F1 2010 Preview

What does the term "cross-pollination" mean to you? Unless you're a botanist or an avid gardener, there's a good chance that these words will leave you cold. You may recall some vague memory of a tedious biology lesson, long ago, or perhaps you'll just find yourself thinking about an angry bee. But cross-pollination is something that frequently happens in the realm of video games, too. If a new mechanic works well in one release, you'll usually see it pop up in another – often in a title from a different genre completely. From recharging health to path-finding assists to ranking systems, everyone plunders the DNA of their gaming neighbours.

Take Codemasters' F1 2010, for instance. It's a racing title, yet it features an XP system to mark your progress, and the Prince of Persia-like ability to rewind time. Of course, neither of these features is particularly surprising any more: the time-reverse thing was previously seen in both Forza 3 and Codies' own DiRT 2, and it now seems like every game under the sun now has some form of levelling-up structure. But F1 2010 has a few other surprising quirks up its oil-stained sleeves - like NPCs and dialogue trees, for one thing.

According to the publicity material at last week's reveal event, the mantra for F1 2010 is "Be the driver, live the life." The first bit is fairly self-explanatory – it wouldn't be much of a racing game if you didn't play as a driver – but the latter half is something of a surprise. For all intents and purposes, "live the life" denotes a serious focus on a detailed career mode, one which will be decided by your actions both on and off the track. There are press conferences to attend, interviews to respond to, and a rather pert-looking agent to liaise with. Personally, I'd like to see a Phoenix Wright-style mini-game involving your character, The News of the World, and unfounded allegations about your private sex life, but somehow I doubt I'll get one.

Still, the role-playing aspects of F1's career mode certainly look intriguing. At the start of the game when you're a relative nobody, your part of the paddock will be quiet and uneventful. Then as you start to do better, things will get busier – journalists, sponsorship guys and other interested parties will start to mill around. After a race you may be approached by members of the press who want your reaction to certain events – so if you suffer a bad crash that costs a few places, you may be quizzed for your reaction. Another neat touch is that your treatment is largely based on what people expect of you, so if you do unexpectedly well in a race and manage to beat one of the big names, you'll suddenly be right in the media spotlight.

There are other neat-sounding details too, like the fact that you'll eventually get to choose a personal rival from one of your fellow racers, and that you'll be judged by how you manage to compete against this foe. Other than that, your primary adversary is actually the other driver in your team. Throughout your career you'll be striving to outshine him - because if you don't, he'll get more attention when it comes to engine tweaks and the like. Codemasters says that your car will be constantly changing over the course of a season and beyond, and you'll also have to pay attention to things like the eight engine limit: during races you can dial-up or dial down the performance of your motor, but if you push things to hard you'll wear through the hardware quicker.