If you want to play a full season, you must do the Story Mode?

If true, combine that with the elimination of the classic cars, and I have almost no interest in F1 2021. I'll stick to 2020.
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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by GB_Simo »

pk500 wrote:
Sun Jul 18, 2021 10:53 pm
Did I read correctly that Championship has been eliminated from F1 2021? If you want to play a full season, you must do the Story Mode?

If true, combine that with the elimination of the classic cars, and I have almost no interest in F1 2021. I'll stick to 2020.
Yikes. Surely not? I know the Championships mode has gone, so no more Street Series, Classic Sprint Series and whatever else, but surely they've left it so you can still just play a full season? Yet I can't seem to find any confirmation of that online. Concerning.

I'm still intrigued by Braking Point and I've enjoyed a few clips of AI cars making realistic-looking mistakes, having convincing spins on their own and so on, which we've not seen in the series previously. Add those in, but take away the championships, the classic cars and the alternate circuit layouts (the 'short' circuits at Bahrain, Silverstone etc are apparently gone) and I'm very much in favour of waiting until this arrives on Game Pass. I've got no interest in the deluxe content either - there's something really jarring about being able to hire Senna, Schumacher or Prost to drive for my modern-day team - so, to my massive surprise, I feel very little compulsion to dash out and make a purchase.

Of course, any second now, Don's going to log in and give us chapter and verse on how much better the handling is, how convincing the AI are and how you don't even notice that a bunch of tracks are either missing or no longer accurate, at which point I'll be all in again...
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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by TCrouch »

I'm not into F1 games at all, but I've enjoyed Braking Point quite a bit.

Cars are still way too heavy/floaty at the front end for a F1 machine. F3 cars are ten times worse. AI is still too passive but I've had fun with the Braking Point mode almost exclusively to this point. If only they'd ever have triple screen support or VR, it would be awesome to dive into more.

Handling is predictable and easy to throw around. Too easy to catch it, but you have to be smooth on throttles to get off the corners well.

I mean, it's pretty much exactly what I thought it would be, for better or worse.

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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by Rodster »

TCrouch wrote:
Wed Jul 21, 2021 2:19 pm
I'm not into F1 games at all, but I've enjoyed Braking Point quite a bit.

Cars are still way too heavy/floaty at the front end for a F1 machine. F3 cars are ten times worse. AI is still too passive but I've had fun with the Braking Point mode almost exclusively to this point. If only they'd ever have triple screen support or VR, it would be awesome to dive into more.

Handling is predictable and easy to throw around. Too easy to catch it, but you have to be smooth on throttles to get off the corners well.

I mean, it's pretty much exactly what I thought it would be, for better or worse.
I think Codie's have done a solid job with the series, better than when EA and Sony held the F1 license. It's not perfect by any means but I think they have hit a sweet spot to allow anyone whatever the skill level to enjoy the game.

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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by GB_Simo »

I may have bought F1 2021. For those who entered the sweepstake, the winning entry is "the last weekend of August". In my defence, it had been very lightly discounted.

You already know whether or not you're going to like this. If for any reason you're unsure, there are free trials available now in the XBox and PlayStation stores, but F1 2021 follows the pattern of recent releases - a tweak here, a tune-up there, a bunch of disappearing features and ooh hang on that doesn't sound right.

The thing is, though, I don't miss the classic content. A properly implemented, carefully curated and sensibly grouped set of classic cars, maybe with the occasional old-time layout to race them on...well, I'd have missed that greatly, but we weren't particularly close to that, nor were we getting any closer. What's left is this year's F1 cars, last year's F2 cars, the returning My Team and Driver Career modes, the ability to run your own selection of tracks via Grand Prix mode and some really, really good virtual racing.

Oh, and Braking Point. I didn't especially care about any of it, I'll not bother playing it again, but I did still enjoy myself. In part, that's because the production values are strong, there's some fun in guessing the next twist in what's a pretty hackneyed storyline and everyone involved in voicing the tale is giving it more effort than it probably deserves. In much larger part, it's because I don't see how you could ever run laps in this game without having fun.

