The Best Racing Game By Far!
GRID is by far, the best racing game I have played in a while. It's not often in a racing that you actually feel like your racing. Most of the time it's, once you get out in front, your their with no presented challenges. GRID on the other hand, depending on the difficulty you've chucked it on, keeps you fighting for your position and keeps you racing hard. Not often do am I required in a racing game to think, it's usually just *SmAsH* "MOVE!!!" *first place* Now it's like "How will I get passed this guy, I can take this corner pretty fast while he slows down, all without causing to much damage to my car." To be encouraged to think in a racing game is a refreshing change.
Like any racing game it was frustrating to get my head around the tracks and how the cars handle. Smashing into walls, flipping the car around corners on tire walls, the usual. But after playing it for some time and really getting use to how the game played. I actually started enjoying myself (for a change).
The AI, not sure if it's just coincidental or not, is pretty smart. There have been times when I've shoved someone going round a turn. Only to find a few minutes later that they've caught up, just to put me into a wall. (BASTARDS! *shakes fist*) Not only are they aggressive to you, but how they race as well. I've never played a game where I've actually watched other racers go in to hard, lock up there brakes and smash up there car.
One of the great features with GRID is the Flashback feature, I know i know, it's kind of a cheap way to win races and it's kind of like having lives in a racing game. But I reckon it's good, especially when someone comes into room, breaks you heavy focus, and then all of a sudden you're missing your front end, and flipping your car across the track (which is awesome I might add). But not when your 20 hours down in a 24 hour race. (rough 10 minutes real time). I sure as hell don't want to go through that whole race again only to do the same thing I just previously did (theoretically). So what am I saying, Flashback feature equals AWESOME *thumbs up*
The damage physics in the is game is brilliant. It's not often I crash my car and go "Woah..." Comparing it to some games in the past, this is probably as real as it gets without being ridiculous. And it's not just in the crashes either. Treating your car with care while throwing it into corners can slowly effect how your car performs, from difficulty handling or lose of power (just like Codemaster said). Fractured windows, bent panels, broken mirrors, bent steering, OH and the coolest thing, a hanging rear bumper bar scrapping along the ground for most of a race and then snapping of causing the car behind me to run over it and lose a little control. Awesome.
Although there are some occasional glitches, like hitting a sweet spot with your car into the corner of something, and flinging your car into the air and coming down like the lump of steel you are, and the occasional random bullet time slow down that briefly occurs at the start of the race. They hard detract from the game-play. Actually trying to send your car flying through the air is rather fun.
Now for the bad, or A bad. It would of been nice to able to take screen shots or save replays, especially for the races where your like, damn that was good, or you do a crash that is like *jaw hits floor* O_O Although taking print screens and pasting it into paint and then cropping it off one screen size (dual monitors) and saving them out is... well I was going to say all well and good, but it's not, it's just a tedious and annoying way of doing it. But anyway, it would of been nice to have had a features such as that included.
But none-the-less, the game is still great. It has awesome levels of detail, from Graphics to AI to physics and is filled with plenty of things to do game wise and feature wise. One last thing that I thought was really awesome was having your name said to you while racing, which is great, because it really makes you feel like your racing. And accompanied by the spectacular visuals graphics and game-play, as well as the interaction with AI, make this game worth every penny, maybe even more.