Game:

Race Driver: Grid (2008)

Duration: 8:49

12,209 views

77

Just wanted to try this game before I get GRID 2, which comes out tomorrow. It's a pretty short game so I ended up beating it in a few days. Playing with these settings was easy because it was how I'd been playing the whole game; by this stage I was used to the cornering mechanics. Of course, the time won't be as good as it would be from a more experienced player :P

The AI in the game needs some work. It's really quite slow in many sections due to braking incredibly early. In fact, the pace can be slow at times in general even on easier sections. It still poses a decent challenge, but for all the wrong reasons. The AI has a really bad habit of braking in the middle of nowhere when you're right behind them, spinning out for no apparent reason and ending up sideways on the road, and ramming into you if it feels like taking your racing line at the moment. All of these things lead to unexpected and unnecessary crashes that typically don't happen so much in other games. To make matters worse, collision physics in general are questionable and you'll almost always end up sideways against a wall in last place after even a minor tap if the AI decides it wants your place badly enough. The entire singleplayer metagame is focused not around getting the fastest laps, but maneuvering around the awkward AI consistently and I hate that.

The game itself is really well presented and generally fun. There are times I wish there was a little more to it, but in some cases less and more and nearly every part of this game feels like a high quality product. In many ways it's a breath of fresh air after playing games loaded with content that varies in quality such as Gran Turismo, for example (also a great game with a great presentation, but in a different way). I will say GRID's mechanics (particularly the AI and drifting) can be so infuriating at times that it does take away from the game, but Codemasters has shown they can make better AI in the later F1 series of games and drifting is inherently gimmicky, IMO.

The cockpit view is really a great asset. It's a shame they're taking it away. It's understandable, but I'll miss the atmospheric feeling it leaves. The ideal setup would be to have a cockpit view without a steering wheel as people with steering wheels may feel disoriented with another one on the screen.

Stability control doesn't seem to be an option. Having it off is such a tremendous disadvantage while cornering that you'll be torturing yourself not to use it. Maybe I'm just incompetent, but no matter what I do with it off, I seem to have half the cornering angle I do with it on. It's ridiculous. Having traction control and braking assist off, on the other hand, doesn't do much of anything as long as you drive appropriately. For keyboard users I'd imagine it's near impossible to use due to the nature of a keyboard, but I've never tried.

I will probably not be making GRID 1 trophy videos because GRID 2 is coming.

Other Statistics