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F1 2010 is a game that in recent memory surpasses the likes of Persona 4 in terms of its hardcore-ness. The game is in fact so hardcore that in order to complete even a single race, drivers will spend anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour. This time is spent with two practice rounds before the race.
The first round is the Training stage, whereby racers will lap the track as fast as possible, and compare different engine, suspension, wing, brake, weight distribution, and gear ration settings, with the intent on bettering your opponents and optimizing your car's performance, which will be different from track to track. Also worth noting is the innovative, and dare I say, ahead-of-its time dynamic weather that goes on drastically affects the speed and grip by which your car can take advantage of.
Next, is the Qualifying round, in which you will use the car settings you tinkered with during the last round to get the best possible lap times. But drivers beware, as other cars are on the track, and can both help and hurt your in-progress lap times; drafting can prove to increase your speed and acceleration on a straightaway, but dirty driving can lead to some severe consequences. F1 2010 boasts quite strict penalties that should you accidentally bump into another driver, you may incur a five-place penalty, or worse yet, disqualification!
F1 2010 attempts to simulate the fastest motorsport to a T, and it often succeeds. This is evidenced by the smoothness of steering, the tangibility of changing the car settings, like camber and ride height, as the regulations that go into a Formula One race are simulated as well. For example, if you qualify within the first ten positions, you will be required to equip soft-compound/sprint tires at first. This is both for better and for worse: sprint tires, while they are fast, wear out just as fast as they can get you from point A to point B. So with this in mind, should you refuse to pit, and thus, not abide by the regulations, you will be disqualified. And while, in other modes, you simply can restart without much of a worry, when it comes race time and you're disqualified, you have to start all the way over from the beginning.
Finally, after all the preparation, practice, and acclimatization to your given track comes race day. Your starting position is based on the lap times you posted in your Qualifying session, and this usually decides where you'll end up by the finish of the race.
The sensation of driving in an F1 car is like no other, and F1 2010 does a fine job depicting the fierceness of the roaring V8 engine as it whines its way through an 18,000 rpm redline, and the brutal hairpin corners that go part-and-parcel with the sport.
One minor issue that F1 2010 seems to suffer from though, is the steepness between difficulty levels. In the Easy difficulty setting, your brakes are automatic, your shifting is automatic, you have the safest traction-control system known to man, you have a big, green, glowy thing lighting up where you should go, and shouldn't, and you don't even have to pit, so long as you turn into the right place. But should you turn those all off without practice, your experience will be a living hell. As soon as you go into the Medium or Hard difficulty ranges damage soon increases, and you soon realize at that point, you have to know what you're doing. With the world's most powerful engines, if you turn off automatic gear-shifts you will value the time when you could itch your testicles (which this game amusingly requires two). Also, you will have to learn to nuance your braking and acceleration, and stop taking big, green, glowy things for granted.
F1 2010 can be one of two things; a blissful taste of what it's like to be a swanky, top-ranked Formula One driver, or a failing, bottom-of-the-list, on-the-cusp-of-unemployment driver who has an uncanny ability to rewind time (which this game allots four time-rewinds to players reluctant enough to choose the Easy difficulty), and one who has an unhealthy desire to spin out.
This Formula One simulator is very bare-bones, and includes some rather pathetic, and by-the-numbers modes apart from its otherwise impressive Career mode. First, Grand Prix mode gives players full reign to set a season for themselves, choosing the driver, tracks, and number of laps you will race around for. This mode lacks the two practice rounds present in the Career mode, Training, and Qualifying. Then there is Time Trials mode, which is as it sounds, your typical, compare-it-with-your-friends-I-don't-know-why-it's-in-the-game-sort-of-thing-oh-wait-that's-right-we'll-put-it-on-the-back-of-the-box-sort-of-thing sort of thing.
The game can appeal to casual fans of F1, and white-knuckled, hardest-core ones as well: people who want to have fun, and masochists alike. I would classify myself as more towards the masochistic side, but prefer to play with the easier difficulty setting with many of the driver aids turned on, just for the reason mentioned, I want to have fun, and I'm a self-styled Forza 2 and Forza 3 master, with all 1000 achievement points in each respectively, and I enjoy driving with no aids and full difficulty in those games, but when you throw F1 cars into the recipe, you need some help taming all the horses from getting loose.