Race Driver: GRID
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Race Driver: GRID is Codemasters’ latest racing game after DiRT. DiRT was an intensely muddy rally game and GRID is fast & explosive asphalt racing, with awesome game-mechanics and a fun multiplayermode. Race Driver: GRID takes arcade racing to the next level.
On the asphalt between the sharp curves
Race Driver: GRID’s single-player mode takes players through the different nations and different kinds of racing types. The career is about creating a team name, logo, and then take that name to the top of the charts. While doing this you will also have access to several different cars that you can buy with the money you earn for either driving for his your own team or as a “jump-in driver” for other racing teams.
The more you drive, the more famous you become, the more sponsors will want to have their logo on your car. Once you place the sponsors’ logos on your car, you’ll also earn money. During the game so you get to choose which part of world you want to drive in, where the U.S. it’s all about muscle cars, in Europe, touring cars and in Japan it’s street racing.. It is up to the player to choose what he / she aims for. There are a lot of courses to play during the game but if you only focus on one part of the world you might drive the same course several times.
After spending 40 hours with the game, it’s a good chance that the player will feel that it is slightly repetative and boring to play the same tracks over and over again, then I would strongly recommend to start playing the multiplayer mode it provides some of the human-factors that makes the game really good.
If you were to put Race Driver: GRID on a scale from Simulator to the left and Arcade to the right, GRID would end up very far to the right. The cars handle incredibly good despite the very high speeds. Like a really good arcade racing game should be, really intense and really really fast with lots of crashes and deadly corners.
In GRID you will not be able to mod your car, nor upgrade carparts or fine-tune various components. You can paint the car though, but it’s pretty limited. However, it would still be nice if you could fine tune and trim some parts of his car to get a bit more variety on the 45 cars that exist, but then again it’s an arcade racer.
Crash! and try it again!
One of the more fun and useful mechanics in Race Driver: GRID is “Flashback” feature. If you happen to crash or take a curve perfectly the mechanics to watch the replay exists, but also the ability to start playing again anywhere within that time frame. So if you crash you can rewind and take the curve right, an incredibly handy feature that helps to save one’s frustration when you accidentally do something wrong on his otherwise perfect lap. How many of these Flashbacks you have in every race depends entirely on what difficulty you are driving on, the higher the fewer flashbacks you have.
The value of a friend and the variation of AI drivers
During the game you will be earning enough money to upgrade one’s garage, but also hire an AI driver to the team. This colleague will run with you in any race, but also make money for you from sponsors and wins.
Race Driver: GRID clearly has one of the better AI drivers in today’s racing games, where other racing games have AI drivers that always stays on their racing line, GRID actually has drivers whom spin out, crashes into tire walls and avoids you to protect his own car from damage. Like DiRT the cars can be damaged, both internal damage and external damage, this is complemented with incredibly detailed car models, and unique damage models for each car, so it is a pure visual ecstasy when a series of crashes happen. If you play online, it can be really crazy taking that first curve, cars flying everywhere, it’s like driving in a scrapyard sometimes and you know what? It’s awesome.
Visual Orgasm
Racinggames has come a long way in term of graphics, and GRID is well above the majority of racing games that exist today. The textures are very detailed and each racecourse looks incredibly good with bloom effects and motion blur, which increases the sense of speed something incredible. It is an pleasant experience to see both the car from a third-person perspective but the interior of each car is really nice, especially in slowmotion you can get some real eye-candy. Driving in first-person view in the cockpit when the door to the left has been busted, it looks awesome.
GRID has a unique and very realistic damage-model for the cars, the cars buckle, windows gets broken, tires fly off and the entire car and can be deformed to the point where driving it is no longer an option, you’ll become track obstacle. It’s just as functionally satisfying as it is visually satisfying.
The sound of an engine and tires spinning on the asphalt
There is not much to say, the sound of the game is reallygood. The various car sounds are detailed and unique to each car, where muscle cars have a low rumbling sound and street racing cars have a sharper sound. Racing accompanied with beautiful up-tempo music to build mood, but you can hear that focus has been on the car sounds.
Multiplayer mode
This mode is probably the most satisfactory mode for racing fans, to run against real people is not the same as running against the AI, even though their “acting” very genuine. However, real people are less afraid of damaging their cars and this is a serious problem when the majority of players always aim for trying to take down each other. In multiplayer mode there is no flashback feature, however, there is a choice that allows one to remove the damage to the car at every race, but it really becomes less fun, accidental crashes gives the game a really nice variation to it.
It is a pity that it is like this, it destroys the experience of playing online, one simple way of fixing it would be to make players buy their cars that they race online and that they would have to pay for the damages on their car to themselves. Then I do not doubt that people would be more careful and sporting. It’s very satisfying to drive with people whom take the game seriously, even though accidental crashes happen.
Conclusion
GRID has its shortcomings and a relatively short career mode, but the important thing is that the game is so incredibly fun to play, it’s quick to pick up, and once you’re driving, it’s damn fun and intense. Together with the flashback feature you will see some spectacular crashes and that is an experience in itself. The graphics and sounds are clearly top-notch and with all its positive aspects, Race Driver: GRID is clearly at the top of this year’s racing games, especially if you like arcade racing, but you really should pick it up even if you like the simulator style racing.
