F1 2010 reviewed on PC and Xbox 360 by Harry Neary

This morning brought the news that Codemasters' F1 2010 has leapt to the top of the UK all formats chart outselling Halo Reach and Dead Rising 2 combined. Not bad - but given the rather dodgy free advertising the game was given on the BBC's F1 coverage not entirely a surprise.

What is more of a surprise though is that even though Codemasters has had the patience to make us wait an extra year for the game - rather than shovelling something out the first year of the license - it's still full of awful decisions and unforgivable bugs.

Thankfully the very heart of the game - the actual driving - is pretty good. As is the atmosphere for a full race weekend (despite the lack of pre-race grid razmatazz). These elements just about sell the game. But if you are hovering over a "buy" button I'd wait. Codemasters has a pretty poor record when it comes to fixing its broken games, where other publishers go out of their way to solve problems, Codemasters software tends to have to fend for itself in the big wide world.

Let's do the good news first. Few F1 games have captured the power and speed of the cars so well. I’m not a great fan of the whole “sensation of speed” thing that so many arcade gamers favour, preferring something more natural. But Codemasters has created a driving model and appropriate player views that convery the fast, twitchy nature of single seat racing at the top of the sport.

High downforce cars can connect a series of different corners into a long sweeping complex of turns taken at full speed. So many games in the past have got this wrong, with a lack of flow from turn to turn. Here in F1 2010 there’s a real sense of achievement and genuine excitement as one turns the wheel and sweeps at impossible speeds from one corner into the next.

A selection of driving aids, difficulty levels and rule settings allow this allow the experience to be tailored to one’s own skillset. Purists looking for the next Grand Prix Legends aren’t really going to find gaming Nirvana here but for most of us seeking a convincing simulcrum of F1 driving thrills will be satiated. F1 2010 may be sim-lite, but it’s convincing sim-lite.

More compelling is the setup of race weekends and the ability of the player to tweak these throughout the season. It’s perfectly possible to race three laps of a track you aren’t particularly keen on and take on a full 76 lap event at the next cross on the calendar. Practice and qualification periods offer a chance to hone one’s skills for the big race before the excitement and terror that is a GP starting grid.

The dynamic weather system is a wonder to behold especially if a storm blows into the middle of a qualifying sessions causing chaos. The representation of rain on a race track is one of the best I’ve seen. Changing weather plays a huge part in F1 - something many games have ignored in favour of offering just wet or dry events. On the longer races especially Codemasters has managed to make the weather as much a character as the track itself - something we’re all familiar with when watching races at circuits such as Spa.

You’re sensing a big “but” coming though aren’t you? And yes there is one. F1 2010 has been shovelled into the marketplace with a raft of bugs - many of which are killers. The most pressing one for many gamers is save game corruption. I have yet to suffer this on either PC or Xbox 360 versions of the game, but a short glance across gaming forums sees many a customer having their hours wasted by having their progress corrupted.

While not a bug - the faking of qualification times compared to what you can see happening on the track has lead many players to feel the whole game is one big fake, a mere time trial game with AI cars really just existing as mobile hit-boxes. Codemasters has admitted that there is fakery in the qualification times but denies that there is fakery going on in the race. Time will tell if this is true.

What is clear though is that lap times being reported for AI cars don’t seem to match what is happening on the track in races. There seems to be some sort of error working out laptimes in relation to the player. More importantly though the player is not given enough information about the distance to AI rivals on the track, you’ve no idea if the car in front is five seconds ahead rather than fifty. Such information is fundamental to the way F1 races are conducted, when drivers no when to push or take it easy, how to plan pitstops. The lack of split time information is a fundamental failure in the game. The absence adds fuel to the fire that the races are faked, with AI cars being pretty visual diversions to entertain the player rather than actually taking part.

Other bugs are equally demoralisng. One I’ve experience myself is a failure of AI cars to make pit-stops even if mandatory in that race. So the player must stop - with the hope of regaining one’s place when other cars pit - only to find they never enter the pit lane. The rules are different for AI cars too - you’ll rarely see them penalised for anything other than ignoring a blue flag.

The AI cars don’t seem to suffer tire wear or react to fuel usage. The damage system is pretty poor too - I've managed to drive pretty quickly with a puncture with no ill effects. Or what about your race engineer suggesting you copy your teammates' setup without the game offering any way to actually do so?

The result is that - whether AI race times are fixed or not - one feels like the races are just a big illusion. Everything reacts to the player rather than F1 2010 being a world the player enters on an equal footing. Perhaps some of these things can be patched - for another publisher I would hold out high hopes of this being so, but Codemasters doesn’t have a good record of post-release support.

This is such a shame. F1 2010 is a visual treat and from a driving perspective a huge amount of fun. If you plan on just enjoying the driving in time trials, playing races online or just enjoying it as an arcade experience on lower difficulty settings then you’ll get a lot out of it. For those of you who want to take part in an F1 seasons pitting your skills against a simulation of the best drivers in the sport you are likely to be hugely disappointed. If you don’t spot it - the slight of hand trick that is F1 2010 - is a convincing and fun ride. However far too many of us has seen the cards hidden up the games’s sleeve.

Codemasters you've potentially got a really good game here - please fix it.

F1 2010 is out now and available on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 from Amazon.

Update: Codemasters has responded in depth to the many criticisms of F1 2010 and we'll take another look at the game post-patch.