F1 24 Preview – Race as real drivers in the dynamic new career

thesixthaxis.com:

As popular as big multiplayer games are, there’s nothing quite like the solo escapism and wish fulfilment of playing single-player, is there? And when it comes to sports games, that wish fulfilment comes in the form of stepping into the shoes of a professional athlete and rising to glory, whether it’s becoming the world number 1 tennis player, leading an underdog football team to win the Premier League, or bringing your favourite F1 team both kinds of championship glory. F1 24 is bringing a bunch of great new options to the career mode, which will add just a few more variable and fun twists in your quest to be the best.

The tagline for F1 24 is “Be one of the 20”, and that’s with good reason. Up until this point in Codemasters’ 15 years of games, you’ve always had to create a custom driver and join a team, or more recently, create your own team and manage it from top to bottom. Those are both still options in F1 24, but for the first time you’ll now be able to pick a real F1 or F2 driver and play as them. Sure, you could pick the boring option of being Max Verstappen (even if the game and various difficulty settings will make Red Bull’s rivals a bit more competitive), but there’s so many stories and narratives that you can lean in on. Do you want Sergio to keep his seat and pull off a wonder season next year? Help Lando get his first win? Hulkenberg his first podium? Or were you excited by Ollie Bearman’s debut drive and want to deliver on the promising potential career he has ahead of him?

It’s not just F1 or F2 drivers that you can pick, but the historical “icons” as well. So Mika Hakkinen can finally come out of his decades long sabbatical and show that he’s still got it.

Helping to really nestle you into the persona are two new elements. F1 has given Codemasters access to their back catalogue of team radio, with the audio team then delving in and picking out appropriate voice lines to play at key moments when playing as those drivers – Lando can give a jokey