Codemaster’s latest racing title is ready to overload your senses with the sound of engines roaring and the smell of rubber melting. Is GRID a worthy addition to the stable of this generation’s racing titles, or does it burn out on the opening lap?

First, lets get one thing straight: This is not a pure racing simulator. In fact, in terms of car physics, it often feels as though it has more in common with the Burnout series than a Gran Turismo or Forza. This, of course, is not a negative aspect of the game, I just thought I’d get that out of the way as I myself was quite surprised at just how much of an arcade feel GRID has to its gameplay.

Perhaps the best way to describe it is like if Project Gotham Racing has developed a severe case of hyperactivity. You’ll no doubt have your own feelings as to whether or not that’s a good thing.

So now that we know what we’re dealing with, just how good is GRID at what it’s trying to achieve? Well, pretty darn good actually.

The single player career is presented to us as “Grid World” in which you start out as a rookie driver trying to make it to the top of the racing ladder. After you’ve experienced some success as a hired hand for whichever teams are willing to take you on, you’ll eventually have enough cash to set up your own racing team, and that’s when the serious money starts rolling in.

You’ll then be able to buy and sell cars, set-up sponsorship deals and (eventually) hire teammates. A bizarre side note here– each time you choose a car that you would like to purchase ,you’re given the option of buying it secondhand on an in-game version of eBay. This rather odd inclusion doesn’t ever really feel necessary as the cars are only very slightly cheaper and the majority of them, you’re told, have been wrecked multiple times by their previous owner/owners.

Anyway, once you’ve got a team you can dive headlong into the process of creating a winning reputation for yourself by performing well in race events. I say “race events” rather than just “races”, as the game contains a number of different race scenarios that you can participate in.

These include (among many others) drift battles, pro touge (pronounced “toe-gay”) and the self-explanatory destruction derby, as well as traditional style races.

A pro touge is essentially a head to head battle from point A to point B, usually broken up into different rounds i.e. quarterfinal, semi-final and final. These are some of the game’s more difficult events (depending on what difficulty you’re playing on) as even minor nudges against your opponents car can cause you to incur very harsh penalties, in the form of seconds being added to your final time.

The drift battles are a contender for being the most fun event and involve a mixture of racing and stylish drifting. Your final position in a drift battle event is determined by how many points you’ve accumulated through drifts (determined by the angle of your car, position on the road, speed etc) but you can earn extra points for each drift depending on how close you are to front of the pack. There are plenty of other styles of drift races to get your teeth stuck into including, you’ll be pleased to know, events in which drivers take to the track alone so you’ll not need to worry about bouncing off a rival.

Combine these race types with the many different styles of cars you can drive, including touring cars, Le Mans cars, stock cars and little open-topped Formula 3 and you’ve got one of the most varied racers to date.

This variation is a large part of what makes the game a success, as it couples the depth of a simulation with the pure thrill factor of an arcade racing title. In terms of the way the cars handle, it all seems very twitchy and ultra sensitive (especially if you, like me, are used to playing racing sims) when you first pick it up.

You can hurl the majority of vehicles around hairpin turns at ridiculous speeds, needing to apply the breaks for only a second or two to get the job done. However, you’ll still need to be careful not to brake too hard while cornering, as it’s all too easy to spin out 180 degrees and end up facing oncoming traffic (never a smart move).

Once you’ve nailed the cornering, though, the constant sensation of speed the game provides throughout the entire race is truly awesome.

On the other hand, this intense speed does come at a price. Crashing into the barriers or colliding with other vehicles is all too easily done and the damage it can cause to your car will often mean you can’t continue the race in that state.

It’s in these situations that GRID provides a true innovation for racing titles, the Flashback feature. Flashback effectively allows you to go back in time and give yourself the chance to undo a mistake you just made. After, for example, you crash into a wall and have gone from 1st place down to 5th now, instead of turning red with rage and restarting from scratch, you can rewind the replay (up to roughly 10 seconds) and start up again at any point you like enabling you to take that corner without killing your virtual self this time around.

In a simulation this kind of feature would be pure blasphemy, but here it adds to the experience, as you can to an extent be as aggressive as you like and get away with it. In fact, the feature itself seems to encourage dangerous and risky driving. Flashbacks are limited, however, and the higher you’ve set the difficulty the less of them you will have per race, so be warned.

Computer A.I. is exceptionally impressive in GRID. There are no preset routes that cars follow here, and opponents tend to be just as crazy as the player when it comes to taking corners at suicidal speeds and crashing into one another. This leads to a fair amount of accidents in which you have had no direct part.

In one particularly memorable moment I had crashed into a wall of tires and gone from leading the race to third position on the final lap. I thought all was lost seeing as I had used my quota of flashbacks. The race was saved however, when the lead car spun out wildly a few corners later and took out the car in second, leaving me an easy path to the chequered flag and first place on the podium. Fantastic.

Graphically GRID is a game with two faces. The cars themselves are rendered beautifully, both in their level of detail (each interior has been individually modeled) and in the way light shines off of their polished bodywork, until it becomes dirty with dust and rubber from the track.

Damage modeling on the vehicles is impressive too. Hit the wall too hard and you could end up leaving a significant portion of your car behind, or, at the very least, mangle it up to such a degree that it looks as though the engine will drop out the bottom at any moment.

On the flip side the circuits themselves look dull and flat in comparison, especially on the real world circuits (the Japanese night-time stages are an exception if only because there’s so much neon to look at). Trees look static and almost as though they are painted on, and people at trackside are just as unappealing and are plagued by all sharing a very limited number of animations, meaning you’ll often see five or six people in a row performing exactly the same animations at exactly the same time.

The speed of the game means that you’ll not have too much opportunity to take in the scenery but it would have been nice if the visuals of the track had been equal to those of the cars.

Audio-wise the game is a bit of let down. Engine noises and gear changes just don’t sound convincing in comparison to other racers and the music during races and replays is horrible. Thankfully races are generally music-free, only playing in specialty races, and what the game decides is a nerve-wracking moment (this is what I believe happens anyway, at points it seemed to come and go at random). Conversely, the music that plays while you’re navigating through menu screens is excellent, and is generally remarkably calming – helpful after the frantic pace of races.

There are some other minor niggles too, such as the on-screen radar, which is not particularly helpful in the way it only shows only a very small section of the track at any one time, and there are also no weather variables (it’s sunny all the time). More cars in each class as well as a little more diversity in track design would have been nice also.

Multiplayer is very solid supporting up to 12 players with only minimal lag experienced, and rarely at that. A neat addition to the online is a voting system that allows players to vote on which tracks and car class they want to race. This is all presented in a very stylish format and is time limited to force the democracy along at a steady pace.

GRID is an awesome experience overall that can easily be recommended. Although it may not appeal to the most hardened of racing simulator fans, it should appeal to just about everyone else. While it does have its problems, they are slight when looking at the package as a whole. If you’re after some intense, high-speed, and accessible racing action then this is certainly for you.

Tags: Codemasters, racing_game

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