Grid Review

BY Mohammed Al-Balushi | POSTED: 25 August 2008

The perfect balance between simulation and arcade racing games.



Codemasters are very well known for developing racing games that lean towards simulation over arcady gameplay, mainly for their Collin McRae (RIP) Rally games and the TOCA series. If you have ever tried any of these games, you will know how hard for a casual player to get into them because they aim at realism and simulation and mostly attract the realistic race game lovers while leaving the player who doesn't care about stats and tire types have a tough time enjoying the game. That is why Race Driver GRID, or simply GRID, was made.

Until recently, the Need for Speed series was taking control of the arcade racer segment and the latest offering was a huge let down in the form of Need for Speed: Prostreet. It is very obvious that people will be looking for alternatives and the best one there is was GRID, which is by far a more superior experience than Prostreet and might make EA think twice before releasing a mediocre game and just expecting that the brand will sell it (which, sadly, it does most of the time).

The game allows you to race in real world circuits around the world categorized as USA, Europe and Japan. The cars themselves are categorized the same way. The career mode offers three parallel race tiers. By racing, you get reputation which allows you to gain licenses (also categorized by USA, Europe and Japan) that opens up the next tier in that license category. Gain enough reputation and you open up the Global license which opens up races that have mixed cars and tracks from the three categories. To spice things up, you get to race a boss-like event against the top team in the game; Raven West after completing a tier set. Raven West tends to be very aggressive and don't make mistakes. In addition, if you manage to overtake them, they get a catch-up bonus which limits you to try and always block their path.

There is a lot of variety in terms of race types. You can race in F1, Touring, GT, Drift and even Demolition Derby with other race types as well. You get a set number of cars to buy per race type and the cars range from Touring to LeMans Prototypes. There are a total of 43 cars in the game which some might argue is too low, though Codemasters seem to disagree and go for the quality over quantity approach, even with the tracks. They managed to pull that off with each car handling uniquely different and behave as they should in their class. There are no can performance customizations which personally I think is a good thing. Reason is that GRID really is focusing on the driver and the actual race instead of the car since most of the fun about racing games is in the race itself. Something NFS series needs to learn.

During the race, the game controls somewhere between a simulation game and an arcade game. Find the controls too easy? Simply turn off the various driver assists available or turn them on if things get out of control. The driver assists act more of a layer of control in top of the game play rather than a complete tide turner between simulation and arcade controls. Whichever way you go, the controls are still far simpler and easier than Codemasters' previews racing games but to a degree that is both fun and challenging at the same time.
The game pits you against tough AI racers who behave as close to real racers to date.

Depending on the difficulty selected, they can race normally and ignore you or will try to steer you off the track. Yet, as real drivers do, they make mistakes and can oversteer, understeer or just hit a wall. If the AI managed to force you into an accident which steals that gold metal from you, the game allows you to use a feature called "flashback" that rewinds the race a few seconds before the accident and then gives you control again to avoid the accident and continue the race normal. To balance this out, you have limited number of flashbacks and if you choose a higher difficulty, that number is reduced. Of course not using this feature will reward you with extra reputation points.

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