F1 2023 PC Review

Bit late to the worlds greatest circus party with horsepower over the top and drama til we drop.
Crofty has said a few times it’s lights out and away we go this season already, but there is no
better time than now to review this years edition of what F1 2023 PC version brings to the table
after a few updates and fixes.

I won’t be spoiling the story mode, and will go through the modes and enhancements that are
new to this years game, also I will give you an idea how the game runs in the real world on hardware
other than the latest i7-i9 CPU and 4090 RTX Graphics cards, since we all are definitely not in that
category as gamers..

I’ve been playing F1 games since the very first ones on multiple platforms, but none have I had so
much fun with as the Codemaster series of the licensed game, and reminiscing specifically back to
2016-17 when they took steps forward in Graphics and drivability, one can only say 2023 really has
leapt lightyears forward on all aspects… and they have kept driving fun since 2009.
One could say it’s almost the best time of the year when a new Codemasters F1 game releases…

For this year Codemasters have brought back the story aspect to F1, you might remember I said in 2021
for the first Breaking Point story mode, it was a good fun distraction for a few hours.. taking on
a netflix like approach, but also had some annoying things such as phones ringing all the time,
a bit corny, but ultimately an enjoyable addition to the game, giving more meat to an already
great package.

2023 builds upon the original Breaking Point story, with people you might remember, Aiden Jackson,
Devon Butler, Casper Akkerman and then there is of course new people like Callie Meyer, whom is
the first female brought into the F1..

The story begins with a recap of what has happened previously, so if you missed out on 2021, don’t
worry you’ll be brought up to speed quickly, and can jump in to the new story arch directly without
feeling lost.

This year focuses on the Konnersport team, where Aiden and Devon have signed
respectively, and are now team mates.. without going indepth and perhaps spoiling things,
what you can expect is a longer than the previous story from 2021, more twists, more drama..
more meddling, happy moments, sad moments, and a fight for the future in the sport..
Costs and success reflecting real life struggles.

But what I enjoyed in the story were the objectives set out for you on what to achieve,
and the possibility of overachieving for bonus points.. But also with the twists happening
you could give answers to the press favoring one or the other thing, to mention a few of the
improvements/additions in game..

All in all the story mode is not a short one to play through with 17 chapters on the line to go
through, and for the achievement hunters out there.. this game does take a good while to grind
out if you are after the 100% completion (49 in total) the last one’s being tied to multiplayer
progress taking the longest.

If you are getting F1 2023 after reading this, don’t sleep on the story mode by jumping directly into
the online racing parts.. it is all in all a worthy part of the game to play, adding even more
content to cruise through in this filled package..

And speaking of content in F1 2023, this is probably the only critique I will give for the game
this year, but I was a bit lost in the beginning starting the game where everything was and why
things were locked, 40+ hours into the game and I still am occasionally going wait a minute what
sub menu was this thing in… I have added screenshots from all aspects of the game above, so be
sure to check those out to get perhaps a better idea if you are a bit lost on what I mean.

Everything besides Career, Local Multiplayer (LAN) and League Racing (requires signing up)
is placed under F1 World, comparable to last years F1 Life.. , and yes this year also features
Super Cars, Home decoration, clothing, trophies etc. for customizing things… a design choice
for sure placing it all there, but then there’s the stubborn me who goes I want a quick race
button on the front menu directly, but I guess we will get used to the new system eventually.

Goals are a big part of the game, to complete your compendium of stickers etc, the more you
drive the more you unlock upgrades to your world car, parts, contracts, and epic people such
as Christian Horner or Guenther Steiner. All for that online grind, to become the best..

As you guessed all the tracks are there for this years season, but for F2 this year we right
now only have the 2022 lineup.. perhaps this will be upgraded in a later update?.

Now for the gameplay, compared to last years where cars felt sluggish, and bit heavy on driving.
This year, the cars feel almost super glued to the asphalt for maximum downforce..
which always feels nice to anyone playing, there’s no panic mode constantly going on thinking
you’ve lost control of your car.. while this of course might not be to everyone’s liking, compared
to other sim racing games… you have to remember that F1 2023 is not aimed to be a perfect
sim racing game, but more accessible to everyone who wants a go at the worlds most known
racing series, and you can of course tweak everything from an assist point of view
if you so wish, disabling racing lines .. to disabling traction control etc. to have the game
respond to your racing style, experience.

Other updates that felt good so far, no more AI getting automatically super starts and glued
to your behind at starts, I always felt that was annoying and unfair in previous games, guess
this has been a requested feature, hitting another car or them hitting you also is not automatically
your own fault (reflecting on your driver standards license)… also now pitstops can be an
immersive QB button presses on changing settings, making it a bit more realistic,
same with Formation laps if you want to experience this, also as a last mention the anonymous
press person has now also been replaced with Natalie Pinkham that anyone will recognize having
watched Sky Sports F1 or F1 e-sports streams previously, taking it one more step closer to realism.

How does it Run?

With an aging i5-9600k/16GB RAM and a 3070 (8GB) the game continues to impress every year with
how good it looks and the frames it generates, this year is no different… turning Ray Tracing
off and just solely going old school I would have to the north of 145fps at all times, and topping
out at 180fps using High Settings / High mix… adding RTX to the mix and we drop down to 80-100fps,
while shadows and lighting effects are always nice, this year I’ve opted to play with purely higher
frame rates instead. In the above gallery you can find the Benchmark I took on day 1,
but later tweaking some options resulted in above as mentioned.

I hope you can draw some conclusions for your own system based on this mid-system spec.

Steam Minimum / Recommended Specification.

Final word

F1 2023, is the series that keeps on giving.. year after year it brings something new to the table
improves on existing features, modes, graphics… I can honestly say, this package is what I
wanted, needed, and will keep me racing for many months to come… until 2024.

What will 2024 surprise us with? It’s starting to get hard to guess what they can bring to the
table in the future, but I wouldn’t be dissapointed if a career mode revamp would be the next thing
they would start from scratch, why not start at Karting, F-series.. F3-F2-F1… to add even more
racing … time will tell what 2024 gives us, but for now 2023 will keep us occupied and happy
racers for many months.