F1 Manager 22 Review

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With a clear path to a yearly release with the name F1 Manager 22. Frontier Developments have spend the last couple of years intensively working on their first manager-game.

The official release date for the game is 30th August, and it will unlock at 14:00 UTC. However, pre-orders, or people buying the game between the 25th and 30th have been allowed to play the game early. This review is based on game version 1.5 – yes, the game is already in version 1.5 before the official release. Make of that what you will.

Please scroll through the following pages to read the official and extensive RaceDepartment review of F1 Manager 2022.

Have you played F1 Manager 2022 yourself? Please consider leaving a community rating here or leave your comments down below.
About author
Ole Marius Myrvold
I've been a motorsport-fan for as long as I can remember. Initially a rallycross-maniac, but got into F1 around the time I started school. Got my first sim when I was 7, but didn't start properly until I got a wheel when I was 12. Been a staff at RaceDepartment since 2012. Mainly the dirty-guy who does rally-stuff here. But also management-titles and rFactor 2.

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Pros: - It has the official F1 License.
Cons: - Doesn't allow to create your own team.
- Simulation is too deterministic.
- Simulation is too shallow at times.
While we had high expectations for the game when it was first announced, I think a good portion of people were expecting something like the My Team mode but from a managerial perspective. What we ended up getting was a licensed feature removed copy of Motorsport Manager.

While it may be unfair to compare those two, as MM is as much older game with plenty of mods which extend it even beyond of what this game can do, you'd expect a bit more polish from a game that costs twice the price. But I think the comparison is somewhat fair because some of the UI elements are exactly the same as the ones in MM but with a different skin on top. Car setup is the same, tire selection is the same...Apart from some specifics this game has, even the manual driver management is similar. That makes the asking price not be worth it, IMO.

Graphics wise, some of the drivers are...let's say the developers didn't quite get the skin tone correct in some. Either their skin is too dark, they look like they have a fake tan or sunburn. When some of them have facial movement, they...It's almost like the gates of hell are opening in front of your very eyes. Granted that is not so much important for a game of this genre but those assets add several GB to the game size and...You'd expect at least some polish in that regard.

As per the simulation, many aspects which are exclusive to F1 are lacking, things like briefings (which MM has to some extent in a different form), media stuff and so on. Things that My Team has. The simulation itself is also quite shallow and deterministic. Once you figure out how the thing functions, you can pretty much take any team with any combination of drivers to the points. You'd think the various differences between different cars from different teams would be well represented, but they're not.

Apart from a few small things here and there, you'd better off getting Motorsport Manager and using some F1 mod instead.
Pros: 1. Made by people who love F1 *for* people who love F1. You may be thinking "yes, Doug, no kidding," but that will become more and more appreciated after more years of EA releases.

2. Very good graphics for what it's trying to do.

3. Captures the vibe of race day. I'm kicking along with Aston and spent a whole race in Jeddah just trying to finish ahead of Williams. But even that totally goosed my competitive spirits.

4. Good tutorial for the most part.

5. Scouting young drivers is kinda cool
Cons: 1. I wish I could *communicate* more. Like in briefings, press conferences, with drivers or staff, whatever. Think Football Manager. One reason these guys are becoming as popular as the drivers isn't just DTS...it's the personalities they show us. We're all either a Toto or a Christian or a Guenther (and we all had that one weird 7th grade science teacher who was a Binotto.) Let us use that.

2. Give drivers some personalities too. Right now, I have Lance Stroll doing everything short of bringing me coffee and washing Seb's underwear. No complaint yet about being a No. 2 driver. And what about some Lewis-style tyre whining?

3. On-track incidents are just plain wonky.

4. You can't create a team from scratch. Be a lot cooler if you did.

5. Car setups could go a lot deeper.

6. One small graphic touch that would help would be to show tyre graining.
I came into this with managed expectations, as the devs are essentially blowing the dust off a primarily abandoned genre. It's a good start, but that's exactly what it is...a start. Go into it with that attitude and you'll have a good enough time.
Pros: Good Race Engineer Voices.
Beautiful Graphics.
Realistic Sounds.
Small Download Space Required.
Amazing Track Details.
Good Driver Models.
Good UI Overall.
Up-To Date F1 2022 Graphics.
Good Hybrid And DRS.
Good Management For The Drivers.
Many Things Your Able To Do.
Cons: Bad AI Driving And Overtaking.
Semi Unrealistic Crashes
Tires sometimes not appearing in a double stack
Cant Escape DRS Trains.
Developing A Car Is Very Hard.
Not Identical Helmet Model.
There Are A lot Of Pros That are just amazing so far considering it was released fully today, its still in semi-development that's why the cars aren't 100% identical to the real life ones, (e.g Alfa Romeo) Which isn't a Must More of a Small Detail, As well as the drivers still having their gloves on all the time, some other small details like the steering wheel and the shifting being a weird as well, but other than that its so far one of the best and is amazing compared to F1 22.
Pros: Licensed F1 manager, F1 graphics, Actual race engineers, graphics.
Cons: Crashes, Pitlane in quali/practice, steering wheels, Crofty, fast forward.
F1 manager 22 is a good game but there is a lot of room for improvement. So the good things; its great to have an actual engineer not jeff or marc who have had the same voice lines since 2014. The fact that its all licensed and not just Motorsport manager with mods is also great. For the most part graphics are pretty solid as well. Now the bad, the crashes are so not legit its just funny also the way the AI drives could use some improvement but IMO its not that big of a deal. Some small things like steering wheels not being representative of the real cars and when in quali/practice the cars just pull into the garage like its a house garage. Also just a quality of life change I would like to see is a way to shorten the races or just fast forward faster. Now onto the thing I think is worst, Crofty. Crofty's voice lines are executed very poorly it just sounds so bad. Karun Chandock is in the game and he does a great job compared to Crofty IMO. So F1 manager gets a 4/5 from me but it definitely has room for improvement.

Comments

What I miss most is the abillity to 'read' the race. As a viewer at home I have acces to way more info about the other teams during the race than in this game: Gap to car in front: how many laps untill I catch the guy, ream radio's: are some complaining about tire wear or other issues. Strategy wise: some sort of tool to calculate/compare race srtrategies during the race, and so on.

Also there is to much micro management of the ERS during the race. I just want to tell my driver to push and than I expect him to execute that to the best of his abillity. The game in it's current state could be called ERS manager 22.

So plenty room for improvement, looking forward to future versions of the game.
 
Pros:
- There's an F1 management game
- Hearing the drivers on the radio
- The graphics in pod cam are good enough, much better than what Football Manager created for many years

Cons:
- A lot of info, not particularly helpful e.g. no telling who has the fastest lap in the race, telemetry data shows me everyone's current lap which is unhelpful when there are in / out laps going on
- Driver management should be slicker. Tell them to push or conserve with a single button. I don't want to be pressing the ERS button on the penultimate corner every lap for 2 drivers
- Get the engineers to give me some advice - "if we pit now, we can undercut everyone"
- Have press conferences / post race questions and get the drivers to say things e.g. "I'm unhappy I was told to sit behind my teammate"
- Out laps are oddly slow - at Jeddah, my drivers ran 20+ seconds behind the competitive lap times. I didn't factor that gap in and missed the flag by about 10 seconds

Overall, it's decent enough for the first game. It needs improving, but that is expected. Press conferences would be a big one for me, FM absolutely nailed that
 
Keeping in mind it is the first game they did not do too shabby, but I really hope that as the years go on, more and more depth is added.
 

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Author
Ole Marius Myrvold
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