Product Description

As the all-new racing experience from Codemasters Studios, creators of Colin McRae: DiRT, Race Driver: GRID is all about the race. Every moment from the adrenalin rush at the start lights to the elation at the chequered flag the tension, pressure, noise, and action.

Featuring only the most powerful race cars current and classic, circuit and drift players will compete to conquer the most prestigious official race tracks and championships and then go beyond to compete in challenging city-based competitions, through to road events and urban street races.

With races crammed with action and incident, high-impact moments will come at you thick and fast, one right after another: engine blows, tyre blow outs, tight overtaking, accidents, opponent cars flipping, spinning, collisions with other cars and trackside objects.

From humble beginnings, earning a few thousand dollars a season, build a feared and respected racing team with a multi-million dollar income and complete at dramatic race locations and dominate a multi-disciplined world of racing.

In Europe, race prestige Marques, including Aston Martin, Koenigsegg and Pagani, on the greatest official race circuits. Enter street competitions and race high-performance V8 muscle cars through iconic U.S. cities including San Francisco, Washington DC and Detroit. In the Far East, Japanese racing culture sets the tone where night races, including Drift racing, take drivers through neon illuminated cities and to outlying mountain roads.

As the antithesis of the box-ticking, plodding single-player race game, Race Driver: GRID delivers a diverse career mode in a persistent world of racing that provides each player with a unique experience as their team writes itself into racing folklore.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4102 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Codemasters Limited
• Released on: 2008-05-30
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

Amazon.co.uk

As the all-new racing experience from Codemasters Studios, creators of Colin McRae: DiRT™, Race Driver: GRID is all about the race. Every moment from the adrenalin rush at the start lights to the elation at the chequered flag – the tension, pressure, noise, and action.

Featuring only the most powerful race cars – current and classic, circuit and drift – players will compete to conquer the most prestigious official race tracks and championships and then go beyond to compete in challenging city-based competitions, through to road events and urban street races.

With races crammed with action and incident, high-impact moments will come at you thick and fast, one right after another: engine blows, tyre blow outs, tight overtaking, accidents, opponent cars flipping, spinning, collisions with other cars and trackside objects.

From humble beginnings, earning a few thousand dollars a season, build a feared and respected racing team with a multi-million dollar income and complete at dramatic race locations and dominate a multi-disciplined world of racing.

In Europe, race prestige Marques, including Aston Martin, Koenigsegg and Pagani, on the greatest official race circuits. Enter street competitions and race high-performance V8 muscle cars through iconic U.S. cities including San Francisco, Washington DC and Detroit. In the Far East, Japanese racing culture sets the tone where night races, including Drift racing, take drivers through neon illuminated cities and to outlying mountain roads.

As the antithesis of the box-ticking, plodding single-player race game, Race Driver: GRID delivers a diverse career mode in a persistent world of racing that provides each player with a unique experience as their team writes itself into racing folklore.

Customer Reviews

Acquired Taste- and get the patch.
It's pretty slick and fun, but GRID should come with a label warning of wobbly arcade handling and stupid AI. These aren't critical problems but they can affect your enjoyment, especially if you're more used to proper simulations. The AI-cars in GRID drive like slot cars, with perfect starts and huge turn-in speeds. The twisty American street circuits hide the robotic AI but on the wide European road courses the AI often drive in perfect 2x2 formation. And the 'rubber band' competition makes some races feel scripted, and leaves you wondering if the AI was cruising. Especially if you're out of championship contention.

The handling is disappointing and often quite tricky. Its more simulation than arcade, but it's a simulation of very high grip cars. The grip kills the feel and the cars can be very twitchy. Again, in the 'point and squirt' American street races this isn't too noticeable, but a bit too much opposite lock in the sweeping turns of Japanese Touge (head-to-head to you and me) and European Touring races can see you mowing the grass and headbutting tyre walls. This knife edge handling is exacerbated by the lack of any practice or qualifying laps to let the player get the hang of the car and the track. Having to start every race mired in the pack isn't really a problem in an arcade smash-em-up style racer but GRID is tough enough already without the built-in disadvantage of having to catch-up with your main rival before you can race them.

