Race Driver GRID

I recently bought GRID, the latest sequel in the Race Driver series by Codemasters. It’s a stunning and also quite fun arcade-ish racing game.

The good:

• Stunning graphics
• Awesome damage modeling system
• Flashbacks (the ability to go back in time)
• The little indicator that indicates your chances of making the next turn (yellow, orange, red) — though one could argue over the position
• The ability to have a teammate

The bad:

• Instant replay feature is only useful for flashbacks, not for reviewing the race itself
• Event selection doesn’t show you a live-preview of the track (just the title and the circuit)
• You can only have a single teammate and he/she is not very cooperative

Observations:

• The difficulty settings mainly influences two things: 1) How fast the opponents go 2) The number of flashbacks available
• The tense music in the final hours of the 24 Hours of Le Mans starts no matter what position you have (even if you are dead last and essentially have no chance of winning) and when you hit ESC during the music it will stop all together.
• Debris can actually get stuck under your car, impacting your car handling significantly

Ideas:

• While it’s cool that you can have a teammate at all, it would be much cooler if you could create an entire racing team. Having the ability to command the teammates during a race (push, let me pass, pass me, block) and having them learn from your driving (essentially have the A.I. base their own driving on yours) would also be quite interesting.

External links:

• http://www.gametrailers.com/game/grid/6195
• http://www.gamespot.com/pc/driving/racedriverone/index.html