Impressions: F1 2010 (Xbox 360)

I’m a big fan of racing games, especially simulation ones. There’s nothing more fun than chucking on a long endurance race and settling down for a couple hours of motor racing. F1 2010 is the culmination of what has felt like years of waiting for a game based on the number one racing championship. The super-sim (but super-boring) Formula One Championship Edition on the the PS3 (from way back in 2007) served as stop-gap for this game and while it was fun, it always felt utterly unforgiving. If you placed one wheel incorrectly you were out, lap ruined, and left with nothing to do but restart angrily.

F1 2010 has tried to spread the wings of previous Formula One games. The character-based career mode gives you a little bit more “narrative” than previous titles, giving you a reason to race. This brings in different parts from the previous Codemasters racing games including Dirt and Grid. It rounds them up into a nice package and refines them with the F1 style.

Luckily, they haven’t just ported the driving from Grid or Dirt as they are. Both games were more arcadey than this. While F1 2010 is certainly not a sim, it does create a more simulation-like experience. I, being hardcore, have played the game so far with all assists off except for automatic gears (my brain simply cannot think that quickly). This creates a game where you feel like you’re constantly on the edge of throwing the car into the gravel (or wall in Monaco) but while still giving you an awful lot of control.

Playing around the hot, sandy Bahrain I spent the first practice session (an hour and 30 minutes) just trying to learn the track properly. It’s hard to overstate how integral knowing the circuit is to the game — you can’t be competitive otherwise, and will just spend your time spinning around and being stuck at the back of the grid.

Once you start to get the hang of it you do begin to get a certain feeling of ‘flowing’ through the race. You feel yourself bouncing through the corners, picking up speed, getting the braking right and all together enjoying yourself. There’s moments of pure joy when you nail a set of corners, but then you’ll forget to brake early enough and smash into the wall or flick the car around being too cocky out of a corner.

The game gives you constant reminders to treat the car with respect; there’s only so far it’ll go for you. This fragility also extends to how you’ve set up the car. If you load up your car with 49 laps worth of fuel you’ll really feel it; the car lumbers more around corners and you need more time to brake while also giving you more stability. Have just three laps and you’re much quicker but things will be more on edge. Car handling also varies nicely between teams with a Ferrari being more forgiving than a Force India, although not so much that driving for the latter team is a chore.

When you’re up against real cars everything changes and it becomes a beautiful balancing act between going as fast as possible and not impacting the guy in front. This careful measuring means that you have to concentrate hard, something I found actually helps you become a better driver. You learn braking distances quicker because you brake where the other guy did and follow their generally faster lines. This type of racing is incredibly fun, especially when you’re carefully following for a couple of laps before getting the guy on a corner in a graceful overtake.

I did notice a few AI issues though – namely cars going suspiciously slow around corners that even as a relatively new player I was bombing around. Perhaps this was just because they were slower cars (I didn’t come across many Ferraris, they were way up in front) but it is slightly worrying. I’ve also been beating the faster cars such as Red Bulls and McClaren in qualifying, sometimes by quite some distance. I’m uncertain whether that’s just a blip or a real problem just yet, but like the above issues it’s could be a cause for concern.

There’s also some reports on the Codemasters forums that the driver AI’s lap doesn’t match the actual race time. This looks to be true and if so is kind of outstanding. Not having the driver’s actually racing their times so you can ensure realism is silly. There’s also several other irritating glitches that’ve been reported, and at least one serious bug that sees saves corrupted. We’ll see if Codemasters responds, but frankly, they should have known better before handing their games to some of the nerdiest fans out there.

The game has what appears to be updated Grid and Dirt graphics (they share the same engine) and when you’re behind the wheel of a fully revving F1 car, boy can you hear it. As you put your foot down in first or second gears that engine roars, almost to distortion (this appears to be a glitch and in the lower gears will really irritate you). Chuck some headphones on and you really are immersed, amplified by your extreme concentration.

F1 2010 seems like a fair compromise. It has the realism of a sim and the fun and ease of an arcade racer. With further play, however, I have a feeling I may notice more and more the arcade element. Once the initial (and did I say monumental?) hurdle of learning the tracks is complete it might just be a case of a difficult arcade racer; a Grid or Dirt trying to be F1. That’s no bad thing, but if you’re a nerdy racing game player it might just water down once you’ve won a couple of world championships and gone on to glory.

Image one, image two, image three.