I was so ready to write this game off as simply a minimal annual iteration on the last one, but that's only true on a technical level. The engine is the same, but just about everything important in the game has been improved significantly, and the new generation of cars with their obscenely large tires combined with the updated physics finally bring F1 games back to the face melting levels of grip last seen in 2013 - enough grip that I feel medium traction control has more grip than 2016 has on full traction control. So much grip that I can actually drive with traction control off for the first time in the series, and do it with confidence... though I still used medium. Grip aside, they also feel downright amazing to drive and give a lot more feedback in the process, to the point that tire wear is finally something with more detail than "now you grip and now you don't" like every previous game, making this game far more satisfying than the last one, which was itself far more satisfying than all the previous ones. I'm not sure if this was always the case, but this is the first game in the series - and one of only a few games in general - where a chosen gear has a pronounced effect on how the car takes a corner, even off throttle. But only in the current cars.

And that's the first big addition over the last game. Classics are back, and while it's not with nearly as much love and care as they got in 2013, the inclusion is inarguably wonderful, and I love that they're tied into the career mode with invitational events throughout the season... but I wish the period correct interface changes from 2013 were still here. The classics are also simply less fun to drive than the modern cars, which is more than a little sad, but unfortunately there is another shortcoming, and it's rather tragic. The sound design for the classic cars is barely a shadow of what it was in 2013. The first classic I drove here was the Renault R26 - tragic in itself, should have been the R25 - and it sounded... thin. It's not just flatter and less powerful than the classics of 2013, it's flatter and less powerful than the regular V8s of 2013, and by all measures, the sound design in this game should be capable of so much more than that.

Which leads to my next nitpick, being the sound. If considered overall as a full package, it's a clear improvement with better mixing and more detail almost across the board, but it's like Codemasters is bound by some rule that forces them to step backwards in some way every time they step forwards in another when it comes to the sound in these games. On one hand, audio cues for a lot of things are much more distinct and audible (and present) now, my engine is finally given proper focus so I no longer struggle to hear it at any point, and extraneous background noise like crowds and echoes from the other end of the track are mercifully toned way down. On the other hand, the sounds my tires make when sliding or on kerbs and such are super quiet now, other cars are only truly audible when they're in front of you which makes it quite difficult to avoid contact since the proximity indicators are as unhelpful as ever, and wind noise is back which makes things sound dull and oppressive at times. Perhaps a better example of my point is that the high pitched whining from the last game is VASTLY improved, both in tone and in volume... but the accessibility option to reduce high frequency sound has been removed. Why? Sure, the improvement is great, the new whine doesn't cause me immediate pain, but man, reducing high frequencies is such a fantastic accessibility option that I would still love to use, and its absence after only one game is confounding.

Also confounding is the fact that the career mode has been made so much deeper in only one game. Remember, the career modes in 2010 through 2014 were all virtually identical, and then 2016 was in a league of its own, so I fully expected the career mode in this to be the same as 2016, but no, one look at the research tree and it's immediately clear that there have been some significant additions. For one thing, it's a tree now, there are lots and lots of different upgrades that you can choose from instead of simply working up five linear paths. Every part is also significantly more expensive now, with each option starting at 1000 points, whereas in 2016 I didn't even see 900 before level 4 on the most expensive paths. Definitely won't be getting a new part every weekend like this, especially since on top of that, there's also a much higher chance of failure in development, which you then need to spend more points on to try again. There are two new practice programs now as well so you can earn an extra hundred points per weekend, but that's not going to speed things up much at all with these prices, so it's quite clearly intended to slow down the pace of upgrades and give a real incentive to play multiple seasons, which I think is great even if I don't intend to do that. Rivalries and team status also move a lot slower now for the same reason.

Another immediate change is also made clear by looking at the upgrade tree, because there are four categories, being powertrain, chassis, downforce, and... durability. An entire upgrade tree for durability. There's also a whole screen showing the current wear of each of the parts of the car, allowing you to switch between your allotment of four of each component as needed to minimize wear, or develop a new component and get penalized for it. In my very first career race, another driver retired due to a mechanical failure. Until now, the extent of reliability simulation in these games has been random tire punctures, or having DRS or KERS randomly get disabled for a while, so having durability and reliability actually be a major part of the game now should be a welcome addition. Problem is, it seems far too aggressive. My engine had "significant wear" by the end of the third race, and just about every other component of the power unit was yellow, and apparently you get a grid penalty sending you all the way to 20th not only for developing new parts, but for simply installing a less worn part during the weekend, which was never explained. Still, after some durability upgrades, I managed to make it through the season without needing more than four of anything... so I would have been penalty-free if not for that unexplained bit.

