Welcome to Rear View Mirror, your weekly racing game news roundup. Get up to speed on everything that happened in the world of racing games this week.
Portimao returns to F1 22
In a surprise free update, the Portimao circuit returned to F1 22, despite not featuring in the 2022 Formula 1 race calendar. The Portuguese Grand Prix was part of update 1.07, which also makes some changes to the throttle application.
Sadly, the update hasn’t fixed the AI straight line speed issue that's still plaguing F1 22. However, Codemasters says it’s identified what's causing this issue so we should get a fix in a future update.
F1 22 cross-play coming later this month
F1 22 was originally supposed to launch with cross-play multiplayer back in June. Unfortunately, this long-requested feature was delayed due to the team working on cross-play being based in Ukraine, which is still at war with Russia.
Happily, EA has confirmed that cross-play multiplayer is coming to F1 22 later this month. This will allow players to race each other online across multiple platforms including PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC.
It’s a welcome addition and the first time in the series’ history that an F1 game has supported cross-play.
There’s no release date yet, but EA are hosting cross-play trials on 5-7 August and 12-14 August, so you can try it yourself today.
Forza Horizon 5 Donut Media DLC car pack
The Hot Wheels expansion has only been out for a few weeks, but Forza Horizon 5 players can look forward to more new content sooner than expected.
During the latest Past Gas podcast, host James Pumphrey revealed that Forza Horizon 5 is getting a new Donut Media-themed DLC pack.
The DLC pack will feature project cars created by the Donut Media crew including Hi and LowCars fitted with expensive or cheap upgrades. Playground Games hasn’t officially revealed the DLC yet, but it’s expected to drop in August or September according to Pumphrey.
In other news…
With less than one month until release, Frontier Developments released a new F1 Manager 2022 behind-the-scenes video focusing on the game’s impressive sound design. One of the most interesting takeaways is that the team were sent 25,000 lines of team radio dialogue to make F1 Manager 2022’s audio as authentic as possible.
While we’re still waiting for news on Need for Speed 2022, EA reaffirmed that the new NFS is still on track for a 2022 release in its latest financial earnings report. With a rumoured November release, it seems likely that the sequel to NFS Heat will be revealed this month around Gamescom.
Polyphony announced a surprise partnership with French fashion house Dior, which will bring custom race gear and a unique De Tomaso Mangusta to GT7. A comment by the official Gran Turismo YouTube channel also suggests GT7’s Sophy AI update is coming by the end of this year.
Mobile racer Real Racing 3 received a huge update adding three new cars including the mighty Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series along with a graphics update. Forza Horizon 5 Hot Wheels also surpassed one million players in less than two weeks.
The Rocket League-inspired Turbo Golf Racing was also released on Steam Early Access and Xbox Game Preview and Wave 2 of the Booster Course Pass added eight new tracks to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe this week.
In other news, the rugged Ford Bronco Raptor LTE is available in Rocket League for a limited time, World Wide Technology Raceway is coming to rFactor 2 in next week’s Q3 Content Drop, and the Hot Wheels Unleashed August DLC update lets you drive the flying space car from The Jetsons.
In case you missed it…
The Forza Horizon 5 Hot Wheels expansion is already proving popular but FH5's first expansion left us feeling cold. Find out why in our hands-on impressions.
With My Team proving popular in Codemasters’ F1 games, we also ask if F1 Manager 2022 needs custom teams.