Thread: F1 2010 review

Formula 1 2010


Schizophrenic, a nice word I’m sure you’ll agree. Why bring it up here? Read on and you’ll see!
Ah Formula 1, the motor that divides nations in its ability to completely polarise people’s opinions of it. Be it the 2 hour races where little overtaking occurs, or where strategy of pit calls seem to matter more than the effort of driving fast, or where crazy white haired old men have ego trips whilst everyone else worships him incase they get banned from future events!

Personally, I like formula 1, I like it a lot. So I picked up the OFFICIAL game of FORMULA 1, packed with OFFICIAL pictures, tracks, names, teams history, and This is where my first gripe of the game comes into play.
Trademarked names are capitalised within sentences, we get it, its trademarked, no-where else does this, why does this game? It makes reading team / track histories a pain & disconcerting.


Well, that’s getting too far ahead of us, lets start from beginning, Create a save & You'll face the press to answer some questions: Who are you? What difficulty will you be playing at?
It’s a good way of bringing you into the style of game, but the models (& mostly faces) of the interviewers is something to be laughed at, they’re (and all human faces in the game) like the human models from the Gamecube era. But OK, it’s a car driving game, we can get past the melted face appearance of the interviewers, onto the next selection.
Picked your name, so choose your team. I really like this idea for the career. Rather than letting you pick from every team; where everyone would just go for the top teams straight away; you can pick from the lower end teams and your performance within the game might get you a contract with a better team.
I chose Force India, though quite frankly, I doubt there’s any difference within the game.

The Menu section is rather confusing for the first time.
The idea is similar to Dirt2, in the motor-home of the team and your options are available there. However, What’s the difference in ‘Career’ to ‘Grand Prix’ the first time you see it? Expect to go into a single race before going into the career, A lot more work should have gone into the menu systems, not just here but through the game itself.

Find the career, listen to the quietly talking agent, Select the first race, Bahrain, and there’s some options to choose before getting into the actual driving.
A Full session, or a short session.
Select the full session, and your there for 3 practice sessions, the 3 stage qualifying & the actual race.
The short is just a single qualifying & race.
Race Length
Going up in 20% stages, it means that each race is going to be around 22 minutes long at least. This isn’t a game pick up & play for a quick spin.
Difficulty
Choose between Easy, medium, hard and extreme. And its at this selection where you enjoyment of the game will become polarised.

First race, Bahrain, a track held out in the desert where theres nothing to see but desert for miles around.
F1 uses an enhanced version of the Grid/Dirt engine, and it looks good, cars look great, the track itself looks great. Sadly, like the physical location Bahrain has little scenery and so it’s a poor demonstration of the graphical prowess available.

Start off in the pits, and again the poor menu system shows itself on the little TV that is onboard your car, You can alter your car’s individual setup, but a lot of cases its just a small variation of ‘low, medium, high’
Which is where schizophrenia really comes into play - is F1 a simulation, or arcade game?
The game; box; instructions doesn’t say, so it could be either.

Set the difficulty as Medium, lets see how it goes.
Drive out of the pits, I have to do a lap before the laptime starts to begin, so a 2 minute lap, then a racing lap or two, then drive back into the pits..
Definitely simulation territory. (there are options that will let you jump away from these at the expense of virtual time)

Accelerates well, sounds good, looks good, turn a corner, carry on going straight, Cant turn a corner under braking… ok, still a simulation.

Cut a corner slightly and a message comes up that I’m corner cutting.. so that laptime is invalidated, so Ive got to drive around the track again to begin the lap anew. Grrr. I don’t recall such stringent rules in F1, normally the stewards would investigate this instead. (especially not in practice anyway)..

Onto qualifying & the same issue occurs here, go off the track & that laptime is invalidated.
At least with other cars on the track you get to push ahead of the steady line of cars. Except, it is a steady line of cars, they all follow the same racing line, Other than for random reasons where they spin out they do not variate from each other, This isn’t like F1!
The driving takes a while to get used to, and feels more like Codemasters have invested more time in supporting the wheel than the controllers (go to the controls options, its for the wheel)

Qualify near the bottom of the pack! Hey just like Force India, so its definitely a simulation! Onto race day.

No parade lap, just 3-2-1 Go! Cars quickly form a single line and more than likely, you will get hit, and you’ll get a warning for causing an accident. Seems you’ll see that a lot when other cars bump into you, There is no penalty given to other cars. Crashes themselves may result in damage, which is the front board below the nose cone breaking off. Your engineer comes over the radio ‘You have damage, but don’t worry we’ll fix it when you next come into the pits’ He says that a lot.
But the nose cone makes little difference to your car’s performance. Much like an Arcade style racer.
Actually, there’s no other damage you can do, race straight into a wall & you’ll bounce off it ready to join the race again. Where’s the suspension breakages? Where’s the punctures? Where’s the simulation? What happened to this? :



Your engineer talks quite often to you. ‘You can overtake that guy ahead’ when that guy ahead is Button out for a quiet sunday drive.
There’s no personality or knowledge in the engineer’s comments, its ‘That guy’, or at most ‘The car in front is a….‘ <loading> ‘Mercedes’ (which is spoken differently too)

End of race and I’m last, spun out once and unable to catch up.

