Seven minutes into an eight-minute endurance race, with no rewinds left and a slim lead over the rest of the pack, the stress becomes too much. We make a mistake. Traction is lost. The racing line a distant memory. We’re overtaken, quickly dropping to seventh and, when it’s all said and done, losing our podium placing in the overall championship.
And this is all on a medium setting. If there’s one thing Grid Autosport absolutely nails, it’s making things challenging on the out-of-the-box difficulty level. Initially you’ll struggle at the back of the pack, and soon you’ll be able to thunder forwards through your opponents – but all the time you’re playing it, as long as it’s not on very easy, you’ll be challenged. And that’s a brilliant, refreshing thing.
While you’re trying to master the art of bumper-to-bumper racing in touring cars, it might then slip your mind that you have to pick up the art of racing in four other disciplines to make any discernible progress in Autosport. open wheel (single-seaters, like formula 3 cars), tuner (fast, powerful beasts of the road), street (a lot of the cars you see on a daily basis in real life – and the Mclaren f1) and endurance (your GT3/le Mans-style motors) make up the numbers in what is an initially bewildering array of disciplines, styles of racing and car physics to master.It feels like tremendous value and a reaction to the complaints aimed at Grid 2 – namely that it wasn’t as ‘pure’ a racing game as the original race driver: Grid. It’s not unfair to look at things that way, either, with the variety of race styles accompanied by more realistic handling – though still not ultra-sim style – and the much-hyped return of the in-car view. Though this latter part has, much to the consternation of series fans, seen a reduction in its detail from the first game.
Each of the aforementioned disciplines feels as well made as the other, with no dead wood and only personal preference coming into picking out the best ones. some will be furious at having to make their way through drift events in the tuner section, while others will find the rough and ready shunting of the touring races irritating in the extreme. Especially when you get nudged out on a corner again. But none of it feels half-baked, and each speciality requires a palpable difference in how you actually play it. All of Grid Autosport feels eminently scaleable, with custom difficulty levels and car tuning available for each race. Even those struggling after a fair few races can fiddle to find the perfect balance between challenge and fun – it’s a praiseworthy approach from Codemasters and one that feels utterly refreshing in the face of something like Gran Turismo 6, where you simply upgrade a car and end up lapping everyone twice.
you to keep going – no persistent teams, no choice of teammates, no story – vague or otherwise – pushing you through. You pick a racing discipline, pick a team and race a few times, then start again in the next season. A lack of persistence feels like a lack of permanence, and a lack of permanence lends itself to the feeling that… well, you’re not actually doing anything yourself.You don’t build up a garage of hard-won cars, you don’t see yourself rise from the bottom to the top, you don’t have rivalries hat last through the seasons – you’re just a gun for hire; a mercenary driver taking on the most enticing contract from anyone who comes knocking. Of course, that won’t matter to those who do just want a racing experience. It might even come as good news to those who derided Grid 2’s more ‘welcoming’ approach. But it does feel as though Codemasters has gutted the experience of its real depth, leaving a rather hollow – if enjoyable – experience in its wake.
This alongside the fact that you have to play the game for hours before reaching the requisite level three in each discipline to unlock the first Grid championship just doesn’t lend itself to a game that you will want to persist with. It’s good, it’s fun and it’s very well made (as well as exquisitely pretty in places), but Autosport just isn’t meaty enough to justify the amount of time it asks of you.Even with some customisation offered in the realms of online, the whole package still feels like a selection of disparate parts with no real core holding it all together. The original Race Driver: Grid was a kick up the backside in the subsection of a genre that seriously needed it. It brought a fine balance between dry simulation and the all-out thrills of gaming, and even now, six years later, it’s still fantastic fun (even if it no longer has online play). Grid Autosport is good fun too, and a technological leap over its forebear, but we can’t see anyone extolling its virtues in six years time. They’ll say it was a lark, but they’ll not really remember why, and they’ll carry on playing whatever it is Codemasters does next in the series – because whatever that is will be the true sequel fans wanted. For now, though, and for the right price, Autosport can bridge the gap.
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