Formula 1 2010:

I have now reviewed several racing games on here and have recently been playing on Formula 1 2010, mainly due to the fact I have been watching the F1 on the TV and have not liked the way that the results have been going and wanted to rectify that.

Price - I wanted to start off by saying that the reason I didn't get this game when it came out was because of its price, in my opinion no game is worth more than £30 and very few are worth more than £20, especially when you can wait and get them at a later date as I did with this at a good price of around £15 (the 2011 game is still £25). This is not a bad price for the game however if you take into account that Blur (my favourite racing game on PS3- see the review) is actually cheaper then maybe it's not such a good price after all.

The Game:

Teams and Cars:

The first thing that I have noticed, although maybe this is because I am driving in too easy difficultly setting, is that it doesn't seem to matter which team you drive for you can win races and that everyone just seems to finish more or less in the groups you would expect them to, and although this has been the case for F1 this season generally speaking this is not how things turn out. It would be nice if the speed of the cars was truly reflected, just because I am driving in easy or medium or whatever I should not be able to easily win any race when I am driving in one of the minnow teams such as Lotus or HRT. I however am driving for Torro Rosso and with several races left to go in my first season I have wrapped up the title and have won most races with relative ease.
Circuits:

This is one of my favourite but also one of my least favourite aspects of the Formula 1 games in general is that you get to drive all the formula one tracks, however as seasons update the game doesn't why shouldn't I be able to race on the India track? Part of the reason for getting something like the PS3 is that it has the ability to update that is something I would like to see, sure it gives me less reason to buy the next game in the series but hopefully that would help motivate developers to make the next game in the series more worthwhile buying, I only bought this as the last one that came out was years ago and wasn't that great.

Another thing that I don't like about this is that they only have F1 race tracks, now while this is not that hard to accept it is a bit boring, why would I want to do 5 consecutive seasons doing the same tracks again and again and again, I mean it would not be that hard to have it so that you could drive the tracks in reverse and this instantly double the number of tracks, now I am no software developer but I have seen on other games tracks getting stuck together, couldn't F1 do that and make unique tracks where you have different sectors from different tracks.

Now for a little bit less of a moan, the tracks that they do have, the real ones, are great not only do they look real in terms of layout but also in terms of environment and weather which I will come onto in a minute, which means that you can almost believe what you are doing is comparable in some small way to what the F1 drivers are actually doing.

I will cover weather here as well, the weather does change, it is predicted if you do a racing weekend so you can set up your car accordingly however be warned that much like in real life the forecast can be wrong, also be warned that a torrential downpour can start and can finish at any moment, it can only last a few laps etc though your team should advise you on this it is down to you to make the right choice and determine your own fate.

The Racing Weekend Experience:
When you do races or season you have a choice of how long and how in depth you would like to make it, I like this aspect of the game, if I only want to drive a race at 20% the real life length I can do that, if I want to just do qualifying and a race at 50% I can do that (by skipping the 1 practice) and equally if I want to do all practice season, all parts of qualifying (in the short mode it's just a one off like it used to be in the old days of F1. During the season mode you will also get the opportunity in practice to go and try to beat a time to earn an upgrade to your car, I like this concept as it means that you are the one that dictates the upgrades that your team make (though you have to be the no1 driver in order to tell them where to make upgrades).

The Season Mode:

I have mentioned the season mode a lot above and it is really enjoyable, however it is very time consuming, I have not yet completed a whole season and this is not because I don't like the game as that's not true as I keep coming back to it, it is just that I don't always have the time to do a whole racing weekend. Now by whole racing weekend I do mean a short racing weekend I have chosen to play my season with only 1 practice season, 1 qualifying season and a 20% race, these still take about 30minutes on average and is really dependent on how quickly I pick up the track.

The controls and driving experience:

Now although I have said that I have won my first season whilst in a rubbish car it was not all easy, most tracks I had to do some practice on or tweak the car but once I had done this I was several seconds a lap clear of my opposition which meant it was a walk in the park, there have been a couple of tracks where I feel the controls of this game let it down and whether it is just due to sensitivity or something I don't know but I can't get the car round, at least not fast enough, on the street circuits like Monaco and in my frustration actually got black flagged (opps). The controls of this driving game are much simpler than many others as you don't have weapons (how cool would that be?) or anything and just need to hit accelerate or break and turn. Now I don't have the driver aids on because 1) I feel they spoil the game and 2) I find they make me much much slower round the lap but maybe this would help beginners as both my girlfriend and my best mate (who games a lot) struggled to pick this up at all, they were last and spent a lot of time in the gravel.

Multi-Player:

Doesn't exist, that's right a racing game of this level has come out and it doesn't have multiplayer, why not? I know that getting two people of a similar level together may be hard but my main appeal to games like Blur is the multi-player, simply make it so that different driving aids are available for different players or something as I hate it not having multi-player.

To sum up:

This game is good, but far from great, it is hard to pick up and even more so if you have not played a F1 game before, if you stick with it you will improve but with the limited difference between the cars and the repetition of the tracks I am not sure how long people are going to stick with it and indeed F1 game in general. Overall 3/5 and if you have the choice I urge you to get Blur.