F1 25 review

Sebastian Vettel once said over the radio: "We have to these days because there's no guarantee they will last forever." There's an odd feeling of that here, and not only due to F1's stablemate WRC being 'paused' by EA. Rather, 2016's genius revamp of the career mode was arguably perfected in 2018 and here in 2025 it's come as far as it's likely to. And, like Vettel in his racing years following that quote, while F1 25 is obviously still great, uncharacteristic errors are starting to creep in.

Let's be clear: We're still looking at another high quality, gobsmackingly authentic racing game, but the returns are diminishing to the point it's no longer easy to recommend—even with the welcome, concluding instalment of Braking Point. Sorely absent last year, the third entry in the fictional story mode has been worth the wait in many ways, adding greater depth and drama to its returning cast of characters.

Seeing drippy Aiden Jackson go from rookie to title challenger in 6 seasons has been a genuinely organic transformation and we now have his team mate California Mayer fighting for the title too. It's a shame a fictional female F1 driver is challenging for the fictional title before any real female has even made it onto the modern F1 grid. Still, from a dramatic perspective, Braking Point 3 does a great job of developing its best character: Devon Butler. The 9-hour story isn't quite worth the RRP on its own, but it's a compelling addition to the game, now offering the player much more managerial input between progressing the story.

It makes you wonder how 'Braking Point' could have fared as a full-price, standalone game comprising the three entries in the style of TOCA Race Driver and its superlative first sequel.

Naturally, when the characters are spouting recorded lines of dialogue there's only so much player-instigated variation that can be accommodated in the game code, so you do end up with some disappointing shortfalls. For instance, one scenario clearly intends for you to finish lower than hoped, while a secondary managerial objective requires you to win. So if you complete the latter objective and win the race, Aiden's still moping about because of his penalty, saying: "A few missed opportunities, like today for example". No real driver would dwell on it if they still won, and it does pull you out of the action.

But that only goes to show how well everything else is delivered. From the incessantly ringing phone full of carefully interwoven sub-plots through to the way you can then take the Konnorsport team through into the My Team mode after finishing the story, it's amazing how well this entirely fictional saga fits into the F1 world.

Particularly noteworthy is the email system whereby staff you promoted will message you, eagerly highlighting personal accomplishments as if trying to win your approval. It's so very human and you start to feel like you're managing an actual team, which is a first for the series despite similar systems being present in previous games. It really adds to your emotional investment. It is a bit jarring to see Max Verstappen popping up, interested in g for this yellow-liveried team but, sure thing, why not? If Max asks to sign, you say 'yes!'

Fan your success

You can turn off all the fictional and fantasy content—which can include having the legendary Ayrton Senna available in the driver market—if you prefer. But if you do, you'll be left with scant little else to convince you this is better than the previous six years of career mode. The greater emphasis on R&D is laborious, with part research, fabrication and deployment annoyingly split across three separate screens.

More pleasingly, facility upgrades and department morale levels work in tandem with the sentiment of your fans. Do well in inter-team rivalries and you can win fan , bolstering your negotiating powers in sponsorship deals and driver gs. If anything, there's a little too much emphasis on the logistical side, as playing the game really does become a job. In Braking Point 3, at one point you are so overwhelmed with managing the team and emotional turmoil, you might start to wonder where the fun is. It genuinely feels like work, instead of being a recreational way to realise your childhood dream of being a racing car driver.

So let's put the heavy stuff to one side and focus on that core driving experience. After the furore surrounding last year's handling model, pad control is unfortunately the worst it's been in over a decade. It's important to have some degree of steering input dampening at high speed because no racing driver would see-saw at the wheel on full lock while going down hangar straight, which is what you'd essentially be doing when you waggled the analogue stick left and right.

Trouble is, this woolliness is now too heavy handed, resulting in alarmingly spongy, cumbersome steering when you're trying to correct oversteer on the exit of a fast corner. Inexplicably, any kind of traction control assistance exacerbates this effect. You want to snap the car straight with a flick, but instead your correction veers you off the road, the car unwilling to turn like it's a laden shopping trolley.

The driving in general feels heavier than usual and seems to need you to brake more in order to get round corners that used to be easy. Turn 4 at Bahrain has always been tricky, but navigating it is so laboured here it just doesn't feel right. It's better with a steering wheel where you get 1:1 movement with the front wheels, but pad control has always been so good in the F1 series that this noticeably feels changed for the worse.

There are a few uncharacteristic bugs, too, like odd or incorrect radio messages, uneven engine sound audio mixes and subtitle text that sometimes contains spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. It feels harsh to criticise the game for what it doesn't do perfectly when so much of it is so astonishingly well constructed, weaving as it does all of the various influences into a cohesive and expansive campaign. But while the game frequently points out what's objectively new, subjectively it feels all too familiar.

New features like some tracks being available in reverse and some LIDAR-mapped courses being authentic to actual race weekends are all well and good, but they don't improve the gameplay. If this is your first F1 rodeo, you'll be in heaven, but for anyone else, it's underwhelming.

There is a third pillar besides Braking Point and career, however, and it shouldn't be overlooked as it offers a meaty and satisfying online-integrated experience: F1 World. This again offers a quickplay series of events based around loot and upgrading your bespoke F1 car. It's largely unchanged from its '23 debut but does nevertheless offer an appealing and enjoyable side mode, especially if you're low on time or attention span. The game is far stronger for its inclusion, even if the emotes you can win are absurd. So the 'three games in one' I championed two years ago are evident here, only two of them aren't as enjoyable as before, and the other feels mostly unchanged.

Tracing line

Tech-wise, you get modern bells and whistles like path traced lighting, which does look very nice, but is restricted to graphics cards higher than an Nvidia 2070. That graphics card will still provide a playable but comparatively low frame rate with standard ray tracing enabled at 1080p, and will even give you a very smooth experience on Ultra settings with ray tracing disabled at the same resolution, but it's interesting to note the early RTX series is starting to become outdated.

Played on a newer card, however, the path traced lighting and newly rendered tracks look sublime. There are a few uncharacteristic choppy moments, particularly at Spa Francorchamps, but with so many variables it's hard to point to exactly why that is. Still, for the most part it is well optimised and looks incredible when running smoothly, and scandalously pretty at 8K60.

Sadly, despite the commendable upgrades, F1 25 feels like fundamentally the same game for arguably the 7th year in a row. Combining F1 World, Braking Point's return and career mode, it's very, very similar to F1 23, only not as fresh or as enjoyable as that game felt on release. It's not practical or even possible to keep rebuilding a game this big from the ground up year after year, that's understandable, but when so much familiar content is being repackaged as a full-priced iteration, it feels like a more radical change is needed soon. Most tellingly, last year's F1 24 felt like an 'off year' as it didn't have Braking Point in it, but—for the first time ever—even this 'on year' feels stale.