#15 Race Driver: GRID

This is a belated review, but I finally managed to get round to giving Race Driver: GRID (or just Grid as the cool kids are calling it) a go, and for a racing game fan such as myself it was exciting to try out a new IP over the established heavyweights in the genre.
GRID is actually from the same people that brought you TOCA and the Colin McRae: DIRT (that seems a lot of capitals...) but was this game worth my 8 month wait?

First off, this game's front end-menus are incredibly slick. Upon loading the game you are offered with chunky 3D text that floats in your garage. This style carries over into the races themselves and is used very effectively when a particular driver is highlighted before the start as the cars line up on the grid by what I can assume to be your race engineer/voice in your head. More about the voiceovers later.


The game offers a career mode (more about that later), a freeplay mode where you can set up a custom race and of course multiplayer. Unfortunately, the online community has pretty much dried up upon playing now, but it does offer a voting system for those players in the lobby to pick the next race which is a cool alternative to the game generating a random race, or having specific lobbies for the differing race types. Anyways, let's concentrate on the single-player and in particular the career mode where you are most likely to spend most of your time...

The first step in the career mode (called Race Day) has yourself accept offers to drive for other teams in order to raise cash needed to start your own team. The main focus is running your own team, improving its reputation, attracting new sponsors and eventually expanding to accommodate another driver to race for you.

Once you hit this early landmark, progress through the career is very conventional. The career is spread across 3 continents - North America, Europe and Asia (predominantly Japan) - the progress on each continent is separate and broken into three tiers. Participating in events earns you reputation, which goes towards acquiring new racing licences which unlock the higher tiers, and also money which is used to purchase new cars and sign a better teammate.
As more racing licences are acquired, new events open up which offer greater rewards and exposure to better and faster cars - there are no surprises here.
A great feature in the career mode is the ability to acquire sponsors and palce their branding of your car. Each sponsor has a condition which if satisfied will pay out a bonus, much in the way that there is a bonus attributed to each driver offer available. At first, the conditions are pretty easy to meet - "finish the race" or "finish the race greater than 7th" but as the sponsors' bonus increase, so do the difficulty of these conditions, some only paying out if you win the race or to go to the extreme, will only pay out if you win without taking any damage - that's a toughie

GRID offers a number of different event types. From street races to grand prix race tracks; from head-to-heads to demolition derbies and drift challenges - the variety helps keep the racing fresh and a lot of different disciplines are covered. At the end of each season, participating in the Le Mans event is an option - initially driver offers from other teams are the only option until you can raise the funds to purchase your own Le Mans prototypes. The Le Mans event itself lasts 24 minutes and it's a shame that the trackside environment looks pretty sparse, although the transition from day to night and back again is a unique challenge.


For the events themselves, a really useful game mechanic can be found in the form of flashbacks. These allow you to pause the race at any time, rewind up to 30 seconds or so to erase your mistake and give it another go. This is especially useful when you have just written your car off in the wall, or have given away 1st place by screwing up on the last corner. It's also super convenient that access to the flashback is mapped to the back button, access is easy enough to become a reflex and is not hidden away behind menus.


Under the hood (geddit!), and the core game is not much more than a just above average racer. The game avoids the depth and minutia of Forza 2 and the differing handling of the cars doesn't even compare with that of PGR4. With regards to the handling, a lot of the cars feel very samey and more often than not suffer from oversteer, especially at slow speeds to the point that it feels unnatural.

While the game is lacking in car handling compared to PGR4, GRID injects more personality thanks in part to the voiceovers I mentioned earlier. PGR4 named all the drivers, gave them nationalities, and presumably different characteristics (although it was very difficult to tell), but it failed to humanize my AI opponents. Luckily GRID does offer more immersion, with each driver having attributes defined in skill, aggressiveness etc and also a potential preference for a particular discipline.

Under the hood and the core game is not much more than a just above average racer.

Back to the voiceovers, and at the start of the race, your race engineer will highlight a particular driver or team that could be a threat in the race. The same race engineer will give you constant updates during the race, letting you know who is currently in the lead, if there have been accidents and also updates on your position. If you reach the status of having a teammate, your race engineer will inform you how they are doing, and you will also get updates from your teammate as well. The teammates offer that personality, my first teammate was a whiny Italian who I eventually replaced with a stoned American surfer dude. It's little touches like this which enrich the experience so you're not just going through the motions.
Possibly the most notable and immersing hook is the ability to select your name from a list when you first fire up the game. Both your race engineer and the very attractive sounding woman that greets you when firing the game will use the name/nick you've selected - again, another great little touch. Don't worry, if your name isn't it their pre-defined lists, they do offer a number of nicknames as a next best thing - if only you could combine them into a super-duper nickname...


The AI opponents in the game are pretty impressive - when following two or more that are in close proximity to each other it's refreshing to see them realistically scrapping for position, and not following a set line like a number of racers are guilty of. The AI is prone to mistakes, often after being hounded by someone close behind, they'll often slide, skid and sometimes completely spin out - which all adds to the realism and helps give a sense that you're not just racing against 7 bots.

Overall, GRID is an OK-to-good arcade racer, a case of more style than substance. That being said, features like the flashbacks and the voiceover work help this game stand out from the crowd - there's a lot of enjoyment to be had here but it does get a bit samey after a while.