GRID - Review
Added June 20th, 2008 by Justin McBride
Following up their previous admirable efforts with their successor to the popular Colin McRae series of rally racing games, DIRT, Codemasters once again dives into the racing genre with another pseudo-successor; this time to the TOCA Race Driver series with GRID. In a move that may be shocking to fans of that series, GRID is not a strict simulation in any sense of the word. It manages to blend arcade style drifting with near simulation handling with good results while still retaining the varied race types and career focus of the TOCA series.
After giving your virtual self a name, you’re immediately thrust into a race, driving the titular Dodge Viper seen on the game’s packaging and racing for a most important prize, your rookie license. It’s here that you obtain your first taste of what’s in store for you as you delve deeper into the game. It’s here that you come to grips with GRID’s vehicle handling, which carves out a niche between arcade and simulation racing. From the start, the handling can feel, off, giving a feeling of driving on ice instead of the tarmac. Another ironic twist to the sometimes twitchy feeling handling is the incredible grip the tires have on the road. While it is easy to send your car into a long, sustained drift, these tires rarely struggle to hook up when you need them to with little to no input (such as braking or dropping revs) from you. These minor handling quirks were quickly forgotten as I raced and adapted to its rather unique playing style.
One thing I couldn’t forget or really forgive is the lack of a proper feeling of your car’s weight and power as you weave it around the track. When driving a Dodge Viper down the track in many of the game’s races, I was able to whip it around corners, pitching it into long, tight drifts with relative ease. Aside from the feeling of ridiculous, unrestrained speed, I never got the true feeling that I was driving an actual, 3400-pound Viper. Maybe a light and nimble Lotus Elise or something along those lines, but not a Viper. It’s funny though, despite these complaints, it didn’t really make GRID any less fun. A little less realistic, granted, but I don’t really believe Codemasters was going for complete realism here.
You begin the career mode, known as GRID World as a lowly racer for hire with nothing but a small garage and a busted Mustang to call your own. To improve on your rank and status in your field, you must first take on mercenary work for other, pre-established racing teams, cutting your teeth for what’s to come. After you’ve gathered the necessary funds you need to restore your Mustang and establish your own racing team, you receive your rookie license in each of the three major regions (USA, Europe and Japan) and your professional racing career truly begins.
GRID’s primary strength is in its variety of race types, offering a nice range for fans to sink their teeth into. Each region has its own share of unique events as well, examples being the Open wheel Formula 1000 events in Europe, the Michigan Demolition Derby in the USA, and Pro Touge events in Japan. New to the series are a number of drift events, from Drift GP to traditional Japanese-style downhill drifts, which take full advantage of GRID’s drift-happy physics system.
As much as GRID offers a nice variety in its many race types and events, it falls flat in terms of its vehicle and track selection. Forza Motorsport 2 this isn’t. GRID only features 45 vehicles to race in with no tuning options whatsoever. What little visual customization there is, is merely a very simple livery editor that allows you to apply sponsor decals (which give you extra cash upon successful completion of their objectives after races) to your car and play around with color schemes. The car selection really begins to show its shallowness when you see certain events where you only have one car to choose from, for example, there are certain touring car events in which your only choice is a Chevy Lancetti. The tracks are all well designed and fun to race on, but eventually, they begin to wear thin.
In the GRID World, reputation is everything. Your driver’s reputation in each of the three regions determines which events you can access. Once you’ve begun racing under your own team’s banner, reputation bonuses increase exponentially. As your reputation increases in each of the three major regions, you receive upgraded licenses opening up more lucrative and competitive events.
In GRID World, your progress is segmented into seasons of five races apiece and each season culminates into one final event which is, without question, the most important and lucrative race of the season and that race is the 24 Hours of Le Mans. This is arguably the best and most challenging event the game has to offer. The race is divided up into classes, ranging from GT2 to LMP1 and victory doesn’t necessarily mean winning first place overall, merely getting first place within your class is enough. The race takes place on the traditional Le Mans race track, the Circuit de la Sarthe, full of long straights, to push your car to its limits and dangerous chicanes, designed to test your reactions. What makes the 24 Hours of Le Mans stand out is the way it’s implemented in the career mode. The race is run on an accelerated time cycle where each hour is represented by one minute. This creates a cool looking effect as a full day cycles before your eyes as you race.
