Grid captures arcade racing in a brilliant way
GRID's main Career mode, GRID World, takes you on a journey around the globe, taking your created team to stardom by winning events: touring car racing, Le Mans, drifting, and touge are some examples of the intense events you will be participating. You start off driving for other teams as a freelance driver to gain some cash, and with this cash you will be able to start your own racing team and brand and customize it, and when you earn cash from winning events you can use this to buy cars and hire team mates (once you have unlocked that ability.)
The drifting in GRID is very well pulled off and is one of the most addictive racing events in the game. Each drift scores you points, and if you keep it going it turns into a combo, and if you stop drifting for a certain amount of time the combo stops and however long you've been doing the combo for, the drift points double that number. Again, like the whole of GRID, drifting is easy to pick up and play and hard to master.
Le Mans is the classic Le Mans race on the Circuit de Sarthe, and instead of it being 24 hours it is 24 minutes which is still a tought amount of time to be drving for, especially when considering the fact that at night time it is almost impossible to see anything. Winning it is very hugely satisfying, and if you win it in GRID World it is the pinnacle of your career, you will shoot up the ranks in both Driver Rankings and Team Rankings, unlike normal racing events where you only boost up a couple of ranks, or even stay in the same position. If anything, you can even move down if you fail miserably during the racing event.
Touge is racing against one other in uphill/downhill races on small Japanese mountain road with only two laps, and if you crash at all you lose time, because the overall winner is the one who sets the fastest time. At night it is even harder than it was before.
Alongside all these racing events, there is of course the likes of touring cars, Le Mans series, open wheel and many more, on many of the tracks and street circuits that GRID offers.
As you go along winning events, you will gain Reputation points to unlock other licenses to progress through GRID World, and you will eventually unlock the Global license, where only the best race.
You have a radio controller in GRID who tells you all the latest interesting stuff happening in the event, but all he manages to get out of his mouth is pointless and useless, such as the times he says someone has spun out, before its too late and you suddenly crash.
There's a constant challenge in the events, and its easy to pick up and play but hard to master, because being an arcade game, its fast, very fast, and you'll be hit by other cars all the time and get pushed into the wall. Also you can usually slide around corners at full speed as well. All of this is OK because its an arcade game, but its too arcadey for my liking in terms of the AI, which ram you into walls and other cars and is overall very stupid.
Add to that the lack of variety with cars and tracks. There's a nice selection with some of the best in the world, but more is always better in any game, so this is another down point with GRID. And there isn't even the ability to tune and customzize these cars, all you can do is add your sponsors in GRID World, which earns you your cash, and vinyls.
The graphics are a slight let down, but still are very good, especially the crash damage modelling. Everything is modelled extremely well, but like I said, a bit of a let down, looking at the early screenshots of the game.
If you do wreck your car in any event, you can always rewind using the Flashback feature, which is good but also takes away much of the challenge. This can be solved with the higher difficulty levels, however.
The most challenge you'll get in GRID is online, but unfortuanltey rammers who try with all their might, with as many ways as possible, to ram you, wreck you, and get you off the road, to the point you fight back. But then, when you kick them, nobody else does, and also people kick the wrong people for the fun of it, and all of this damages an otherwise really fun and addictive online mode. I know this is not Codemasters fault, its the communtity, but thanks to them Codemasters have to pay the price and this is one of the majore problems with the game, and one of the major reasons GRID got only 8.5 instead of 9.5/10. Actaully, to an exent, it is Codemasters fault for not taking action against these cheaters, rammers, and pointless and stupid online players.
For an overall arcade racing package, GRID is an amazing and addictive arcade racing game, only let down by those annoying problems which can be easily fixed.