Twenty-two years on and hundreds of racing games later, and F1 has somehow consistently remained a relatively stuffy and inaccessible racing sub-genre that has consistently passed us by. Somehow, every Formula One game has managed to completely drain the glitz and glamour of the event, focusing almost exclusively on realism and detail above all else, eschewing any aspect of fun in favour of pure simulation. That's not to say that all F1 games have been bad – far from it in fact. It's just high time that the sport be given a serious shake-up and a real shot of the kind of Monaco GP glamour that you'd normally associate with the life of a multi-millionaire driver.
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| The trusty in-car view. Always a treat. It's the perfect way to feel the Gs. Well, not the Gs, but... You know what we mean. | Wet races represent a tougher challenge since spinning off the track is a regular enough occurrence without water on the track. |
Codemasters' unmatched pedigree in crafting some of the finest racing games around (DiRT, GRID) makes it the perfect studio to take up the Formula One reins and do proper justice to the FIA license. Using the tried and tested Ego engine that served Codies' other stellar racing titles so well, F1 2010 already looks incredibly stylish and robust even at this relatively early stage in development. The code we get hands-on time with is so early in fact, that the cars are still sporting last season's liveries and the grid is still inhabited by 2009's roster of drivers.
Still, it's enough of a demo to get a sense of the handling model and a feel for the sole car we're given as a sample – Mark Webber's Red Bull Racing Renault. Since we also graduated straight from the school of arcade racers - where Burnout and PGR are big on the curriculum - doesn't help us in getting to grips with the hyper-sensitive steering of an F1 car, and so before you know it, we're spinning into the gravel, cutting corners via the grass verges and crashing into rival racers like we're at a destruction derby.
Despite all of this terrible, disqualification-worthy behaviour, we still manage to somehow scrape an 11th place finish, clearly indicating that we've been given the arcade settings rather than the full-fat simulation. F1 2010 will be taking the simulation aspect of Formula One to new places however, charting your complete F1 career in deep, meticulous detail, from being part of a team and the internal rivalries therein, to dealing with the media, performing press conferences, interviews and more. Factor in the engineering side of F1 with research and development for new, bleeding-edge technology during off-season, which leads to upgrades and even building a better car for the following season, and you begin to understand that the only thing missing from F1 2010 will be a Nicole Scherzinger-style lady friend, which is (naturally) a huge shame.
“Be the driver. Live the life” is the mantra that Codemasters is using to promote F1 2010, and the attention to detail that the studio has planned is staggering. Off the track, there's all of the aforementioned aspects, alongside pit strategies, engine maintenance and allowances for varying weather conditions. On the track, there's tyre wear (deterioration such as marbling, blistering, shredding and punctures for instance), drafting, slipstream and numerous other elements and emergent problems and obstacles to take into account too. No part of the actual sport has been left out – Codies' promise that it'll all be in there in full. Or as full as you can get in a game, at least.
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| Current code still has the 2009 liveries and drivers, which will obviously all be replaced in time for the September launch. | The pit crew is lovingly animated and even have slip-ups, just like real life. Squint and it could be like, totally real! |
Simply put, the developers state that, “you are a driver. You are in the world,” and so you virtually live on the team truck or in the garage, which is your window to the race track. It'll all be completely seamless too, switching between garage tinkering to racing without missing a beat. And there'll be the tense atmosphere to match – at least that's what the dev team tell us. All we have is their word for now.
It all sounds incredibly promising though, and although at present F1 2010 plays much like any other Formula One game we've encountered in the past – albeit with a slightly choppy frame rate – there's no doubt that Codemasters will make it an absolute certainty that the finished product will be every bit as polished as the rest of its racing stablemates. DiRT and GRID have both shown what the British racing studio can do with rallying and balls-out street racing, so F1 should be no exception.
We'll find out for sure what's in store when F1 2010 releases in September 2010.
