Nowadays, when people think about great racing games of this era, they think of forza, PGR, Dirt, Gran Turismo. The race driver series, the sucessor to the TOCA series, gets somehow forgotten. Racedriver Grid is the first in this series, and while it's not the best raceing game on the system, it's one of my favourites. Starting with the negatives, it's not a game full of different game modes, infact it feels a little sparse and you are basically left with 3 modes, campaign, single race and online mode. The campgain is quite confusing at first also. You start off doing random events for other teams taking part in a variety of different types of races, then suddenly you have your own team, it's not explained very well and there's little story and no training to get you up to speed. Despite these flaws, the racing itself is excellent. Your enjoyment of racing games probably largely depends on how well it aligns with your preference of Sim to Arcade style, and Grid rides this perfect balance of very difficult and competative arcade racing, which is helped by the excellent AI. Every race feels like a challenge, but not impossible, and the inclusion of rubber banding means that you are never laps ahead on you own like in some simulation racers. The races are fun and competative from start to finish. That's not to say it's fully arcade, you will need to use your break wisely and there is an excellent damage system which can mess up your stearing if you take too much damage, but you won't need to tweek your car too much each race. The campaign also features a huge variety of racing styles to keep you entertained. I really enjoyed the drifting events akin to Dirt 3, and the one on one races were really intense. For me it's some of the best racing to be had on the console, and I highly reccomend it if you enjoy hard but fun racing, of course this style is not for everyone.

Reviewed on Dec 14, 2023


Comments