F1 2010 Review
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nutcrackr
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Based on the highly prestigious motorsport F1 2010 is not an arcade racing game, but it’s also not quite a simulator. It falls somewhere in between but is better served when it sits closer to the simulator genre. Featuring all the teams and drivers from the current Formula One season you can start as a new driver or step into the shoes of any current driver in any team. However F1 2010 isn’t fun and action every lap and don’t expect much personality over a gruelling season. Thankfully the driving does feel great and the game shines when taking corners at full speed or overtaking other cars. It is all about pure racing and it holds faithful to the motorsport it is trying to emulate with a few problems.
Ferraris certainly look nice in the sunshine
F1 2010 starts you on a somewhat obscure team in the F1 championships and tasks you with trying to take yourself and your team to great heights. This includes getting offers from other teams and pleasing your current team. You will need to answer some pointless questions after you win a race in an attempt to make you feel like a driver. These interviews are shallow, boring and completely unnecessary when a podium celebration may have been better instead. It’s no surprise but the only time you will really feel like a driver is when you are actually driving. This may be when you improve over your previous lap or make an outstanding overtaking manoeuvre during a long race. Formula One racing is a difficult sport and I think they have demonstrated this to good effect for better and worse.
On the simulator side of things many settings can be changed to get the experience somewhat close to what it would really be like to drive a F1 car. Options like break-assist, ideal racing line, tyre simulation, traction control and flashbacks can all be adjusted to varying levels to set the game just how you like it. These adjustments are a great strength but more than four flashbacks should be available considering the length of the races.
Full car damage is too reduced for a Formula One vehicle travelling at insane speeds. You can literally bounce your tyres off barriers when going at high speeds without taking any damage or losing much time. The most damage I took by accident was a broken front wing but it didn’t impact my driving much at all. The game could be described as an epic battle between you and the track ever searching for better laps even though you can sometimes get away with a little too much.
Full speed crash, who needs four wheels?
The shortest race length in the campaign mode is 20%, and this equates to about a dozen laps or roughly 20 minutes of solid race time without restarts. When you add in the time for practice sessions and the qualifying times you will be spending a good deal of time per event. Doing many laps in the practice sessions is essential unless you already know the track layouts well. Tracks like Monaco are quite punishing when first attempting them as you may miss corners or produce awful lap times. There was a great deal of satisfaction from wiping a large number of seconds from my lap time as I progressed through each weekend.
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.
Online the game doesn’t shine like other Codemasters games because as a simulator the collision and penalty system does not work when there is a delay between what you see and what is actually happening. A few races I had cars appearing from behind me and becoming translucent before my eyes as they moved through my car. Other times in the same race there would be a collision, sometimes with a penalty and sometimes nothing. This variation also applied to corner cutting and illegal blocking and I kept glancing to the top of the screen just to see if I’d be punished. The net code isn’t accurate enough to simulate a race with real collisions and consequently the online portion is very inconsistent.
The first corner in this multiplayer game had 5 collisions
Since most online races are only 3 laps in length with no practice time the setup also seems to go against the style of the single player experience. There were sadly a few griefers who knew of an impending loss and decided to just ram your vehicle for kicks earning disqualification but spinning you out in the process. If they were lucky they could take the inside line at full speed and have you turn into them leaving you with a 10 second penalty. Varying settings also throw havoc to your skill and the host may also set penalties very high resulting in quick disqualifications.
The game lacks the immediate jump in fun that can be had with other racing games but it definitely has a higher level of satisfaction when you spend hours on a track and produce the perfect entrance and exit out of a difficult corner shaving a fraction of a second off your personal best time. Taking a corner at full speed in Monaco only to miss the railing by inches does feel fantastic. It succeeds even just to get that track repetition where you literally feel in the racing zone with only one thing to focus on, the next corner.
F1 2010 may not be a pure simulation but it can be close enough to one and will please those who greatly enjoy the Formula One motorsport. I certainly recommend turning as many assists off as you can, learning the track without the coloured arrows just feels right. The driving is slick and responsive and visually does enough to make you feel like you are really on one of the famous tracks. I don’t recommend the game for racing fans after pure arcade action even though you can adjust various settings to make it close to an arcade experience.
Victory celebration? No I’m shaking my fist at another ridiculous penalty
Performance, AI and penalty problems aside it’s a nice racing game that maintains a good level of fulfilment as you learn each track like the back of your hand knowing when to break at corners and getting a feel for the speed of your car. Online the collision dynamics and net code is too problematic to get full enjoyment, especially with frequent incidents on the notorious first corner. Not as polished or well presented as the other games from Codemasters but overall a good emulation of Formula One racing.