Sometimes I want to love a game even if it’s against my better judgement or logic. “Pole Position 2010” is absolutely dire. You know you’re in trouble when the keyboard isn’t even mapped right for the game. When you press Y a Z is typed! The text is translated from German by something like Google Translate which makes things laughable and the game is full of aggravating bugs like crashing to desktop when you try to save a game. Is it better than the previous version Kalypso released? Barely.
Pole Position 2010 is an F1 Management Sim. It’s completely unofficial so all the teams and drives names are changed. Thankfully a trusty editor is available to change them to what you’d like. Inside the game you can build your cars, parts, liveries and buildings. You can hire staff and drivers. You can negotiate with sponsors for a better budget. This part of the game is ran in a fairly streamlined menu system that’s quite intuitive and you’re never more than 3 button clicks away from where you want to go. The race screen itself shows a semi 3D map that you can rotate with the mouse and the cars are shown by team markers. This screen is more cluttered and less simple to navigate through.
There is one big problem though. The game doesn not give you a vague bit of help or pointer at all as to what you’re meant to do!
Each area of the team can be ran by staff which do little to affect the overall gameplay. The car designs themselves show no real difference in how to improve them and worst of all the car set up screens do not give you any feedback on the car setup themselves. You literally have to play completely blind and when you hit the track only the tyres and wing settings are adjustable. It’s absolutely unforgivable when you think 16 years ago Grand Prix Manager games were able to give you pointers and something to go on. As a result its nigh on impossible to work out exactly what to do next.
Basic rules are not even in play such refueling, the knockout qualifying letting the last 16 drivers through to Q3 and tyre changes when the weather changes. It’s a complete and utter mess. Dare not try to save the game as it’ll crash to desktop.
Yet why did I find myself grinding on? Maybe it’s because its to see how awful the rest of the game is – but I did. I found myself trying to find out why I was a second off everyone else. I had no clue where to look but I still looked. I guess the game as the confusing factor to keep you playing.
Positives
~Most current F1 Management Sim on the market
~Hard to complete
Negatives
~Graphical slowdown in the menus
~Full to high heaven with game crashing bugs
~No help or hint system makes everything a complete guess
~Poorly translated
~Not even faithful to the sport it pretends to be
Conclusion
Get Grand Prix Manager 1 and 2, Grand Prix World and Software 2000’s F1 Manager over this anyday – hell even F1 Manager from EA is better. Bottom of the pile tripe. Avoid.