2010 Remastered — F1

Rating: 8/10 Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Reviewed on: PS5

When Codemasters launched F1 2010 back in September of that year, it was a bold reinvention. It brought the "career mode" to life with press interviews, rivalries, and a paddock atmosphere that felt revolutionary at the time. But let’s be honest: the original was buggy, the handling was twitchy, and the AI had a death wish.

Fourteen years later, F1 2010 Remastered arrives. The question isn’t whether it’s good—it’s whether nostalgia blinds us to its ancient quirks, or whether the remaster fixes enough to deserve your grid slot.

However, this is still a 2010 game at its core. The safety car? A myth. It appears maybe once every 50 races. The AI still suffers from "train mode"—they follow each other in a perfect DRS-less line and will brake-check you at the apex of Eau Rouge. Damage modeling is cosmetic; you can smash your front wing, limp to the pits, and lose only five seconds. No mechanical failures either—your engine will never blow up, no matter how many revs you abuse. f1 2010 remastered

Also, the "remaster" is inconsistent. Driver faces look fantastic in cutscenes, but podium animations are still the same stiff, arm-raising robots from 2010. And the audio mix? The engines sound beefier, sure, but your race engineer still repeats the same four lines: "Box this lap, box" and "We need more pace."

The first thing you’ll notice is the visual overhaul. This isn't a simple resolution bump. The lighting engine has been rebuilt. The Bahrain desert sun actually glares through your visor realistically now; the rain in Korea doesn't just look like white streaks—it pools, sprays, and genuinely reduces visibility to terrifying levels. Car models are dense with polygons, and the helmet cam now features dirt buildup that requires you to "look left/right" to clear a patch. It’s immersive.

The crown jewel remains the career mode structure. Unlike modern F1 games that rush you through 23-race slogs, F1 2010 forced you to start at a backmarker team (HRT, Virgin, or Lotus). The remaster keeps that brutal climb intact. You still have to impress midfield teams over three seasons. The press interviews are still shallow (three dialogue options that rarely matter), but they’ve tightened the "rivalry" system—insult Lewis Hamilton now, and he will genuinely defend harder and take risks to overtake you later. Rating: 8/10 Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC

Handling has been the biggest improvement. The original’s "ice skating on hot tarmac" feel is gone. The remaster borrows the tire model from F1 2020, meaning you actually have to manage heat and graining. The brakes bite harder, curbs don't launch you into a spin for no reason, and the Force Feedback on a wheel is finally punchy and communicative. It’s not iRacing, but it’s now more fun than F1 24’s floaty arcade physics.

Let’s put the champagne down. Why is this article likely a fantasy?

The License Graveyard. The cars of 2010 are covered in sponsors that no longer exist or changed ownership. Lotus? The name is tied up in legal knots between Group Lotus and the now-defunct Lotus Racing. Virgin? That’s Richard Branson’s domain. HRT? The team went bankrupt. The cost to re-license the branding for the HRT F110, the Virgin VR-01, and the Lotus T127 would be astronomically higher than the potential sales of a remaster. Fourteen years later, F1 2010 Remastered arrives

The Engine Sound Nightmare. Codemasters lost the original audio masters for the 2010 V8 engines. Replicating the sound of a Cosworth CA2010 at 18,000 RPM via reverse engineering is almost impossible. Modern F1 games use turbo-hybrid sounds. Dropping a V8 into the current engine audio engine would sound fake.

The "EA Sports" Strategy. EA is currently focused on live service and F1 World. A remaster of a 14-year-old game with no microtransaction potential (no "PitCoin," no classic liveries to sell) is a non-starter for a publicly traded company. They would rather sell you a "Legacy Drivers" pack for F1 25 than rebuild a niche title.

The original F1 2010 had a distinct Instagram-filter aesthetic—heavy bloom, aggressive lens flares, and a hazy, sun-drenched palette. A remaster must honor that early-2010s visual identity while upgrading track geometry, car models, and driver helmets to 4K standards. Imagine the Bahrain International Circuit (the original layout, not the recent changes) under the floodlights with ray-traced reflections. Imagine the pearlescent paint of the Renault R30 shimmering in real-time.