Race Driver GRID preview

Back in the day I used to play loads of different racing games. Looking back now, most of them were probably fairly shity, but at least they were something to keep me occupied. Today i’m more inclined to play a First Person Shooter than anything else, however the other day I stumbled across the demo for “Race Driver GRID”.

The game follows on from Race Driver 1, Race Driver 2, Race Driver: Modern Warfare and Race Driver: Extraction Point. Once again it is developed by Codemasters, who until they released DiRT last year held pretty high acclaim in my books. I only had to play the DiRT demo for about 10 minutes to realise that it was a steaming pile, so naturally I was a bit wary of GRID.

Fortunately though it looks like Codemasters have really got there act together for this game. Its good to see that British developers are still up there with the very best.

The first thing that struck me about this game was the graphics. When turned up to MAX the textures and lighting look spectacular. Sadly though, I imagine this game with have the sort of system requirements that will make you cry into your pants.  Running on an 8800GT I got an average of 45FPS (MAX settings @ 1280×1024, No AA).

In the demo you get the choice of 3 races. Take to the European circuit in a BMW touring car, race around an American street circuit in a Ford Mustang or try you skills at drifting in Japan.

Personally I didn’t find the drifting to be much fun, possibly because I was crap at it. Certainly though the idea is well realised, and it is possible to pull off some very cool looking drifts.

Taking on a street circuit in an American muscle car sounds really cool… and it is! There was a real sense of speed around the tight track, where even small mistakes would be punished with a trip into the barrier.

Out of the three races the Touring cars was the best. The handling was smooth and the track was just plain excellent to drive around. It was challenging, but importantly not frustrating.

Unlike a lot of other racing games the AI is GRID is actually very good. The driver don’t just race you, they race each other. On several occations I would see two drivers battling to out for position, the result being that one of them would end up in the gravel trap.

Crash damage looks very realistic and actually affects the way your car handles rather than being purely cosmetic. The actual crashes themselves look very good, rather the just bouncing off walls, cars react to collisions in a life like manner.

Based solely on this very short demo, i’d say GRID is lining up to be one of the best racing games this year.