When Codemasters revealed that their next racing title would focus on tarmac action, I was very eager to see what they would come up with. Aside from Gran Turismo, the TOCA and Race Driver series from Codemasters have built up a great reputation in providing neck-to-neck intense tarmac racing action spanning a variety of racing disciplines. With a strong simulation focus, its in-depth damage modelling and steep learning curve, it definitely had its own following. However after the widespread success of their off-road title DIRT, Codemasters are continuing this new softened approach with their latest racing game, Race Driver: GRID. Unfortunately for fans of previous titles in the series, GRID is certainly not racing game you’d expect it to be.

Before I get to why this is so, let’s talk about its positives first. GRID sees you as an aspiring race driver set to dominate the world and become the top racing driver and be part of the best race team out there. In order to do this you need to earn reputation. At the start, this is done by racing for other teams who need drivers. This is great if you want a quick bit of cash, but only gives you a small amount of reputation. Racing for your own team is the best ticket to buckets of reputation, and so after you’ve scraped together enough cash, your sexy sounding female team manager will help you put together a team and get stuck into the races available. As you progress through the career mode, you’ll gradually earn enough reputation for race licenses, unlocking more events within the three categories of racing, consisting of American, European and Japanese themes. Along the way you’ll be asked to pick a team mate to increase the chances of winning in races, and also pick which sponsorships to take on to boost your winnings.

Much like DIRT, GRID aims to push your driving skills to the limit by testing you in a variety of racing disciplines. There’s Touring Cars, American Muscle Cars, Drifting, Touge Battles and even the famous Le Mans 24 Hours Endurance Race. It’s pretty safe to say that whatever you like about tarmac racing, GRID’s probably got it. Of course, each events are more specific towards their own region. For instance, the Drifting and Touge modes are a Japanese speciality, so they can only be found in the Japanese category. Regardless of which event you’re competing in, you’ll gradually be purchasing a lot of cars to cater towards each driving discipline, resulting in experiencing lots of different cars depending on the event. GRID features 45 different cars, a minuscule figure compared to other games, but with a car selection ranging from Corvettes, Silvias and even GT cars like the Aston Martin DBR-9, you’re bound to find your favourite car amongst this crowd. Some events have a few different car types, whereas some are stuck with just one. It’s a completely even playing field though, since GRID has no tuning options for the cars, meaning the outcome of each race is up to your driving skill. That and, any unfortunate incidents that may occur during the race itself.

What are these unfortunate incidents I speak of? Well this is down to the A.I. of your competitors. As you may well know from real life racing, mistakes happen. After all, race drivers are humans as well. And much like real life, in GRID now and then the A.I. will make mistakes too. Whether it be not braking enough for a corner and driving into a gravel trap or spinning out due to loss of traction. Whatever happens, you’ll sometimes be there to witness it, and more importantly, these can turn the tide of any race. Sometimes these incidents might happen to your team mate or right up to the race leader itself. It doesn’t matter, just know that your knuckles will remain white until the race is over. As for the A.I. itself, they’re pretty competent racers and are in most cases aware of your presence and do their best to adapt as they see fit. It’s quite entertaining to see an early spin at the front of the pack and witness the rest of the cars swerve out of the way and into a world of smoke and body panels.

GRID uses a game engine called Ego, which is an evolved version used in DIRT, and it definitely shows. The graphics are very pleasing to the eye, with the cars all very shiny and with detailed race liveries. GRID seems to sport somesort of brown colour palette, which seems odd and dull at first but once you start racing on other tracks and check out the scenery then all doubt disappears. This is a stunning game to look at with minimal frame rate issues. The same high quality visuals are further highlighted when you see damage on the cars. Body parts will deform and fall off, scratches start to appear and cracked windshields may occur. Everything has been modelled very well and is a testament to Codemasters attention to detail with their car modelling. If you’ve played DIRT, you would remember the stylish menus and loading screens it had, and the same goes for GRID. The majority of GRID’s menus are in lucsious 3D and float around and change stylishly. The statistical loading screens return, although not as stylish as they were in DIRT, again reminding you of your racing achievements throughout your time with GRID.

