Recent reviews by Blue Monkey

There are other games with fewer devs, shorter dev time and more content ...

1.2 Update
The graphics are okay, the licenses are amazing, settings & usability is good, it works nearly bug free, but,

FFB is inconsistent in strength and sometimes lead to unexpected loss of the rear. Some cars, like the BMW have much stronger FFB than say the Lexus ... why? should be obvious during QA. Another sideeffect of this is the overly strong ABS effect, leading to wheel clipping.
A suspicion here is, that there is something wrong with the physics too, as in rare circumstances the rear just snaps away without obvious reason or realistic forewarning.

Horrendous driving standards at bronze level.
The lack of effective stewarding and the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ safety rating system are an absolute deal break for me. Some relatively clean drivers are stuck in Bronze hell because they want to race and not do a sunday drive to just get the license up. It can be expected that in a system like this one can race others, cleanly, and still get the safety rating up. iRacing does this 10x better than LMU.

Particularly the last point is really essential for a simulation, I can atm not fully recommend LMU.
I hope and think, they will address those issues sufficiently in the near future. I will definitely keep trying it out and if they improve it enough, will change this review!

Every match, there are 1-2 cheaters. Pretty obvious too.
EA bans anyone criticizing them or criticizing other players with in game chat.

The gameplay is not Battlefield anymore, its Call of Duty with vehicles. Bunnyhoping, running around like having ADHD and sliding has become the norm. Even the maps are too small for Battlefield. SQUAD is the only alternative at this moment and it is a tad more sim than BF3.

Netcode is mediocre. Performance okayish. Only had 1 crash in 4h.

Of course all the women are doing always the ethically / morally right thing. The men are evil (except for the minorities ofc). On top of that, women & blacks are way over-represented in this game given the historical context. This is both true for the campaign, and mostly for the sandbox too. There is tons more wrong with it, see https://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/app/3274580/discussions/0/667222787666154757/

Nobody asks for an exact representation of Roman times, but this goes clearly too far.
Shame on you Ubisoft, have you not learned from the PR disaster that was Assassin's Creed Shadows?

I want to relax, enjoy the game, instead of subliminally be constantly indoctrinated. Imaging we would make a game about the Nazis and show them as the good guys and minorities as the bad guys - would be exactly the same issue. Everyone would be rightfully outraged, nobody would say "It's a game, not a historically accurate history lesson" etc.

You just ensure that me and many others never BUY another Ubisoft title. You have become greedy and political. And it means you are not focusing on making good games anymore and it obviously costs you now!

---

Onto the rest of the game, so far:

• Multiplayer is broken at launch (and first hotfix did not help that much), every ~30min it desyncs or breaks and you have to restart game and redo lobby ... after some hours you can't even get past the loading screen - some simple testing would have easily unveiled this and many other issues ...
  
• Campaign is unfinished by devs - it seems like they cut a huge part, which explains why it so suddenly and abruptly ends - hopefully they finish it one day, but given it is Ubisoft, I wouldn't hold my breath
  
• Usage of AI in the game. At the very least some loading screens are AI generated and they don't look anywhere as good as the one's from Anno 1800
  
• I am neutral on why they force Ubisoft Connect, I have a rough idea why they do it - it is not pleasant for us players, but seeing their side, it is a mixed bag for me ...
  
• Gameplay is at least as good as Anno 1800 if not a significant upgrade (*)
  
• Performance is okay (not great though, but given it is not a fast paced game, it is good enough)
  
• Love the graphics
  
• Love the attention to detail, particularly inhabitants walking around, working, etc.
  
• UI is good to great (*) - they fixed some issues from the beta
  
• New Coop options are great!
  
• Basically bug free so far, no crashes
  
• and much more ...
  
• 
  
• if the main issues wouldn't be, I would fully recommend this game ...

