F1 2010 – review

As odd as it may seem from the fulsome coverage, Formula One is not flattered by television. Camera angles neuter the breathtaking speed, flatten the gradients, and make braking distances look simple. Trackside, the reality is different: these are terrifyingly fast, technical masterpieces of machines. It's this reality that Codemasters have captured brilliantly in F1 2010 – from the only viewpoint none of us will ever actually have and the only one really worth having – behind the wheel.

With a full re-creation of the season, all the teams and all the circuits, an easy-entry Grand Prix Mode and a career that includes all the ephemera of agents, interviews and inter-driver rivalry, F1 certainly covers all the basics. But for fans it's the car that counts. They will not be disappointed.

From the off there's a verisimilitude to the performance that's instantly familiar. Grippy in corners, with a palpable sense of acceleration off an apex, the modelling is immensely detailed – a world away from sports cars and unique to F1. This attention to detail is everywhere: the back end will step out all too easily upon ill-advised braking; tyre choice, aerodynamics and fuel affect performance; and overcooking it into corners ends, without exception, in the gravel.

All of which applies to the computer-generated opponents as well: clever and aggressive, they are also all too believable – witness the stomach-churning sight of a Sauber parked directly in front, at right angles, on the exit of a fast corner…

Full practice, qualifying and dynamic weather are thrown in, making it fortunate that there is a (Ferrari race engineer) Rob Smedley-alike colleague to talk you through tiptoeing around Melbourne in a downpour, while the tracks themselves look magnificent – the first time around Spa's Eau Rouge or Suzuka's 130-R are moments to be savoured. But a measure of the genuine thought behind F1 is exemplified by a minor, yet brilliant, technicality: Codemasters rejected traditional gaming escapism by rightly insisting that lollipop men keep drivers in their pit box until it is safe to leave. It's a wheel-thumpingly frustrating-at-the-time moment but indicative of the care that has gone into the game.

Tiny niggles aside (easy is too easy, hard may be off-putting to some), and outside specialist titles like Grand Prix Legends, this is the best-realised, most exciting, and simply the most realistic F1 sim yet, at the front of the grid in a class of its own.