With the Monaco Grand Prix now in the tiny little wing mirrors of this year’s F1 season, it feels like the perfect time to drop into the latest F1 game from Codemasters and EA. Interest in the premier motorsport category has never been higher, and this yearly game series has sought to make steady improvement, adding much-requested gameplay features while pushing ever closer to visual realism in the cars and tracks year-on-year. While F1 25 is undoubtedly a further refinement, rather than a revolution, this is, incrementally, the best F1 game to date.
F1 25 gives you a full digital representation of the sport of F1. That means you can play through full seasons of multiple grand prix events, with real-life stars like Lando Norris and Max Verstappen, fresh-faced rookies such as Gabriel Bortoleto or Isack Hadjar, or your own created character aiming for greatness on track. It’s as compelling as it ever has been.
Alongside that, this year sees the return of Braking Point, the extensive story-led mode that focuses on the fictional Konnersport team. The hateful Davidoff Butler is now owner of Konnersport, and he looms like a grim figure over the opening chapters of this year’s tale. There’s a huge change to come though, throwing the team into disarray, and though the emotional beats don’t consistently hit home, I really enjoyed playing through the team’s dramatic rollercoaster season.
Alongside the on-track action, where you take control of both Callie Mayer and Aiden Jackson, you have to take some light control of the team’s leadership, deciding on the right time for press and marketing, or focusing more on elements that will improve your car’s performance.
Besides that, you have to court the press, getting to choose Callie or Aiden’s responses in their post-race interviews, again aiming to boost various stats. While those incremental gains feel less essential, getting to embody and take part in a fuller spectrum of your team and driver’s activities helps to put you at the centre of the action.
Once you’re done with Konnersport’s dramas, you can carry the team through into the main career mode, taking up an 11th spot in the pits. It’ll be interesting to see if they’re there again next year, as Cadillac will fill that slot, but for now, Konnersport feel like a legitimate addition, if not for fans of ultra-realism.
Of course, Braking Point doesn’t have the sole place on the drama grid this year, with the F1 Movie also coming along for the ride. The film, due out in June and starring Brad Pitt, appears here as a series of playable chapters alongside clips from the film. The first is in place at launch, with the rest due to arrive on the 30th of June. It’s a pleasing inclusion, but it’s very much a small taster of what is to come. The most important aspect? Being able to take that 11th spot in Career mode away from Konnersport and putting APXGP there instead. Honestly, Brad Pitt’s character model is worth it alone.
I assume that the majority of players are here to play multiple seasons of the Career mode, taking their favourite team, whether a proven winner like Mclaren, a fan-favourite like Haas, or a fictional creation (which can be of your own making) to the Constructors’ Championship. Various improvements have been made to the behind the scenes action here, from research and development being unique to each of the cars in your garage, to more in-depth facility expansions. They’re solid improvements, and the overall process is now more satisfying rather than perfunctory.
Adapting from the previous year’s outing to the altered handling in F1 25 proved to be surprisingly tricky at first. For all that F1 24’s handling model came under fire from the community, we’ve continued to play the game throughout the past 12 months, and though it had various foibles, we never felt at a disadvantage. The new model is fundamentally more realistic, with less grip and increased differences between the different tyre types, including clearer and more incremental tyre degradation.
That said, playing on controller is now much tougher, requiring even more precise and granular trigger inputs, while there’s seemingly far more chance of locking up. The wheel handling, meanwhile, has been significantly improved, feeling far more settled and precise, making it the better choice for F1 25 right now. For those members of the community looking for a more realistic and enjoyable experience, I think that Codemasters have nailed it.
The computer AI for other racers helps to cement that. While last year’s opponents tended to be more timid, here the AI has been made far more aggressive, pushing harder and racing as though they actually want to win.
There’s also more humanity to them, with genuine variation and variability to their performances. While you can rely on the best racers continuing to perform as you’d expect, the game offers more chances of an unusual result, or a racer having a spectacular race, than we probably get in the real world. It doesn’t undo the push for realism, instead injecting some excitement, but some players may dislike it.
Visually, this is the best-looking F1 game we’ve ever had. Everything here looks more detailed, and five tracks – Melbourne, Bahrain, Miami, Imola and Suzuka – have received the laser-scanning LIDAR treatment, making them even more precise to the actual circuit. These are now so close to the real-life track as to be nearly indistinguishable; it’s only disappointing that it’s limited to a small percentage of the overall whole. We reviewed on PS5, where the game looks great, but PC players can push for more ray tracing features, right up to a full path-traced option.
For those who’ve been racing around the same tracks for years, F1 25 also adds in the option to race some of them in reverse. Silverstone, Austria and Zandvoort can now be experienced backwards, making those well-known corners and racing lines completely null and void. It’s another interesting inclusion, and probably best for those most invested in the series, but it does open up some possibilities if the real-world sport ever needs a shake-up.
The improved visuals extend off track, particularly in Braking Point, and Codemasters have clearly worked on the character and facial animations to make the whole experience feel closer to watching an F1 production, or a TV show like Drive to Survive. Each of the racers also look closer than ever before to their real-life counterparts, and it just brings F1 25 closer to the real-life sport, which is exactly what every fan wants.