[Preview] F1 2010: Hands-on impressions

Codemasters seem to love publishing racing titles and while this may make them appear like a one trick pony at times, their trick is usually pretty good. Next release from the English publisher is F1 2010, which will be their second game in the series after acquiring Formula 1 license in 2008. Publishing the game in the India is quite understandably Zapak, since its parent company owns 50% stake in the Codemasters’ business. So, we were invited by Zapak to try our hands on a preview build of the game.  

Now, since this was a preview build, we did not have the opportunity to try every feature of the game, especially any of the multiplayer modes. However, from what we say, we get the impression that the final game is going to have a comprehensive career mode that is built along the lines of Grid and DIRT. The Career Mode starts with a short and familiar character creation process that concludes after the player chooses a team to represent. Some people may get turned off from F1 games due to its relatively complex driving mechanics and rather long races. Codemasters offers a good deal of customization options with driving assists, damage and tire-wear simulation and length of races. Now, this feature is commonly seen in racing games these days; however it is all the more beneficial for a game that is stuck within the F1 portion of the racing world. While such restrictions may bog down a game, it also offers the opportunity for the developers to create a deeper experience. To find this out however, we will have to wait till we get our hands on the final version.

Considering our experience with the preview build, we can fairly confidently say that this game looks quite promising. And with Codemasters’ behind the wheel, you know that it cannot be too bad—we just hope that F1 2010 is not too much like their other racing titles from the publisher.  We expect to get our hands on a review copy soon and bring you a review of the game sometime next week.