These problems are greatly relieved by the rewind feature. So if you do mess up and crash out of the lead, spin back the replay a few seconds and try again. Racing games have been crying out for this idea for ages and its great that someone's finally included it. Another plus is the interface, which looks amazing and is a big improvement on on the one in DIRT. The tracks are split between the usual selection of real-world courses and fictional tracks. Codemasters have done something a bit different with GRID by creating fictional tracks that use real city streets in San Francisco and Washington DC. It's a great idea and hopefully they could do an add-on or download with some more tracks. The only minus is the rather rubbish attempt at modelling Le Mans. Let's just say that if you've seen the 'Le Mans 1979' track in RFactor (chicane-less Mulsanne straight and all) you will be disappointed by what you'll find in GRID. There's a good selection of cars, ranging from an old Ford Mustang to the Audi R10 diesel, with the usual mix of Japanese GTs, European supercars and American muscle cars in between. Not many single-seaters but given the shortcomings of the handling and AI that's no bad thing really.

I should add that this entire review is based on the *patched* version of GRID. Before the patch there was some dreadful slowdown and stuttering on many tracks AND the game menus. The force feedback didn't work either, and without FF the cars were almost impossible to control. On second thoughts perhaps that's the warning that should be on the box.

Motor Racing Fans beware - This game is not aimed at you
It must be made clear from the outset that I am approaching this game as a motor racing nut, so I pride realism and the racing experience above all else. And I mean racing, not driving.
As someone who has owned every game in the TOCA series from the very beginning back in 1997, I never even considered the possibility that this game might be terrible. Sure I was expecting a few corners to have been cut as normal to make the game more fun but these usually add to a generally realistic racing experience. However I was wrong. This has to be the worst simulation I have ever played.
To start with the handling of the cars is appalling. Take anything for a drive and whatever you do it will not work. If you try braking in a ruler straight line before turning the car will come to almost a complete stop before driving over the inside of the corner. Put less steering input in and it will go straight on instead. I have a steering wheel (Saitek R220) and it took an hour just to set it up so that the car was drivable and even then it was only just. If you concentrate really hard though, you can brake nice and gently into the corner, creep the car through it and then accelerate out for a nice clean lap time. But you can forget following the racing line, which is impossible.
That done you head confidently for a race only to find that the AI cars drive through all the corners like it's Mario Kart. They seem to have limitless grip right (up to the point they spin off - which is actually quite a good feature) so will just drive away from you, even on the easiest difficultly level.
So it is back to practicing and trying to drive the car like an arcade game; brake as you turn in and accelerate as soon as you've finished braking. This does allow you to keep up, but the car is horrible. At every corner you get understeer on the entrance and then oversteer on the exit and because there are no car setup options in the game (yes, you heard me) there is nothing you can do about it except fiddle desperately with the set up of the steering wheel.
So the game doesn't work as a driving simulator and it doesn't work as a racing simulator either. Firstly, like in Colin McRae DIRT (which is a good game) the game has five difficultly levels for which the only differences are how many walls you can bounce off before retiring and how fast the computer cars go down the straights. This doesn't work as a racing experience; driving past everyone on the straights like it's a motorway and then getting rammed through the turns because the AI is so much faster through them is not motor racing. Besides the best overtaking move is out braking but this is barely possible because a) the AI cornering speeds are so high that they don't seem to need to brake and b) because the AI drives as if you are not there! It doesn't matter how far you are along side you are or whether they've been following you for an entire lap so clearly know where you are, as soon as the computer cars want to use the piece of track you are currently occupying, they will just drive into you. Overtaking cleanly is nigh on impossible, especially since there is no option to qualify the car so you invariably have three laps to gain about ten places to fulfil an objective.
Personally I think all the above faults are in the game to allow Codemasters to show off their new damage model. The visual effects are quite good I'll admit, but what's the point when the damage has no effect on the car unless it's terminal? I drove almost an entire race around a street track in hot American sunshine in a V8 engined Mustang with no radiator because I'd lost it when I was shunted into the wall by the AI at the first turn and did the car overheat? Take a guess.
Of course I'm being slightly harsh. For the American and Japanese segments of the game these problems aren't actually too much on an issue. You are racing highly tuned cars on ridiculous courses most of which have never actually existed. So there is an element of fun in just crashing in to things in a Need for Speed kind of way.
But in the European segment of the game, oh dear God. It is unbearable.
Firstly there are the lap times, which are as usual way to fast. Example; one of the earliest challenges is to drive a BMW world touring car around the (new) Nürburgring only seventeen seconds slower then last years formula one pole time; and that is on the easiest difficultly level.
Then there is the racing which is dire. I think its best demonstrated by a Formula 3 race at Spa where the cars ran side by side for the entire race, pausing only to crash into each other periodically. This was no problem though because the car handled just as badly a with a front wing as without one. I even lost my engine cover with no ill effects, which was doubly strange since I'd been rammed square from behind, so should have lost my rear wing.
Anyway, anyone who as seen F3 race will know that overtaking is almost impossible and that any contact almost always results in retirement. Nevertheless after an entire race of watching the AI swapping places and bouncing off each other I was able to drive from 12th to 5th purely in the last two corners through no greater expedient then ramming people.
Every time you crash out the extremely irritating American pit wall radio person comes on the blower to announce "Race over Kid." And with it's selection of thumping annoying tunes, spectacular crashes and annoying characters (including the aforementioned radio man who can use "wow" twice in a sentence and a female advisor in the main menu who is so stereotyped it is almost sexist,) that is clearly who this game is aimed at. Twelve year old American kids.
So if you list your favourite racing games as "Need for Speed Something or Another" or "Burnout" then ignore what I've said, you'll probably love this game. However, if your list has "Grand Prix Legends", "GTR" or "Grand Prix 1/2/3/4" on it then the classic European motor racing experience is better simulated by them, or by any of the previous TOCA/Race driver games. Or by a Scalextric set.

