Race Driver: Grid

My entry to the Grid series was Grid Autosport. When going back to the first Grid game, I knew it wasn't going to look anywhere near as pretty, but I was also expecting a change in gameplay style. I heard that the Grid series is an arcade racer, so I was expecting to slide around the corners at high speeds. On the very first corner, I ploughed into the barriers and destroyed my car. It was at this point I also found out the rewind mechanic is poorly implemented.

You can only rewind a couple of seconds, so when you use it, it takes you to a point where you are losing control, or have already hit the object. Occasionally, you can rewind and save yourself with a crazy handbrake turn, but can often end up in a worse situation. Unless you react instantly and press the button to rewind, the majority of the time - you just have to carry on.

The handling in general is more of a simulation racer, and I found myself losing control and spinning out far more than I did in Autosport (this is with traction control and stability assists). Once off track, it's incredibly hard to drive off the grass, since any kind of acceleration will send you spinning. When on the road, turning sharply, or accelerating from a low speed has a high risk of spinning. Sometimes it seems a bit on the ridiculous side though. Sometimes you see your opposition making an easy turn, but instead, they perform a 360 doughnut. It's good to see that the opposition can make mistakes, although it tends to happen to drivers lower in the rankings.

There's a damage model, although I didn't feel its effects like I did in Autosport. When my steering showed as damaged, I didn't notice any difference. In Autosport, your car pulls in one direction, and if your engine is damaged - there's a noticeably drop in speed.

The game has a dark colour palette and isn't easy on the eyes. Even adjusting the gamma in the in-game settings and the brightness of my TV, I couldn't find a setting that looked good. Some tracks still looked too dark, some looked reasonable, and others looked way too bright. On some tracks, the lighting model seemed a bit backwards; you drive under an overhead object and it gets brighter, then gets dark as you leave. It's incredibly bizarre.

You start your career taking various offers from different teams to raise cash to start your own. You can choose your team name and the colours of your car. Initially, you start a one-man team, but with enough reputation, you can hire another driver.

The career is grouped in three areas: Europe, America and Japan. Earning a certain amount of reputation in each of these areas unlocks a new tier. You can retry the events as many times as you like, and completing a certain number of races completes a season. There's a few disciplines of racing such as GT racing, F1, Drift, Drift Race, Touge (Head to Head) and Demolition Derby.

As you win races, you unlock new sponsors. You can choose 10 of these to add to your car which rewards you with extra cash if you meet certain conditions. These are usually ones such as "finish above 5th" but there's a couple of other clauses such as finishing without taking damage. Your team mate also gets rewarded, but takes a percentage of the winnings depending on his contract.

You're not able to tune your car, or add upgrades. If there is a choice of cars, it is very limited, and you have to purchase them to use them. This could annoy some racing fans, but I think this simple system puts you on a level playing-field rather than becoming annoyed that you bought/chose the wrong car or tuning set-up.

The career mode theme of creating your own team is a great idea and I'd like to see more of in racing games. The actual driving is fine but is let down by how easy it is to lose control of your vehicle.

GRID is halfway arcade racer halfway sim. The handling is loose, the AI is pretty aggressive but at the same time it has a complex damage system that can take you out of a race, as well as the accelaration of the cars feeling authentic. There is no boosting or nitros, but there is drifting to take into account.

Above everything else, GRID is a fun game, which is where pretty much all sim races fail for me. Its flexible when it comes to its damage and drifting mechanics, but not to the point that the game becomes a breeze. There is a great variety of events and vehicles, including drifting events. It keeps being entertaining 20 hours in due to how solid the driving mechanics are.

One thing that really left me a bitter taste about it though is that it the game forces you to play the last race on the hardest difficulty mode, which is just a really stupid move. Other than that, it might be one of the best racing games out there that is not Burnout.