The game feels like not finished, this is noticeable in the game, features not working (like map generation), missions breaking, multiplayer not working, sandbox quest broken. Nearly all of these issues would have been found if the devs would actually have played their game for a month. Did they run out of money? Is this a cash grab for the inevitable selling of Ubisoft (go woke go broke)?
63% steam review score is really bad for such a big franchise with a large owner ...

* = depending on your preferences.

Absolutely no.

NO to forcing players to make an account.
NO to mediocre driving physics in an alleged sim.
NO to bad performance / ♥♥♥♥♥♥ graphics.
NO to insanely greedy devs (massive monetization with dirty tricks).

The Demo is free, but I judge this like it is a preview for the upcoming full release, assuming >30 USD price tag. More than 10 bucks is a no from me. If this came out 10+ years ago, it would be a yes. It is about on the level of Starfield, in some aspects better, in some clearly worse.

The graphics are simple, at least it runs well, i had also no crashes so far.
The gameplay is too simple, too arcady, weird and for me too boring.
The leveldesign is linear and boring. Choices? Nope.
The story so far is just not good.

I have >50h on another platform.

While the game has a great new road system, some cool new visuals and the fundamental idea is great,
it runs badly (particularly when city gets medium size), it is pretty buggy (simulation wise), and is too expensive at the moment.

It is also not good to see that certain features made a step back, while other long requested features never made it into the game, like lane editing. The first DLCs released were underwhelming to say the least. Certain features are of low quality (i.e. radio stations that are boring & repetitive, particularly the announcements).

I was very disappointed at launch and things have progressed but are still far from satisfactory. It is a shame, this one has huge potential, but it was badly mismanaged (looking at you CEO of colossal, with your lies and blaming everyone but herself/studio)!

---

Original review:

I can fully recommend, just beware, this is WW1 setting, and thereby WW1 era weapons, so it might not be your taste.
Sound, graphics, immersion, speed (not too fast) are all superb.

Big Note: You will encounter regularly cheaters and there also people spamming & raging in chat. EA basically has stopped caring about BF1 unfortunately.

It is very similar to Overwatch, with better mechanics, more innovative heroes and abilities and less of a dictatorship like leadership style (looking at your chat policies Blizzard, utterly ridiculous). I enjoy this more in general.

Negative reasons:

• Balance is badly broken rn, yet the devs have not fixed some of the obvious balance issues since beta. I.e. There is Jeff's ult, that is utterly broken balance wise. Instead they released a winter event patch ...
  
• For me performance is just about good enough (4K low, except Lumen on on a RTX 3090 = 100 fps), but frankly, given other reports, it is obvious that this game runs not performant enough
  
• Game is free to play: The problem with this is, that cheaters & other a##es get banned and just create a new account ... if they get banned, still have 2\3 confirmed cheaters not banned ...
  
• Aimassist for console players are overpowered
  
• Can't turn off crossplay
  
• Cheaters are already an issue at higher ranks
  
• Netcode and hitboxes in combination with the stupid 3rd person are bad - example: Many heroes, where your crosshair is not where you will hit, not to mention that it is offset from the left ... it is obvious that some ammo, like arrows/sword, have a way too big hitbox
  
• It is doubtful that not having role queue will work ... in quickplay sometimes players dont do tank/healing ...

Note: F1 games by EA/Codemasters are NOT simulation, they are considered simcade (in between arcade & simulation). If you want to drive F1 cars in a simulation, look at iRacing, Automobilista 2, etc.

Did only 1 25% race on Spa in offline F1 World:
Try to crash your car with max simulation damage; in F1 23, wheel would fall off hitting a wall, in F1 24 wheel is basically indestructible. Same for front wing.
The car grips up during cornering very sharply & suddenly. Totally unrealistic.
The engine at top speed has that horrible stutter sound, due to how the game handles ERS.
Graphics look more cartoonish, but performs better (max @ 4K).

Also it still has the same UI issues from F1 23, like overburdening menus, tons of menus & sub-menus (pain in the ass to even start something).