Grid 2 Review
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Rubbin' is racin'
It’s been five long years since Race Driver: Grid. With the Dirt series and the F1 license sucking all the oxygen out of Codemasters HQ ever since, until recently it seemed the fire for a follow-up had gone out. It would’ve been a shame, considering you can trace the lineage of the series back to 1997’s TOCA Touring Car Championship. Fortunately, Codemasters seems to agree, unleashing Grid 2 from the paddock just in time for the final few laps of this generation.
Grid 2 is a confident, aggressive, good-looking racer that boasts a level of focus last year’s Dirt: Showdown didn’t have. It’s well executed and easily the measure of the award-winning original in all but a couple of areas. However, missteps with how it approaches its track content will harm its long-term appeal, and further shedding of its sim-based roots will continue to alienate fans of the racing games Codemasters made back in the late ’90s and early 2000s.
Grid 2’s handling has a foot on each side of the fence; grippy, with a good sense of weight – particularly under heavy braking – but honed to emphasise drifting. It’s a one-size-fits-all model, with no driving aids, but it still clings to one or two of its sim-like characteristics. While the handling errs towards the arcade end of the spectrum, the tight courses and mechanical damage still conspire to keep players thinking two corners ahead at all times. Flashback returns to help you undo a nasty write-off or a blown tyre, but it’s a limited-use device.
Like Grid before it, Grid 2 takes a few dozen recognisable cars, decks them out in fake racing liveries, and sets them loose against one another across the world. The difference here is that there’s somewhat of a story thread holding it all together. It’s territory Codemasters has dabbled in before, but never this credibly.
For Grid 2, Codemasters has invented a fictional global racing league: “World Series Racing” (WSR). It’s the brainchild of a cashed-up petrol head who wants to take WSR from grassroots club level to a world-dominating motorsport, and you are his first star. You’ll need to race in a variety of disciplines against other racing clubs across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia to attract them, and their fans, to the WSR for this to happen.
WSR is a great device because it’s really nothing more than an explanation that services the gameplay. All you get is a little clip once or twice a season giving you some context into your own surging fanbase, and an ESPN-branded glimpse into the rise and rise of WSR, but it’s just enough to tie all the racing you’re doing together and give you a sense of momentum through the career mode you wouldn’t get from a simple progress bar. It’s no substitute for the days Codemasters racing games were filled with real-world racing competitions from all over the globe, but overall there is a believable authenticity to the otherwise fake WSR that is absent in most of the racers that opt for fictional leagues over proper ones, and Grid 2 benefits noticeably.
The WSR features a host of different racing disciplines. Point-to-point blasts across the countryside are thrilling, and Codemasters’ rally heritage is clear in them. The traditional track racing on purpose-built circuits is arguably where Grid 2 shines brightest; it’d be quite nice if there were more of it. Touge and drifting also feature, although the latter requires a deft touch to have much fun. Tweaks to the rulesets also allow for fairly standard elimination-based contests, checkpoint races, and time attacks. It’s LiveRoutes, where the corners and paths change dynamically as you race around a city, that feel like the new races Grid 2 is betting the farm on but in practice they’re a little too chaotic as the route changes on-the-fly and sudden hairpins are introduced violently to your face.
You’ll also be hit with a variety of bespoke challenges as each series progresses, like timed laps to win new cars, endurance challenges (which, at around only five or six minutes, honestly stretch the meaning of 'endurance' somewhat) and overtaking challenges. The overtaking challenges are actually quite addictive; each lumbering 4X4 you pass adds to a multiplier that resets the second you nudge one, graze a wall, or go off track. They’re good fun.
You can create your own races by toggling all the available locations and race settings but there’s a pretty stingy lap limit which dulls the appeal. It’s strange you can't make lengthier races.
What’s more strange, however, is the shift away from tuning options. Codemasters has moved the focus on performance upgrades to a segregated multiplayer mode. Multiplayer in Grid 2 has its own progression system and its own garage, and you can’t share cars between the two. The multiplayer racing itself is serviceable enough, and it’s certainly lively, but I don’t think the game has enough truly unique courses to keep people playing indefinitely.
In fact, Grid 2's course design in general commits the same sin as the last few years of Codemasters racers: the road tracks start to blend into one another thanks to too many repeated segments, and there probably aren’t enough real circuits to stop most people from getting itchy feet and moving on. By the time the WSR enters its fourth and fifth seasons, the fanfare of evening prime time does little to disguise the fact you’re still racing on the same tracks and track segments as before. Licensing hurdles aside, it’s odd Grid 2 doesn’t feature more tracks considering all the complete F1 tracks Codemasters would have tucked away on a server somewhere.
A hankering for some of the courses currently being bogarted by Codemasters' F1 series aside, there’s a lot to like about how Grid 2 looks. The cars aren’t quite on the same rung as those of genre peers like Forza 4, or Gran Turismo 5’s premium models, but they are crisp and well-detailed. Bodies gleam and light glints off polished fenders. While some of the locations are a little drab (the overcast Hong Kong ones are some of the worst offenders) they’re certainly never less than competent.
However, it’s the little flourishes that help most. Leaves whipped up by the wind that drift across the track. The razor-sharp reflections on your bonnet as you pierce through Parisian streets. The fireworks that light up the sky during night races. A squirrel darting across a rural street. (You can’t hit it, incidentally.) It’s worth noting, however, that the much-discussed absence of an interior view means Grid 2 has no equally detail-lavished interiors to showcase. Codemasters maintains only five per cent of players tend to use the view. It’s my preference, but bonnet-cam is a sufficient compromise.
Finally, Codemasters has done an exceptional job with the audio. There’s a pleasing rawness to the engines, and the sound of the tyres thumping across different surfaces doesn’t go unnoticed. The music that kicks in during pivotal moments is also a nice touch. Likewise the menus are elegant, and the smattering of video vignettes are well produced.
The Verdict
Last year’s Dirt Showdown never really knew what it was. Grid 2 does. Its continued shift away from its sim pedigree will still disappoint those of us who fondly recall the Race Driver games of old, but it still a great, modern package. A well-curated car list, a great sense of speed, and a well-thought out career mode combine in a racer that is a lot of fun to play through.
8.0
Great
A well-curated car list, a great sense of speed, and a clever career mode combine in a fun, confident racer.