Perhaps one of GRID’s few innovative and original features is its new flashback system. Miss the apex of a crucial turn and drive off into the dirt? Slam into the barrier, wrecking your car’s suspension and alignment going into a turn too fast? No worries! Hit the back button on your controller (a fitting button assignment) and you’ll be taken to an instant replay of the last ten seconds of footage of the race. From here, you can choose any point in that replay to resume. Hit the flashback button to be instantly taken back to that point and receive a second shot at completing that turn properly or avoiding that barrier. It’s a very interesting feature, not unlike a similar feature used in another racer released earlier in the Xbox 360’s lifetime named Full Auto but the feature is arguably better executed in this title.
As a caveat, it can be argued that the flashback system makes the game much, much easier. Knowing in the back of your mind that you have a certain number of flashbacks in reserve in case of a catastrophic crash or other emergency, you may begin to take more risks and drive more aggressively. It seems Codemasters anticipated this and thus provided increased reputation gains for players who up the difficulty settings, thereby reducing or eliminating the number of flashbacks and including the Pro mode, which doesn’t allow players to restart the race at all. It’s a nice touch for hardcore players and racing sim veterans who appreciate a little extra challenge in their racing.
As is common for racing simulators of its ilk, GRID features an incredibly realistic damage model, complete with not only cosmetic damage but system based damage as well which affects your car’s handling and performance. It’s actually quite remarkable how well rendered the damage model actually is. Jarring crashes are accurately reflected on the car in a way that is rarely seen in racing simulators. For example, in Forza Motorsport 2, no matter how fast you’re going when you crash into a wall and how much damage is done to the car; it will still technically be drivable. In GRID, when your car is totaled, you know it’s totaled. Not because the game takes the liberty to slow down the action at the point of impact and flash red across the screen but because it goes a step further. Wheels will fall off, the chassis will be twisted and the car will be practically unrecognizable in some cases. Above all else, in a move that is quite uncommon in games that use licensed vehicles, the car can be flipped and rolled over, making the crash that resulted in your car flying through the air, that much more spectacular.
To merely say that this game looks great would be a severe understatement. GRID stands tall on the Xbox 360 as the best looking racing game out there. GRID’s car models are sharply detailed and feature accurately rendered interiors, easily making the “helmet cam” the best way to race. The meticulous attention to detail extends beyond just the car models to the faithfully recreated environments, which show off nice lighting and sharp detail. As another testament to its graphical superiority, the game runs at an incredibly smooth clip throughout, even with as many as 20 cars on screen at any given time. Not to mention the aforementioned damage modeling, which is perhaps the most realistically rendered in any racing game this side of Burnout Paradise.
As an audio experience, GRID’s rich suite of sounds really shines. It’s more than just accurate engine sounds, GRID encompasses all of the sounds you’re likely to hear in a race with surprising accuracy and depth. From the sounds of screeching tires as you drift around a corner, the fans cheering you on as you speed down the back straight towards the finish line, and their shocked gasps as you, or another racer makes contact with one of the barriers. The only downside to all of this is the quickly repetitive (although sometimes useful) lines doled out by your pit crew.
Online, the experience is virtually unchanged, allowing up to 12 players to race all events in GRID World. There are options to turn damage and catch up on or off. All in all, the online offerings are pretty solid and should, if the community takes to it, provide an entertaining diversion for players wishing to extend their racing beyond what is offered in the GRID World.
My biggest problem with this game is that it seems to be suffering a bit from an identity crisis. It sounds weird, I know, but once you play it and then stack it up to its predecessors, GRID is sorely lacking in its portrayal of professional racing that was previously pulled off so well. A prime example of this is the Midnight Touge event you’ll encounter later in your career. Now, GRID tries very hard to replicate a professional racing environment, as was mentioned before but these races are held in the middle of the night and on mountain roads open to civilian traffic. An immediate red flag goes up, as no professionally sanctioned racing competition would ever be held on a road left open to civilian traffic (for obvious reasons). This just brings me back to my earlier point about identity crises. While GRID feels just enough like a proper representation of a professional racing culture and sanctions to pass most of the time, these midnight races (yes, there’s more than just touge) make it feel more akin to something like Need for Speed: Carbon.
GRID’s delicate straddling of the line between arcade and simulation racing is one that works well for it, appealing to fans of either simulation or arcade racers, once you get used to its handling quirks. While the wealth of race disciplines provides a refreshing sense of variety, the lack of environments and vehicles to match is a bit disheartening. It also trips up slightly in its representation of Professional racing, which it emulates with mixed results. That being said though, GRID is a surprisingly fun racing game that does a great service to the sport. While the Xbox 360 isn’t exactly in desperate need of another great racing game (its catalog is quite full of those), this one should do racing fans proud and is worth a look for anyone with even a small interest in the genre.
