Lead by example
My Team distinguishes itself from previous F1 career modes by choosing players not only as drivers, but also as team owners. Where before we had to choose and join an existing team as a rental driver, and jump between them as opportunities arise, F1 2020 allows players to follow in the footsteps of greats like Sir Jack Brabham and Bruce McLaren and build their own teams of personal races around him, all while hitting the track every weekend.
While previous F1 racing modes have allowed us to control car upgrade R&D on behalf of our employers, giving drivers at least some leverage over what’s happening off-circuit, My Team massively overshadows it. You need to build a new team from scratch, effectively becoming the 11th team in the F1 championship. That means choosing team colors, putting together a logo, signing a power unit, securing sponsors, polishing a livery and matching racing suits, hiring a second pilot and looking at your finances as you try to grow your organization in an outfit that you can. challenge established powers
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My team adds a great deal of longevity to F1 2020. I never hit the 10-year mark in previous F1 games, but I could do it here. And it’s not just because there are visible things to spend large sums of your sponsorship money on, like upgrades to various parts of your business, including bigger and better simulators and fancy wind tunnels for your aero boffins. And it’s not just because the finite number of days on F1’s calendar means it’s a constant act of juggling to schedule everything from training for your second driver to team-building activities for your various R&D departments. it’s because my race team’s sense of ownership over destiny is something unique to F1 2020. F1’s previous career modes simply haven’t been able to produce the same emotional connection. When my first driver refused to re-sign after our debut season, after all the time I spent increasing his stats through training, he was pretty out of shape. How do you dare? After all that Jack Speedweasel Racing did for him! Seeing him finish last in the first round after leaving my team was surprisingly satisfying.
Yes, the scope of livery selection is ultimately quite narrow. Yes, it’s kind of silly that showing any kind of specific attention to a department makes the rest of its staff grumpy, like they’re a group of five-year-olds who missed a cookie. Yes, some of the recycled scenes clash a little with the fantasy that you are the boss now. But aside from the small complaints, the combination of a strong motorsports management experience with the existing brand of excellent on-track action series means My Team is not just the best Codemasters has added to its F1 franchise: It can be the best addition to any F1 game since Psygnosis persuaded Murray Walker to a sound booth in the late 90s.
Time to leave
If the team’s additional micromanaging isn’t your purse, or it just bleeds Ferrari red and you could never imagine competing against them, My Team hasn’t replaced the traditional Career Mode; it still exists as a separate mode. Like last year, you can start with a small F2 snack, though you can also complete an entire season this time, if you like. Otherwise, there is still the regular Championship mode, where you play as a real driver in a fantasy version of the 2020 season. You know, the one that was going to start in Australia instead of Austria. Zandvoort and Hanoi make their debut, and while the latter is a bit straightforward to see from runway level, a couple of long straights and some gently meandering S-sections that you can basically straight ahead contribute to a fairly sense of speed. perverse. There is no shortage of content in F1 2020.
Perhaps best of all, however, is the return of the split screen. And yes, it seems a bit silly to celebrate something we had in 1996, but I love playing F1 2020 split screen with my kids. You can choose the driver and car you want, but we’ve had fun turning the split screen into a bit of a cooperative couch by competing on the same team and battling for 1-2 finishes. I looked down at one point to find the AI struggling to pull itself out of a monstrous mess in Monza where my son found himself trapped, but he was howling with laughter at the time, so well played, Codemasters. After all, anything can happen in Formula One, and it usually does.
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The inability to mix excellent standard simulation handling with the new, more forgiving split-screen driving model means that experienced F1 players will likely need to switch to informal to share the track with the very young or inexperienced, but it’s a small sacrifice for a lot of fun
The casual driving model provides a useful friction aid for off-road excursions and an automatic respawn function for F1 novices, but F1 2020 also caters to the other end of the spectrum, with improved grip on corner exits. thanks to a bit of tire model massage and more realistic ERS implementation mechanics. The main role is now assigned to a single, more authentic “Forward” button. There’s also clean, nerdy touches like the ability to play around with the HUD and fully customize what you want on screen.
