Let's Do the Time Warp Again
While racing, players can choose between several points of view, including dashboard, first-person (in-car), headlight, and two third person perspectives that show off your car and all its glory. You can also up the stakes during race setup by locking yourself to the in-car camera, turning off driver assists like traction control and automatic transmission, or increasing the difficulty level.
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As far as the speed in concerned, the developers at Codemasters made sure players felt every bit of the 150+ MPH that the game's cars are capable of reaching. In a nutshell, the racing in GRID is frantic, fast paced, and above all fun. As enjoyable as the racing is, crashing is equally satisfying as the game sports a full crash engine, allowing cars to take on "realistic" damage. Coupled with the game's physics engine, players will experience splintering fibers, impressive spark trails, shattered glass fragments, and mangled steel, all in breathtaking real-time.
Crashing is almost unavoidable, with rather aggressive AI opponents, and if you leave the track you can forget about maintaining speed or steering. When that happens, your best course of action may be to consult the instant replay. Codemasters provides an intuitive instant replay feature that allows you to survey the damage, as well as rewind the action and replay the impact from multiple viewpoints. The following video shows off this feature, as well as the brilliant audio sampling that makes the action come to life.
Coupled with the instant replay feature is what golfers refer to as a mulligan. During each race, players are given the opportunity to correct mistakes that may otherwise end a race prematurely. This feature is called Flashback. After a deadly crash or loss of control, players can choose to rewind the action and restart shortly before things went south. This is useful as even moderate damage can hinder your ability to control your car properly - for example, damage to your car's steering column after a wreck that doesn't necessarily take you out of a race may cause your car to pull to the right or left, thus killing your chances of winning the race or the desire to simply continue on.
Flashback is designed to keeps players in the game after an unfortunate spill on the race track. While this may be seen as a helpful feature to some, others may view it as a means to cheat their way to victory. For those whose opinions represent the latter, GRID offers a Pro difficulty mode that disables the Flashback feature. Players may also choose to limit the number of Flashbacks on standard diffuculty.
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honolululu - Friday, August 8, 2008 - link
Gotcha. I don't have any problems with the steering range of action, but damned if I don't have to hold myself back with that throttle.I have noticed that it seems floored when the throttle is only about 70% applied, and if you increase deadzone that just decreases the range of action.
Next patch maybe. The saturation levels for steering and gas should not default to 100% me thinks. It says "Decrese saturation if you feel the steering is not sensitive enough."
Well where do we go if it's too sensitive!
I can't get enough though. Love that Demolition Derby.
flobo - Thursday, August 7, 2008 - link
Good game, they only forgot the driving part. Not the car is steering, but the landscape is turning before your eyes, suggesting speed.Physics? Still pivot after all this years.I wonder if the critic ever played a serious driving game. Next time better give space to Iracing, not this childish stuff.JarredWalton - Thursday, August 7, 2008 - link
Lots of people enjoy games for gaming's sake, not because they are a perfect reconstruction of real life. I will readily agree that the physics and driving model of GRID are not realistic in terms of the hardcore sim crowd, and we said as much. Of course, they're also not as unrealistic as most arcade racers. But the bottom line is: do we think the game is fun? Yes, we do.I don't think I personally would enjoy the "serious" racing games as much as this "childish stuff". Then again, I've spent a lot more time - and got a lot more enjoyment - out of Mass Effect than from GRID, which is why I confined most of my comments to the benchmarking and performance section. (Yeah, Eddie didn't write that page, though he did run the tests for the two graphs.)
dare2savefreedom - Thursday, August 7, 2008 - link
recommended racing wheel:logitech g25
FTW
HDBanger - Thursday, August 7, 2008 - link
I race alot of sims on pc, and Ive raced most arcade racers also, GRID is 100% arcade, and it has so many bugs, I had to wear misquito repellent when I raced! I finished the single player game in 3 days, and the multiplayer is atrocious! Huge lag, all kinds of cheats, just pure BS online. Hot lapping was the only thing to do after single player, I had about 52 world record laps at one point, then I went back to real racing (gtr2, rfactor). Codemasters should be renamed CodeDisasters, they have alienated their whole sim base.schwinn8 - Thursday, August 7, 2008 - link
... but it's "brake" not "break". I don't know why so many people make that mistake?MrBlastman - Thursday, August 7, 2008 - link
It is a shame the demo doesn't support Track IR.I hear the full game does now via a patch. Has anyone tried it? Racing games (or any type of sim for that matter) are impossible to play properly without Track IR.
n00bxqb - Thursday, August 7, 2008 - link
I got this free w/ my Radeon HD 4870 and I must say I'm thoroughly impressed with the game itself; it's fun, immersive, and the graphics are quite impressive (though I wish it supported 24x CFAA). Physics are more realistic than DiRT, but it still feels geared more towards arcade-style handling than realism. More car choices would've been nice as well, but now I'm just starting to nitpick :PMy only real complaint is the DRM. Half the time the game doesn't even launch (original disc), it gives some random SecuROM error code (with a link that only takes you to SecuROM's homepage; not a page that explains what the error code means). I always try to rip a disc image to my hard drive with any game I own so I can play w/o having to fish out the disc, but that's a no-go, even w/ YASU and other anti-SecuROM utilities. It's not a huge deal as the game doesn't seem to load anything off the disc during the actual game, but it's a pain to have to track it down and find it when I want to play it. On the plus side, it's offered through Steam, meaning no DVD.
HDBanger - Thursday, August 7, 2008 - link
The Reloaded EXE works with any version of Grid, and it works better than Codemasters EXE with less crashes and graphical glitches. Also, it works online just fine, Codemasters didnt do anything to thwart pirates whatsoever. One of the reasons the online is so atrocious.Omega215D - Thursday, August 7, 2008 - link
I was debating whether to get this game for the PS3($60) or PC ($40) but I heard there were many bugs for the PC version so I wasn't sure if I should pick this one up. The cool thing about this game is that it is more action packed than Gran Turismo 5 Prologue.Now I have something to keep me occupied till GTA IV for PC in November (hopefully).