F1 2010 Review
Formula One racing with responsive driving, solid visuals, great learning curve spoiled by AI, performance and unpredictable penalties.
F1 2010 is not really a pick up and play type game like the recent racing efforts by Codemasters, instead it rewards you if you give it enough time. Spending hours on track just to master it and become the fastest driver in a race genuinely makes you feel superior. There is no chance to grin as you shove a competitor into the wall or give him a nudge on the inside like with GRID. Instead you will get a penalty and it will likely cost you time. You won’t want to touch the other drivers cars at all because chances are you’ll be punished for causing a collision. Although necessary for the game the penalty and AI implementation is not quite up to scratch.
Ready to race on the famous Monaco track, one to remember
Since the game is better when it is closer to a simulation the penalties are critical to the gameplay and unfortunately they are flawed. It’s incredibly easy to get a corner cutting penalty and you can even get them when your “cutting” actually resulted in a loss of place or lap time. Caused collision also happens often but less in a full races presumably because of how angry you would get after 10 clean laps. One qualifying session had me behind two drivers who collided on a chicane, not being able to break in time I slid into one of the cars incurring a collision penalty and the loss of pole position.
The AI is also slightly flawed, they can maintain track line even when your front tyre is hitting against their main chassis, pushing you aside further like you were playing GRID. If you are on a particularly fast qualifying lap they rarely let you go through with ease and instead slow you up. Yet you will be the one receiving a few blocking penalties when trying to get back on the track after a spin out into the gravel.
The game does have its share of performance problems and bugs which take away from the experience. Visually aside from the awesome rain effects it doesn’t look better than DiRT 2. In fact some of the car textures are too low resolution and characters in the garage or paddock look poor. The engine also runs slower with much longer load times, helped by fewer loads in general. If you start at the back of the grid you will barely be able to see the starting lights, a definite case where gameplay should have taken precedent. Aside from these things my biggest problem came when I was just getting into the game during my first season.
Rain effects are impressive and difficult to see through
After four races in the shortest of the main campaign (which at 3 seasons is far too long) my save file got corrupted and I was forced to start again from the beginning. The save corruption is a known issue that has yet to be fixed on all platforms, a definite game breaker. Grand Prix luckily enough allows you to set up your own season and place the circuits in the order you want to race them or just do one at a time. You can even make the races 1 lap in length if you prefer things short and sweet.
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