And speaking of welcome additions, the character models actually look like humans now! Not only that, they also have some different animations! I hated looking at the character models in the last game so much, the fact that I'm even mentioning this at all while talking about a racing game and also clearly not being one to care about graphical fidelity should make that quite clear. I still hate them, but they aren't repulsive anymore at least. There are also some vaguely feminine options for your avatar choice now, which is great to see after the confusing and glaring lack of them in the last game, even if they aren't particularly feminine or varied. Otherwise, graphically, it's better in some areas and worse in many... probably. For some things, I can't tell if it's just my preferences or if it's actually worse, and for other things, I'm not entirely sure if what I'm seeing is how it's supposed to look or if it's a bug caused by running the game through proton. The horrible artifacts from 2016 are mostly gone, but not entirely. It's still just as awful around character models, but on track, what little artifacting remains is much more subtle and less distracting, so at least the racing is much clearer in that respect... but dark areas seem too dark, everything seems overly contrast-y and sometimes overexposed and bloomy, there's lens flare and light rays that are a little out of hand, there's a depth of field effect going on that looks just plain ugly, there's a brand new visual glitch where there's a sort of afterimage of my car stuck on there, and many textures are so aggressively noisy they look like they got passed through an aggressive sharpen filter a few times. I was leaning towards thinking at least some of those problems were genuinely stylistic decisions, but after getting to Hungary and seeing the shadows all over the track so intensely broken that some parts of it were pitch black in broad daylight, I'm quite sure most of these problems are glitches. All of these things come together to have an overall negative effect on visibility for me.

Fortunately, I could at least live with the degraded visibility thanks to the fact that the horrendous performance issues from the last game are not present here, so the game actually runs at a stable frame rate without constant stutters and hitches. Although, flashbacks and some cutscenes are locked in 30 fps for some reason, which is weird. Unfortunately, however, the game is still unstable, maybe even worse than 2016 in certain regards, because after only three races I encountered a pileup at the safety car, a couple drivers steering directly into the wall on a straight, a character model lost its head in a celebration scene, and the game crashed on me near the end of the third race. It did not improve from there. At least the game no longer freaks out every time a flashback is used or when exiting the pits like the last game.

It's a shame, really. For all the good this game does, something always drags it down. There's still plenty I haven't mentioned, like how the difficulty selection is now a precise slider from 1 to 100 instead of a few set levels, which is a fantastic change since I and likely many others always seem to land somewhere in between two options with regular difficulty selection, and the difficulty is more even across the different sessions now so I can actually compete at the same level in the races and in qualifying for the first time in the series. The AI is also both less murderous and more aggressive, so they make less blatantly awful moves like spinning you out on a straight, but will also race you and the other AI drivers harder than before and make more mistakes as a result, so combining that with the new mechanical reliability mechanics, seeing at least one driver retire from almost every race at least in the first half of the season is more than likely. Replays have a basic photo mode now. These are great things! But not great enough to make me really enjoy this game more than the last one, because all the new and unsolved pre-existing problems neutralize my positivity. The cherry on top is that the whole game feels colder and less compelling than the last one, despite being presented in a very similar way and actually having more effort put into the presentation in some areas, and I can't even explain exactly why. It just feels... lesser.

If 2016 is the game 2015 should have been, this game should be the game 2016 should have been, but it isn't. What separates them more than anything, aside from the different cars, is their shortcomings rather than their strengths, and in the end, both games are uniquely bittersweet experiences that I wish were better. It's almost like annually released games are a bad and stupid thing that shouldn't happen.

It doesn't take long to pick up on pretty much everything necessary to form conclusions about games like these, so at this point, my patience finally started running thin and I did most of the season in this game as 5 lap races rather than 25%, and I quit bothering with most of the practice programs too. Hopefully at least one of the remaining games can finally stick the landing and hold my interest without so many disheartening small issues.

(from my web zone: https://kerosyn.link/i-played-every-codemasters-racing-game-to-prove-a-point/#f1-2017)