Start the race again, Easy this time.
From a challenging, difficult game that probably just needed practice, to an awful mess of a game that offers no challenge.
Auto brakes, Auto Acceleration, But with braking zones that has your car stop on the circuit at some corners, no challenge, no difficulty, no point.
Completed the qualifying and race, qualified 4th, finished race 2nd and why those positions? Because it was computer controlled. Braking and acceleration where both computer controlled, you cannot choose to overtake (the other cars just spun out), you can only block other cars behind trying to overtake (just stay slightly outside of the highlighted racing line on the corner to do that)
I have a feeling, that over the 3 seasons length, that playing on easy will perform in this manner :
1st season:
Get top 5 places until the Force India contract runs out.
Get a contract on a slightly better team,
Get top 3 places until that contract runs out.
2nd Season:
Get a contract on another slightly better team,
Get top 3 places until that contract runs out.
Sign new contract with one of the big boys (Mclaren, RedBull)
Get top position consistently for rest of season & win championship
3rd Season:
Win every race and win championship and constructors championship

Its pretty much the plan like every arcade racer!

Playing the game on easy isn’t fun. It’ll complete the game with time, but its not enjoyable.


Other options like rain are included, Ive only seen this constant on a course, so I don’t know if its as dynamic as it says (yes when its dry it changes form sunny to overcast, but that’s not really dynamic)
Driving in the wet is a shame, You can ‘tell’ when a spin is coming the computer takes control of the driving from you to ensure that you do spin out! But then there’s none of those quick wheelspins. It’s a long sweeping turn, or reverse into a turning position.
The pit options are laughable within a race, its all computer controlled even down to driving down the pit straight. On a 20% race, nearly everyone pits one the same lap, however if your leading (or near the front), you’ll pit first. But you wont be released until all the other cars have gone. Congratulations from top 5 to 20th!

There are upgrade packages available in set practice sessions, but these are handled like arcade style racers ‘Beat this laptime & you can unlock this package’.. Hang on.. surely the idea of a simulation would be to test both out & see which gives the improvement? Make the cars modular in which components can be added with positive and negative combinations occurs from certain options?

In summation

I’m not sure how long Codemasters have the official contract for F1 for, I can see yearly releases for this, and with it incremental improvements, however I doubt Ill be getting next years. There’s not enough for a true sim. And there’s no option to enjoy it as an arcade style game.
There’s no Team control within the game whereas teams have a huge part in the sport.

Taken as a view to accurately reflect the sport, then this is highly disappointing game.
Taken as a view to have a solid game racing engine and try and force some tactical control it has partial success. The Grid Engine remains a top quality racing engine, but it’s the rest of the game that lets it down..
Codemasters would have been better to get rid of the F1 licence and build an F1 style game around the open wheel racers available in Grid.


Would you buy? Love F1 and want a highly flawed racing game that has a thin veneer of F1 on it? Sure (try & get it cheap though)

Otherwise, No, not at all (and I would like to be in this camp)

id imagine it will be an every-year game, otherwise it wouldnt be named "F1: 2010"

of course it might get dropped if there is no interest

Must absolutely agree with your review spot on(I wanted to like it but too many flaws).

i love this game, yes it has flaws, like where's the lap times at the end of each race??? i mean, F1 is all about lap times, a serious omission. the media thing, being interviewed and the like, feels very last minute to me, pre determined answers, you just choose which one is applicable, i'd have preferred them to leave it out, it's just a gimmick. but i play it for the multiplayer and think it's great, very rewarding for smoother, consistent drivers. you just won't get away with whacking someone up the arse, you'll get disqualified. PGR drivers need not apply.
the handling is, in my opinion, spot on, especially with a wheel, where you really get immersed into the game. the car feels "weighty" and solid, your actions are reflected accurately on the screen.
yes, it's not a true sim, lets face it, it would have been financial suicide for Codemasters, as it would have made it a minority game, but there are enough options to make it very twitchy unless you are delicate with the throttle/steering.
i've been let down too many times before with racers, the aforementioned Grid springs to mind, those cars were on rails. Race Pro was another, so much promise but so little substance when it came.
no, as a racer this is spot on, for me anyway. just difficult enough to make me want to come back for more and beat that laptime, or learn top control the car.
i can recommend this game to anyone who liked Forza, but wants that next challenge.
hope this helps...

Yes i would love to play this game as i use to play PS1 games which was brilliant in them days but it was never the same on PS2 but it is good to see i can finally play it on Xbox 360 when i can afford it

Mintz.. its completely different styles to the PS1 (which was ace & very much arcade based) to the PS2 (which I never played but was equally aimed at the arcade style)

Ive since got rid of the game (& glad of it too), but before I did, codemasters did a title update :

They did 'fix' little issues like drivers not pitting & lap times displayed (they show times within the race but still not within the pit wall)
They also claimed to fix handling problems, but I couldnt see any difference..

As far as the handling as I originally said.. after getting used to it, its not as bad as I originaly dealt with (however, I daresay with a wheel as Flan says it would be much improved over a joypad)
The easiest solution is to go online & copy someone's setup.. they work so much better than the standard car setups..

Theres still huge flaws & by all accounts Codemasters ahave moved onto their next game (no more updates)

The online when I did go on it, was 'different' its mixed with genuine racers who like the F1 style.. and complete idiots is just to grief other players by ramming them.. It didnt seem to have the rampant vocal abuse from other players like Grid does however.

The update was a small improvement, but doesnt resolve what remains a huge disapointment...
Question is, when 2011 comes around, will it have had the time & money to see a big improvement? or will it be another game to avoid?

Whilst Im on it & forza 3 was mentioned. Im playing that currently (god awful boring 'game').. theres things like trees in F1 that are missing, I never noticed it, but odd things like that F3 includes & F1 doesnt.. not sure that affects anything (as well as tracks being slightly different it feels) but its odd playing two games so close to each other using the same tracks

Oh dear that has shattered my love of F1 games, i wanted to buy this game but after u reviewed it being not so good, now i havent got a F1 game i want to play, i think codemasters should go back to being arcadey and it might improve people wanting to buy it, i still pined the F1 game i had on PS1