F1 2010

It’s surprising that for a sport so dominant in the world of motor racing, F1 hasn’t had a good gaming representation for a very, very long time. The last proper F1 game was 2007’s _Formula One Championship Edition_ and while it was an alright game, it didn’t truly live up to the excitement and pure thrill for attacking a corner at 200mph. Luckily F1 fans the world over can rejoice as Codemasters, continuing on their apparent goal to make decent games for every single driving genre, has provided an experience that is both exhilarating and technical, the perfect combination for an F1 game.

Driving is what an F1 game should be all about and in this regard Codemasters have absolutely nailed it. Even when starting out with one of the lesser known teams, your initial car is death-defyingly fast. The action starts straight away without having to make do with a gimped vehicle until half-way through your career; thankfully the F1 sport doesn’t seem to have the equivalent of a Mazda Demio. With all this speed, it’s fortunate that _F1 2010_ hasn’t been compromised by unforgiving handling, instead offering a fine balance between the inherent technicality of F1 and the accessibility of your average driving sim. While it’s necessary to apply precision cornering and pinpoint braking and acceleration at every moment of every event, you never feel like you’re being cheated when you mess up; it isn’t the game’s fault, it’s simply yours.

And if you do mess up, Codemasters’s signature flashback system has made its way across from the likes of _Grid_ and _Dirt 2_ to make those 40+ lap races a little more bearable when you undoubtedly spin out on the second to last corner. Rather than having to restart the race and effectively throw away an hour of your life, you can have another go, finishing the race at the front of the pack. The system works as well as it has always done in previous Codemasters titles, but when the average race goes on for considerably longer than in your usual racing game, the standard three flashbacks does seem a little tight.

In terms of the career mode, Codemasters have tried to immerse you in the life of a F1 driver instead of simply stringing together a series of unrelated events. This method does occasionally work and definitely offers something far more interesting than the usual, but unfortunately doesn’t quite go all the way, with a number of aspects feeling only partially fleshed out. A prime example of this is the inclusion of interviews with the press after taking a podium finish; a reporter will ask you questions and you have the ability to choose responses from a limited selection. One option will make your current team extremely happy with you while another will royally piss them off. This all feeds back into a system based on how happy your team is with you; you can upset them or you can attract the attention of bigger teams. However, what really matters in this regard is your performance on the track; this makes these interviews pretty pointless and merely an extra annoyance that you have to sit through before getting to the next race.

_F1 2010_ was also hyped up on a number of features aimed at F1 superfans; track evolution, tire wear, damage and fuel simulation were all promised and have indeed made it into the final game. However, all of the above are turned off by default until the hard difficulty, at which point extremely useful things like traction control are turned off resulting in the game, as the difficulty states, becoming excessively hard. There’s also a research and development section built into the game where improvements to your car are gained on meeting certain targets. While this is a nice addition, it doesn’t have any real effect on the driving experience unless playing on the hardest of difficulties, something that isn’t particularly fun to do.

This may sound like a lot of unfair criticism and it probably is as _F1 2010_ is truly a great game that deserves to be purchased if you enjoy any form of motor sport. With a considerable amount of technical depth, this is far more like the original _Dirt_ as opposed to its arcade heavy sequel; both games get down into the nitty gritty of choosing tyre set-ups and a host of other engine management minutiae. While this probably isn’t for some, it’s no doubt what true F1 fans would want. The career and the initiative attempt at representing more than just the driving side of the F1 lifestyle may fall a little flat but they are definitely in the right direction, making the experience far more interesting than that found in lesser racing sims. All this, thrown together with a fantastic presentation and a number of online modes, makes _F1 2010_ a highly recommended game that still has some room for improvement in the inevitable sequel.