Yet another game/film (in this case game) which I've been so impressed/infuriated (in this case, impressed) with, that I decided to tell the world about it. Its name is Grid.
Something i love about racers, in particular, need for speed: pro street, is the engineering aspect; tweaking the car with dozens of minor adjustments to details such as tyre pressures, suspension, cam timings helping to improve lap times and drag speeds. Grid has NONE of this, there is NO SUCH THING as tweaking, modding or engineering in this game, you can change the paintwork and thats pretty much it.
I tell you this so that you can play the game and know not to be able to mod the car, and hence not be disappointed. I'm now stuck wondering where to begin with describing the rest of the game, i think I'll start with the physics/soft damage engine.
The game uses a mod of the Colin Maccrae game which I never played so didn't know what to expect, nor did I care when I downloaded the demo, I was just expecting another racer. Lets face it, everyone loves explosions, to see cars ripped to shreds and pileups longer than the M25 (note, the M25 is a circle). Now, physical damage isn't new to the world of racing games, but in Grid, the tyres lose their tread as you go progress through the race thrashing the gears slowly knackers your transmission, and this is the first game I've played where wear and tear on the car is authenticaed through audio. By the end of the gane, your car will be whining, whirring and making ticking noises from every moving part. It's also the fist racing game I've seen where a car's rear end blew up with flames erupting from the exhaust before slamming to a halt mid race.
Then theres the time two cars collided infront of me, the bumper launched into the air, landing on my bonnet, blocking my vision, causing me to crash. Oh oh, and this other time, I was going down a bumpy hill, the car intfront of my clipped an edge, took off, and came down as a drove underneath, crashing my car and putting me out of the race.. don't worry, it'll only be a few minutes of your first race before you're going "WOW! I don't believe that just happened! awesome!" and be telling your own stories.
Another nice touch is the way that the audience will boo you if your car is knackered, and if you crash into a barrier, the audience behind will duck for cover.
Theres a wide variety of challenges. NFS: Pro Street had a nice variety with sub-varieties, but this game seems to go just that bit further, adding modes such as freestyle drifting where you're free to drift around the location rather than have to follow a specific route. The one I love most (which coudlnt be done without the awesome physics and collision/damage engine) is demolission derby mode. 12 cars going around a track with plenty of crossroads = plenty of crashes = plenty of carnage, yummmm.
The actual game modes themselves.. well, there's the standard "i want to just do a one-off race" mode, and there's the championship mode. If begins with you not being able to afford your own car, so you start by loaning yourself as a driver for other racing teams, I guess this is like the tutorial bit, where you learn the basics of driving before learning to manage your cars etc. After you raised enough car, you find yourself with a restored mustang, and your own racing team. You can now buy cars as you wish and enter challenges from Japan, Europe and USA. You build up individual reputation for each location, and gain sponsorship. Each location has 3 stages, each needing to be completed before progressing to the next. The sponsors will give you chalenges and provide extra income if you achieve them during a race. Typically these achievements are to actually finish the race (ie not wreck your car), beat a specific laptime or come within top X places. More money means more cars meaning you can entire more racing modes, though the game limits your selection of cars for each race type, unlike NFS where you could bring any car to any race as long as it was customised for that race mode. Is this a bad thing? well, it doesnt really seem to bother me; I'd probably be wanting to buy a new car for the racemode anyway. While being in your own team, you can still loan yourself out to drive for other teams, this gives no where near the same rewards for winning a race, but gives oppertunity to try a car out before buying fr yourself.
The tracks themselves are also perfectly designed for the racemode they're set to, NFS also managed to do this quite well. The tracks are also built into incredibly accurately recreated real-world locations. Earlier I was racing through Milan, going "hey! theres that cathedral I took photos of last summer, now if I remember rightly.. yes! I'm now racing through the shopping centre I walked through, and in the distance, the castle! and these tramlines I almost got ran over on!!!"
The multiplayer is also great. It works flawlessly. It's efficient for "set-up and go", with players being free to join and leave (and get votekicked when deliberately causing roadblocks) sessions whenever they want without interupting everyone elses gameplay, and at the end of each session (3 races), theres a vote for which racemode and track to go for next. It does lack a friends/buddy feature, and there isn't a visible list of players in the session until you join it. In other words, when joining a friend, you need to find out the excect session settings, and look for it using the filters, since the sessions aren't individually named either. However, when you do find the session, joining will always work, there'll never be the problem of randomly not being able to join (pointing at test drive unlimitted, and non racing games such as company of heroes).
So in summary, this game has sacrificed some aspects that are becoming standard in modern racers, such as NO engineering of cars, and the limitations of cars for each race type, but it seems that by sacrifising these aspects, they've made sure the rest of the game works solidly. That said, I guess that since there isnt an engineering aspect, it does give me one less thing to worry about..
Pros:
Insane physics, damage, and overall wearing-and-tearing-of-the-car engine. Best I've ever seen.
Multiplayer works.
Interesting new style of overall gameplay with a wide variety of race modes, and accurately recreated locations.
Stunning graphics.
Wide overall variety of cars.
Cons:
Lack of buddy system in multiplayers.
Limitted car selection per race mode.
Made by a british company, why all the american accents? GRRR
Video i recorded of a typical demolition derby crash. Thanks to this games replay features, I've been able to record some spectacular crashes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHZUi7i6YOg
