Racedriver GRID
I am pleasantly surprised with Racedriver GRID which I’ve been brushing with on the PS3 for the past few days. It has brought my single most favourite feature of racing games back; the ability to drive the wrong way round the track and total other racers’ cars in head-on collisions.
The damage model makes racing quite challenging and in combination with the blistering speed at which everything seems to go can be quite fatal if you make a wrong move. Fortunately there’s a Prince of Persia: Sands of Time like rewind facility dubbed “Flashback” that puts you into replay mode when you write off your car, allows you to rewind to a safe position, and race that turn all over again. Of course you can’t do this indefinitely.
I’m loving the arcade feel, ridiculous speed and unpredictability of the game so much that I am now making every effort to obtain a compatible racing wheel and review both it and what it lends to the Racedriver experience.
I’ve been a fan of Codemasters racing titles for many years but there’s definitely a distinct portion between CMR2 (maybe 3 at a pinch) and Racedriver GRID where their games just didn’t captivate me; but now Racedriver GRID gives me a far quicker speed fix than GT Prologue in which I wasted hours racing the same course in order to try out a Tuscan TVR that I then proceeded to crash consistently at every corner.
Racedriver GRID is full of nice touches and seems to have dropped me right into some pretty intense racing which, whilst difficult (I tend to suck at racing titles), seems to avoid being frustrating (and that’s not just down to Flashbacks). More to come in the full review but, for now, it’s looking like a winner and I’ve barely even scratched the surface!