Grid Hands-On

Codemasters' racing games have been receiving makeovers as of late. The publisher earned its racing pedigree on dirt (with the Colin McRae Rally series) and on the asphalt (with numerous games, including most recently the TOCA Race Driver series). The company went on to redefine its reputation as a racing-game leader with last year's Dirt, which brought cutting-edge presentation to a wide variety of off-road racing styles: everything from traditional rally to dune-buggy racing. That same multidisciplined approach will also be a hallmark of Codies' updated asphalt race, Grid. We saw the game a few months back and have now finally had a chance to get our hands around the virtual wheel to see what Grid will have to offer.

Unfortunately, the preview code that we tried featured only a portion of what will be available in the final build of the game. Career mode was not available to us, but the build did have a brief video that introduced how the mode will work. It seems very similar to the Dirt format: You enter events, earn points for your performance, and open up new events as you go. In Grid, you earn reputation points to unlock new events, and those rep points are spread across three different geographical locales: Europe, Asia, and North America. How many reputation points you earn depends on the type of event, as well as what kind of assists you use when tackling the events, including driver assists such as traction control, stability management, and braking help.

Another crucial prerace adjustment will be the difficulty of your AI opponents, a group of computer-controlled drivers who are prone to brilliance as well as mistakes on the track, sort of like a real human driver. The game starts out on three-star-level difficulty, which is a pretty comfortable level of challenge for a veteran driver. However, if you bump it up just one degree, the cars become much more aggressive on the track, bumping you if you're too slow through a corner, and wiping out badly when they misjudge a turn. They're also canny overtakers; it isn't unusual for you to be zipping along, only to find an opponent's car ducking underneath you if you take a turn too wide. As a result, you find yourself not just looking to run clean laps but, at the higher difficultly levels, you're also constantly looking to close the door on your foes, keeping as close to the apex as possible.

The preview build of Grid on hand featured a number of different events across all three locales: a saloon car race at Jarama circuit in Spain, a street race in Tokyo, muscle-car battles in Washington D.C. and San Francisco, and so on. There was even one specialized event on hand: a drift competition set on the shipping docks in Yokohama. Here, speed isn't your concern; style takes precedence when you're drifting your car around the multitude of right-angle corners that make up the circuit, hopefully kicking up as much burnt rubber as possible. Drift success is measured by a number of factors, including the length and speed of your drift, as well as your proximity to the apex in corners, and so on.

Chaining multiple drifts together will result in higher scores through combo multipliers and, at the end of a race, you'll get a detailed breakdown of how your two-lap race event went: longest drift, biggest combo, that kind of thing. As you might expect, the cars in drift events feel quite a bit different than in the regular race events, looser, more apt to swing their rear ends out, and with short gear ratios to keep acceleration at a premium. Of course, you'd naturally expect a specialized drift car to feel different from the regular cars, but Grid seems to be doing a pretty good job of portraying the unique feel of all the cars in the game. For example, the relatively stubborn Aston Martin DB9 that you race in Milan is an entirely different beast than the BMW 320si that you drive in Spain; it's heavier and tends to understeer in fast corners.

When it comes to presentation, it's easy to see the influence that Dirt had on the development of Grid's visuals. The game's lighting gives a soft, saturated hue to the environments, providing real drama on street circuits such as Milan, with its authentic architecture and narrow streets. The Jarama circuit is less of a visual showcase, but it's a fun track to drive in its own right, with lots of tight corners and elevation changes to keep things moving. Driving veterans will love the interior camera view in Grid; the car interiors look great, and it's with this camera that you get the best sense of speed in the game. Cars blast off the line at the starts, and shudder and slam into walls during accidents. Damage wasn't final in the build we played, but the cars certainly crunched up nicely, which bodes well for crashing in the final product. Of course, if you crash too badly, you'll always be able to take advantage of the game's flashback feature, which will let you rewind time and jump back into the driver's seat to try that crucial turn or pass attempt again.

With nice visuals and dynamic, challenging AI, Grid aims to appeal to the longtime Codemasters fan, with enough variety to keep racing rookies interested as well. Although Dirt's sheer quantity of events felt a bit scattershot at times, we're hoping that won't be the case with Grid. There's more to learn about the game--we look forward to checking out the career mode and online play in a future look--but, for now, we'll be happy turning laps with the work in progress. Stay tuned for more Grid information in the coming months.