F1 24: Unfortunately, fans are right, the game is undriveable

The complaining is for real. F1 24’s handling is bad. To the point of undriveable. For me anyway.

But I’ve been driving this game on a gamepad for eight years, currently using no less than an Xbox Elite Series 2 to tune my inputs for maximum stability and smoothness. And it’s true, just being away from the game for a good two or three months requires me to almost re-learn how the car behaves, if I intend to drive at a high difficulty or set respectable lap times in Time Trial.

But whenever the game has thrown me a problem that seemed to me to be intractable, I’ve always reminded myself that millions play this series; that gamepad is the preferred method of play; that I’m not special in either talent or knowledge here, and I’ve always found a way to keep playing. Maybe it was a car setup or a calibration setting, but — as a point of pride — I still found a way to solve Baku’s inscrutable downforce demands or the Hotel Hairpin at Monaco.

That’s going to take a bit more work this time, if not one hell of a title update from Codemasters altogether. I am not the only one with this complaint.

Redditors are already pining for F1 23 — which I agree, is probably the best-handling game in the series, but I still had to spend time understanding it, and it was still a white-knuckle ride, especially in those all-out qualifying laps.