There are no major surprises contained within the handling model, with the main change being a balance shift towards understeer, as experienced by the real cars this year after some aerodynamic rule changes. I quite like it, because it takes corners that were easily flat-out last year and makes them very nearly but not quite flat, which not only places an additional emphasis upon player skill but makes you feel like an absolute hero when you get through Copse at Silverstone with just a tiny little breather on the throttle. (I like to think this is a common reaction to doing well at racing games. If I'm wrong, do please feel free to keep that to yourselves.) Slides are easier to catch, spins are more convincing and we also find ourselves in one of those "some of the kerbs are big, tall and dangerous" years that Codies throw at us every so often to make sure we're paying attention.

What was already best-in-class AI is enhanced further this year by their increased defensive awareness. Where there's scope to sensibly banish any thoughts you may have harboured of overtaking them, they do so. Sometimes it's a little fade towards the middle of the track, sometimes it's hugging the inside line like your favourite Martin Brundle quote. Where there's no way to sensibly defend, they won't, but if the track layout allows it they'll try to hang on around the outside of a chicane and claim track position when the track changes direction. Their behaviour under blue flags is massively improved too, moving smartly off line in places which allow for easy passage. What they still lack is a bit of extra punch when trying to attack your position, but this is as good as we've ever had it.

Thanks to today's patch, I can also tell you that Portimao is the ideal playground for these physics. Coming from the back of the field in a Red Bull, the fun is in exploring the huge variety of alternative lines available as you advance through the field. In an Alpine, it's about finding a line that works in a car that, lacking the ultimate downforce and grip of faster machines, can get you sideways pretty much everywhere. Trail-braking over the top of a hill, turning left into a right-hander so that the back of my car might remain behind the front rather than overtaking it, it occurred to me that if Portimao was the only track available in F1 2021, I could still get a good 40 hours from it before I even thought about complaining.

Are there wrinkles? Well, yes. Perennial favourites like your parts taking far too much wear during Career mode practice sessions have only just been patched out, though Codemasters are yet to address exactly why they keep reappearing every year. Spray during wet races is largely non-existent, cut scenes have so much screen tear you could do amateur kirigami with them and while the in-game performance is rock solid on PS5, the replays run on a wildly fluctuating frame rate, determined each second by a random draw at Codies HQ. It also transpires that the MFD flashing up on-screen whenever your tyre wear reached a 20% increment, which I thought was a helpful new feature for gauging wear without having to manually flick through menus, was in fact a bug. That's just been patched out, in yet another triumph for the boys and girls in the Questionably Attentive team.

The big caveat is that while the series has never been better than it is now, you might feel it would benefit from a bigger refresh, something that made it feel new. This is inescapably a Codemasters F1 game and you can trace its roots back to F1 2016 without all that much difficulty. I would welcome a new engine next year, heralding the arrival of the new real-world rules as well as a firm shift towards current gen. In the meantime, though, I've still got plenty of mileage left in this one. Most of it set in Portugal, by the look of things.
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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by Rodster »

It’s currently on sale during the Steam Halloween Sale. I bought the base game with Braking Point for $25.98

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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by DChaps »

Autumn Steam Sale is going on until Dec 1 and F1 2021 for PC is showing as 80% off at $11.99 USD - already had it for Xbox but at that price definitely worth it for PC.

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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by Rodster »

That's odd cause the Steam site shows 50% off and the base game is $29.99 but at $11.99 I say get it.

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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by F308GTB »

DChaps wrote:
Thu Nov 25, 2021 10:28 am
Autumn Steam Sale is going on until Dec 1 and F1 2021 for PC is showing as 80% off at $11.99 USD - already had it for Xbox but at that price definitely worth it for PC.
???? US site or are you VPNed with a foreign IP? I am also seeing $30.

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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by DChaps »

Yeah, that is weird, it is saying the same thing for me now, but earlier this week it was showing 80% off and I definitely grabbed it for $11.99 USD (see screenshot). Definitely US site and not foreign IP/VPN setup. Strange. Sorry about that.

Image

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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by GB_Simo »

Now available on Game Pass and EA Play for those who successfully waited it out. My impressions of this haven't changed a jot since I last posted - still Codies F1, still very much an iterative release, still a blast.
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Re: EA/Codemasters F1 2021

Post by F308GTB »

GB_Simo wrote:
Mon Apr 04, 2022 6:47 am
Now available on Game Pass and EA Play for those who successfully waited it out. My impressions of this haven't changed a jot since I last posted - still Codies F1, still very much an iterative release, still a blast.
Can't wait to get back to my own house - dislocated while doing some renovations and testing it out with a hand controller socks.

I have heard that the 2022 version may include VR on the PC. That would be awesome.

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