"You know when your tires are going to let loose, just by the feel of it, just like you feel it when you're driving in real life. This small detail alone makes the purchase of the game worth it to petrolheads like myself. -Jeremiah Brown"

Guest's Score:

9.0

When you want something done properly, you best leave it to the experts. So far, every single racing game that Codemasters has made has been top notch. Even way back when they were new to the industry they were making excellent racing gems like 1nsane. Now, they have come out with GRID, and their reputation stands firm.

You may remember DiRT, an amazing rally racing game from not too long ago. GRID seems to be its road-going cousin, as it shares some of DiRT's gameplay features. One of which is the way that the game challenges you to push the limits of your skill by rewarding you better for small changes to the difficulty. For example, you may get slightly more reputation for forcing yourself to race using the cockpit view only or by turning the traction control off. If you turn all of the assists off, it adds up to a substantially larger reputation increase than you'd normally get for finishing a race. I love this feature because it's an incentive to make you work hard to do better and improve, rather than just be comfortable with your current skill level. It also prevents a huge jarring jump in the difficulty like other games that use a single option. By using many smaller options, so you can slowly improve rather than hitting a brick wall.

Immediately, you will see the difference between this game and its competition, and we're only talking about the menu system here. This game has one of the most beautiful and amazing menu systems I've ever seen in a racing game. It's just so fluid and even the music is perfectly suited to it. It's also easy to use and clearly explains itself as you use it, so it's not at all confusing.

The meat of the game, oddly enough, starts out kind of deceptive. During your first few races, it's almost as if the game wants you to feel like you're playing just another run-of-the-mill racing game, but then, as you play more, little things start to make themselves known that differentiate this game from the others. I believe that this odd but appreciated effect is actually a result of the developers wanting to ease the player into all of the features of the game in a sort of automated learning curve. Instead of playing the full-featured game right off the bat or having a tutorial, the game adds in features as you go. Things like Sponsors to help you make more money, a live replay-do-over system (called flashbacks) and eventually even an AI controlled teammate.

Actually, I believe that the teammate is the biggest thing that sets GRID apart from the others and is a totally awesome feature. A couple of seasons into the campaign, your garage will grow big enough to contain another one, which is given to a team-mate. You then have to browse through many available people with varying skills, strong and weak points and even a specialization. Each person also has a fee for signing onto your team, plus they will take a certain percentage of their winnings for themselves after each race. I'll make this clear right now though: the winnings that they take are subtracted from their race placement prize, but you still get all of the money from the sponsors and the championship prize. That is what makes them key for earning tons of extra cash. However, the teammates will not do well in every race. Depending on whom you hire, you may get a total loser or someone that will even beat you every time. At least you can fire and hire another teammate at any time if you don't like the one you have.

As for the other reviewy bits, the graphics are quite excellent, especially in the cockpit cam. Although there are a few graphical glitches that I have come across, like Level of Detail and some texture pop-in. The frame-rate is solid and the scenery, whenever you bother to actually look at it rather than the road, is quite well done. The sound is amazing in this game. The engines are pitch perfect and the music is excellent, but never overpowering and the tires screech and scrub at the right times and loudness to help you know whether or not you're gonna die.

Speaking of dying, that's another detail that only Codemasters seem to have the balls to do: damage. Cars in this game actually get destroyed pretty thoroughly, even to the point of not being able to complete the race, and yes, you can see it and it is area specific. This is yet another tool that makes this game so much better that the others because it makes you race properly rather than bashing into the other cars with abandon. No more using the competition like tools just to help you get around a corner that was sharper than you originally thought, at least not without consequences. Some sponsors even want you to finish with no damage... Yeah, good luck with that.

The only problem that this game has that may change one's mind about it is that it really isn't a long game. By the time one week passed, I was already halfway finished, and I wasn't even playing it hardcore. Even so, there is a robust online mode so you can continue playing once you've completed the single player game.

One other quick thing, it seems that only Codemasters has managed to find that magic detail in their physics engine that allows you to actually feel the relationship between the rubber on your tires and the road. You know when your tires are going to let loose, just by the feel of it, just like you feel it when you're driving in real life. This small detail alone makes the purchase of the game worth it to petrolheads like myself.

All things considered, Codemasters has done it again by making an excellent racing game that differentiates itself from the competition in ways you wouldn't expect and by simply making the game function and play like a proper drive. Simply put, if you like racing games go buy this one. Heck, even if you rent it first, you'll still probably end up buying it.

-Jeremiah Brown

Pros

Cons

Bottom Line

Guest's Score:

9.0