Australian Gamer Review :: Race Driver: GRID

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Race Driver: GRID

Reviewed on: Playstation 3
Available on:

Samo takes a spin of the latest Touring Car/Race Driver series from Codemasters. Does it offer enough to keep his interest, or is it more of the same?

Players: Up to 16 online players
Genre: Adventure
Release: 2008-06-08

Developer: Codemasters
Distributor: Atari

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I was walking down the street the other day and I saw something that made me think a lot. That is actually a lie; I wouldn’t walk anywhere but humour me for a minute dear reader, for once again, there is a point to my rambling. I was on the main shopping strip in my suburb and I saw an older lady, her age was very hard to guess but she was trying desperately and failing miserably at wearing the fashion of a young girl. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the character I’m describing, the well wrinkled old girl who looks like she’s seen way too much sun clearly enjoying the low cut top and über tight jeans she’s wearing even though everyone else certainly isn’t. She has a smoke in one hand nearly down to the filter and she reaches for another to chain. Her hair is mousey brown but has the streaky blonde foils through it and it’s been put up and sprayed and producted to within an inch of its frail life. You know where I’m coming from? There’s a notion about growing old gracefully which Marg or whatever her name was has clearly completely missed. I don’t mind, hey, it takes all kinds to make the world go round and I’m sure in her own mind she looked a million bucks, maybe even felt like she was 20 years old. As a character she’s part of the scenery in most Aussie suburbs, if you live in Surrey Hills then we’ll give you a pass for not knowing but she’s a great reminder of plenty of long running video games franchises and the one I’m calling into question this time round is Codemasters’ well aged and generally successful Touring Car/Race Driver series.

No drift mode would be complete without an old Corolla

This time around they’ve called it GRID, as opposed to the other racing series in the Codemasters stable, DIRT. Duuuuhhh, this one is on Dirt, and this one is on a Grid. Does it seem like a dig at the target market to you too? Some say they’re expecting all racing game fans to have the intelligence of The Stig but I’m not The Stig, my driving is clear proof of that so as a regular human being who has enough intelligence to write for an online publication (read: slightly above zero) I feel a touch insulted. It’s all because Codemasters is trying to turn Race Driver into Marg and breathe some youth into an aging series but unfortunately they’ve pared down the game a bit, the Aussie link from the last Race Driver games, the V8 Supercars have been deleted completely which is sad but forgivable but the most frustrating thing is they’ve lost the plot somewhere and couldn’t decide whether Race Driver should follow Need For Speed Pro Street into the fancy world of wanky monograms and attitude or stick to the traditional Race Driver staple that is career Circuit touring car racing.

The result is somewhere in the middle, a Touring Car racing game that has elements of Drifting and Touge (pronounced too-gay, it’s Japanese mountain racing a-la Initial D) with a bit of car buying and sponsorship management. The race team management side is really quite cool, with the ability to set up your team’s racing livery, sponsorship, AI second driver and then there’s the buying of the cars for the various classes. The cars can be bought as new or through ‘eBay’ which is pointless anyway because you very rarely save significant game dollars off a new one, shameless product placement, anyone?

Slip, slidin' away

The career mode is played in seasons and in each season you can choose which events you partake in, gradually making your way up a scale. The coolest part though, and probably my favourite part of the entire game, is at the end of each season you are offered the chance to partake in the 24 Heurs Du Mans. For the people who aren’t car nuts or don’t speak French, that’s the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In the race, one hour is the equivalent of one real minute and there’s a realistic day night cycle. The racing at night is very tricky with realistically short visibility ahead. Then there is class racing, something I haven’t seen in a game for a long time, it was great to see a grid of 20 cars from 4 different classes all on track at the same time.

Oooohhh, angry

However there is a big hairy but in the mix, the big flaw in Grid, unfortunately, is the inconsistency of the handling. With a controller I found it near unplayable and when I set up my wheel it was even more so. Thankfully there are myriad settings to toy around with but it was only after an hour of playing around with sensitivity and force strength settings that I started to get a feeling that was playable. Even then it’s nearly impossible to judge the cars properly, the cars are quick and feel quick but the power delivery is unpredictable and traction control in a rear wheel drive car was an absolute must. The braking is the other way around, it’s very soft and underwhelming and very hard to judge. It’s almost like the braking performance of the car varies from corner to corner and all too often I found my braking to be way too late for one corner only to use what I’ve learned on the next lap to accelerate again before the entry point. Then, especially on the Touge mountain runs, I found that corner speed of the cars was very inconsistent from one corner to the next. It was very hard to judge. The most glaring constant in the handling and probably the contributor to all of the above is the feeling of the control. Even after spending time setting up the wheel I found the controls to be distant and wooden. In contrast, Gran Turismo has an almost natural feeling to the control and feedback; both the steering wheel and controller feel so direct. In Grid it’s possibly the biggest and most unforgivable blemish. With a new game on a new generation of console I’d hoped Codemasters would have fixed TOCA/V8 Supercar Race Driver’s biggest flaw but unfortunately it lingers, just with nicer graphics.

The guy on the horse was feeling optimistic....

It’s a crying shame because a lot of thought has clearly gone into the structure of the game. The career mode is excellent, gone is the story type progression from TOCA/V8 Supercar Race Driver and now it’s a simple run a team, earn money, earn sponsors, buy cars sort of setup. It’s simple but brutally effective giving a real sense of progression and accomplishment and it was enough to save the awful handling and hold my attention at least for a little while.

Grid is very much like Marg. Codemasters have tried to cover up her age and glaring deficiencies with some new ‘tude, some fancy graphics, a Queens of the Stone Age remix and a bit of toss. Unfortunately, as soon as you get past the menus and into the gameplay it all shows through and what could have been a good looking ensemble shows through to a tired and wrinkled old game that isn’t sure whether it’s a sim or an arcade racer. It’s sad, because Grid has the makings of a truly great racing title, with a decent handling model it’d be brilliant but unfortunately, what was once one of the finest racing games on the market isn’t aging gracefully at all and now it’s just Marg chaining up that next ciggie.

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Final Verdict

Mutton dressed as lamb. A beautifully structured and presented game that underneath is starting to feel very old. It’s such a shame because the design, structure, presentation and some of the ideas are brilliant but they’re let down by a core handling model that was flawed in V8 Supercar Race Driver and doesn’t seem to have changed.

Pros
Career mode has a great structure, beautifully presented.
Cons
Handling model is as old as your grandma so the actual game feels wooden and arthritic. Too hard to set up the controls to actually make the game playable, should be able to just pick up and play, not so with Grid.