The same level of detail has been applied to the audio department too. Engines are loud and brash with every race sounding thrilling as you floor the throttle. Tyres will squeal as you throw the cars around corners and brakes will whine when your braking for a corner. Amongst all this action you can hear the crowd cheering and fear for your safety as you plough into a safety barrier right before their eyes. GRID really nails the sensation of an intense racing atmosphere. Although oddly enough there is not much of a musical soundtrack, with only a handful of original tunes for the menu and replay sections, of which are pretty good in its own right. But it just shows that Codemasters want you to concentrate on the racing and not head banging to whatever music they could license for the game.

Other pluses in GRID include little touches such as all the dials moving in the impressive in-car cockpit view, with even the driver’s feet animation modelled and moving as you drive. Another handy feature is your crew chief advising you during every race, warning you of potential crashes up ahead and keeping you up-to-date with who’s in front or behind you. This is pretty helpful at first, but you soon realise that there aren’t much variety in the tips he provides, so eventually this gets repetitive rather quickly. A few well known drivers also lend their names to GRID, such as Nelson Piquet Jr. for his part in the Le Mans 24 Hours and Youichi Imamura who is a professional drifter. These are just names though, and are buried within the sea of other fictional names within the drivers rankings. GRID also has a feature called Flashbacks. Basically whenever you go into the replay mode or make a critical mistake causing irreparable damage to your car you’ll automatically go into the replay mode. Providing you have enough Flashbacks, you can rewind to a state shortly before the crash and continue from there on in the hope you’ve learned your mistake and won’t repeat it again. This looks and works great, but its downfall is that it makes racing a little too easy since you can go back and fix your mistake when you see fit.

That’s all the good stuff, and it’s all very good I assure you, no doubts about that. But GRID’s biggest downfall, the single biggest problem with GRID is its driving model. Now before you question why my biggest beef with the game is its handling, consider this. I already mentioned that GRID’s runs on Ego, and evolved version of the engine used in DIRT. In DIRT the driving model was pretty decent and felt like a good hybrid of simulation and arcade physics, but its sore thumb was in the tarmac sections. The cars just felt like driving on ice and skidded around with no real feel of braking or acceleration. However, DIRT pulled through because these tarmac sections were pretty rare since after all it is an off-road game. But now since GRID is completely tarmac racing and uses the same model, you can see why I’m thoroughly disappointed with GRID.

Pretty much every car you drive in the game has hardly any feel whatsoever when you’re on the road. All the cars skate around like on an ice rink and braking is hardly needed. And when you do brake your car can stop dead from 120mph easily in a few seconds, which is just ridiculous. You’d think that with Codemasters’ experience in racing games they could have at least brought some of their simulation qualities into GRID, but its much more simple than that. The reason why GRID has such terrible handling is because they’ve simply dumbed down their entire driving model so that even non-racers can get into it, and for that the entire game completely suffers from it. With all this being said, the one notable mention is GRID’s drifting mode, which I can confidently say is one of the better models out there in the Arcade racing genre today. But don’t think that you can remedy this problem by using a Steering Wheel, because the support for it is a complete joke. Even after you tinker around the driving options available it can’t fix GRID’s underlying handling problems. And if you’re on the PS3, don’t even bother with the 900 degree option. It makes driving even the most nimble racing cars into an absolute chore, much like driving an HGV.

So really it doesn’t matter that the game looks and sounds great, has a lengthy career and strong multiplayer options, because the game itself is virtually unplayable. And even when you do have a go, coupled with the Flashback feature it completely removes the sense of achievement when playing racing games. It’s perhaps the worst hybrid of simulation and arcade games to date. Worst yet, this is easily a triple A title from a well established developer, which is in my opinion a complete disgrace. In fact, this is Need for Speed ProStreet all over again.

It really all boils down to this. If you’ve played the demo and found it enjoyable, then you will have a right riot with this game and its bound to keep you going for a few months. But, and this is a big but. Again, if you played the demo and immediately found the driving not up-to-scratch, then I suggest you stay well away from GRID and look elsewhere. Even if you are compelled to give it a go by no means should you buy it. Rent it first, then decide.