''F1 2016'' is a

racing game Racing games are a video game genre in which the player participates in a racing competition. They may be based on anything from real-world racing leagues to fantastical settings. They are distributed along a spectrum between more realistic ra ...

which is based on the

2016 Formula One season The 2016 FIA Formula One World Championship was the 70th season of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile ( FIA)'s Formula One motor racing. It featured the 67th Formula One World Championship, a motor racing championship for Formula O ...

and was developed by Codemasters Birmingham, published by Codemasters, distributed by

Deep Silver Deep Silver is an Austrian video game publisher and a division of Plaion. Eugenio Vitale serves as the director of games development for Deep Silver. History Deep Silver was announced in November 2002, with their first release to be '' Ana ...

in North America and

Ubisoft Ubisoft Entertainment SA (; ; formerly Ubi Soft Entertainment SA) is a French video game publisher headquartered in Saint-Mandé with development studios across the world. Its video game franchises include ''Assassin's Creed'', '' Far Cry'', ...

in Japan. The game was released on 19 August for

PlayStation 4 The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013 in ...

Xbox One The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third base console in the Xbox series of video game consoles. It was first released in North America, parts of ...

and

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

. The game was also released for

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

and

tvOS tvOS (formerly known as Apple TV Software) is an operating system developed by Apple Inc. for the Apple TV, a digital media player. In the first-generation Apple TV, Apple TV Software was based on Mac OS X. Starting with the second-generatio ...

on 10 November. A Mac version by

Feral Interactive Feral Interactive is a British video games developer and publisher for macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Windows platforms. It was founded in 1996 to bring games to Mac and specialises in porting games to different ...

was released on 6 April 2017.

Features

Players are able to play a revised career mode consisting of ten full seasons rather than five seasons in previous games. The game includes the twenty-one circuits from the 2016 season and in-game commentary from David Croft and

Anthony Davidson Anthony Denis Davidson (born 18 April 1979) is a British former racing driver, currently working as an analyst for the Sky Sports F1 television channel, as part of the commentary team for WEC TV, as colour commentator for the F1 series of vide ...

. The game also features all eleven teams and twenty-two drivers competing in the championship, including the return of

Renault Groupe Renault ( , , , also known as the Renault Group in English; legally Renault S.A.) is a French multinational automobile manufacturer established in 1899. The company produces a range of cars and vans, and in the past has manufacture ...

, and the brand-new Haas team.

Esteban Ocon Esteban José Jean-Pierre Ocon-Khelfane (; born 17 September 1996) is a French racing driver who competes for Alpine in Formula One. He made his Formula One debut for Manor Racing in the 2016 Belgian Grand Prix, replacing Rio Haryanto. He ...

was however not included, as he did not replace

Rio Haryanto Rio Haryanto (born 22 January 1993) is an Indonesian racing driver and a former Formula One driver for Manor during 2016 season. He last competed in the 2019-20 Asian Le Mans Series and in the Blancpain GT World Challenge Asia for T2 Motorspor ...

until the game's pre-release development had ended. Players are able to choose the time of day that a race takes place, customise helmet designs and choose a race number for career mode. The safety car returned, with the mechanics related to it revised, while the Virtual Safety Car was introduced, as well as manual starts, manual pit lane entry and, for the first time in a

Codemasters The Codemasters Software Company Limited (trade name: Codemasters) is a British video game developer based in Southam, England, which is a subsidiary of American corporation Electronic Arts. Founded by brothers Richard and David Darling in Octo ...

game, the

formation lap A parade lap, also known as a pace lap, formation lap or warm-up lap, is a lap before a motorsport race begins, in which the drivers go around the track at a slow speed (usually between ), and, in some cases, behind the safety car. Purpose The ...

. The research and development aspect of the game was revised to allow players a greater degree of control over the performance of the car. The teams have a perception of the player, which decreases with bad results and increases with good results. The player will be fired or demoted if the perception goes too low, and will be promoted if the perception goes too high. Online lobbies are expanded to allow for twenty-two car grids.

Reception

The game received a positive reception scoring 86 out of 100 on the

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site

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, with many publications calling it the best Formula One game Codemasters has created. The game reached number 2 in the UK PS4 sales chart, behind ''

No Man's Sky ''No Man's Sky'' is an action-adventure survival game developed and published by Hello Games. It was released worldwide for the PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows in August 2016, for Xbox One in July 2018, for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Ser ...

'', but topped the XO chart. The mobile version, however, has a score of only 66/100 on Metacritic due to AI issues.

References