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May 2018. Circuit de Barcelona. F2 Championship. You run in first position, but a problem causes you to go down several positions until you are right in front of your teammate. You have recovered the rhythm, but from the radio comes a strong message: "Let your partner pass". He's on your heels, but you're going fast too. And then the time comes: you have to make a big decision. Pay attention to your team or your desire to champion? This internal struggle is what has marked many times the difference between a pilot with character and one who follows the rules, between glory and mediocrity.

The previous paragraph I have not invented it. It means the start of the F1 2019 professional career. It was hard for me to believe what I was seeing, but it was real. For this edition, one of the greatest achievements of Codemasters is to get even more into the skin of a pilot. It does so through an introduction supported by Formula 2, making us run in several situations that show that your biggest rival is your teammate ... and that not everything happens on the track, but behind the scenes.

The incorporation of the F2 is the great holder, but this edition brings some more. One very important is that the game comes almost two months before the last edition, which is increasingly adjusted to the start of the real championship of Formula 1. Another very interesting is the integration of eSports, as well as improving the way online multiplayer, with leagues of greater possibilities. Graphically it also evolves: above all they win in realism the nocturnal races. In short, this release is not a revolution, but another acceleration to continue to mark pole in the subgenre of F1 games.

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*The most striking of F1 2019 is the addition of Formula 2 as a new playable layer. You have just started the trajectory mode, as a springboard to the premier category: the Formula 1. You select a driver (man or woman) and one of the available teams, from Carlin to Trident. The next thing is to start running without saying a word. A kind of story mode awaits you, in which you fight not only with your teammate (Lucas Weber), but against your great rival in the championship (Devon Butler). Internal disputes and bad practices in competition shake hands to show you that everything is not as rosy as you thought.*

This introduction to the F2 does not last much more than an hour, and the truth is that it has been quite short, but as an experiment I think it is a great success ... and I particularly hope that it does not stay here, but in the future let's see a deeper approach. For the moment, it serves as a transition to F1, and it depends on our performance that we jump with one contract or another. The demonstrated performance and the answers offered to the media will be important for your next step: Ferrari? Mercedes? Renault?

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*Another of the elements that Codemasters most boasts for this edition is its online multiplayer component. Unfortunately, there is no split screen since the change of generation with F1 2015, and I still think it would be a good idea to recover it, given that there is a good number of players who still appreciate this feature. Even so, the online game is competent, with a maximum of 20 competitors (plus two spectators) that this year puts the focus on the leagues, online championships to several races in which we can configure almost everything from the AI of the CPU to the open or private character of the games.*

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At the moment, we have a new edition of Codemasters F1 that of course recovers everything we knew: championships, great rewards, weekly events ... as well as eight special challenges that are included in the Legends Edition, with several clashes involving to Prost and Senna. It is a pity that they are simple races without historical value, because it would have been a detail. In short, if in F1 2018 we had 18 cars, now we see the introduction with this edition of four new classics: Ferrari F1-90 (Alain Prost), McLaren MP4 / 5B (Ayrton Senna), Ferrari F10 (Fernando Alonso) and McLaren MP4 -25 (Lewis Hamilton).

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My opinion after playing

Codemasters is committed to stability this time, maintaining the magnificent attributes of the last edition and making small adjustments on all systems. The great headline is the entry of the F2 as a new game option, and it is very welcome, because it throws interesting ideas, related to the empowerment of the narrative, giving greater variety to the proposal. But there are also other headlines, such as the empowerment of online or the emergence of e-sports, which will be interesting to see where they can take us in future deliveries.