Most stunning racer there is!!
Simply put, Race Driver: GRID is the most visually stunning game I've ever seen.
Let me say it again, from the incredibly detailed cars and crashes, to realistic damage modelling, even the crowds who are taken aback when you crash near them, the amount of graphic effects in this game are breathtaking.

The only downside to that is however, in a hefty system requirement:
If you don't have at least 256MB of dedicated video memory, you're not going to enjoy the game.
Be warned!

I'd like to start off by saying, this is NOT a driving simulator...so its not right to compare this with Forza-Motorsport or TOCA and say its not realistic enough.

Quite frankly I'm starting to get tired of the bad reviews people write just because they were disappointed in the simulation.
Hear this: This is an ARCADE game; not a sim.

Having said that, this game is does offer quite an action-packed experience:
There's a huge variety of races - although broadly catagorized into US, Europe and Japan regions (each with its own style) there is a staggeringly large amount of race types: Street races, GP style track racing, open wheel (formula style) racing, Drifting, speed challenges...goes on and on.

Each race and car type has a distinct feel to it; and it feels good if you're really into racing...and yet enjoyable enough for the casual gamer.

The AI is also very good - in that it acts like a real driver. They don't simply drive in perfect formations without making any mistakes; they don't mindlessly bang into you if you're spun out on the track, AI is very realistic.

The bottom line is this:

1.
If you're a hardcore sim fan, you might not enjoy the cars-only upgrade mode of this game: Get TOCA or something.

2.
If you're just looking for mindless high-speed action with plenty of NFS-style nitro boosts and things, this is not for you either: Get Burnout Paradise or something.

3.
If you're looking for a racing game, with a variety of race-types, incredible detailing and graphics, without all the hassles of a sim, THIS IS THE GAME FOR YOU!