A rewind system is present should you wish to hit ctrl-z on a fluffed corner, however Grid’s method of giving you just five rewinds per race encourages you to drive cleaner in the first place. We like that.
Are there any downsides to Grid?
If you’re a tinkerer, then Grid might frustrate. Customising your car isn’t really a thing in Grid, whether it’s cosmetic changes to bodykits and wheels, or mechanical upgrades to your engine, suspension or driveline.
It’s obviously a deliberate effort to limit complexity and also keep every car on a fairly even pegging with their class competitors, but we’d like more than just basic adjustments to suspension, gearing and vehicle livery.
Coupled with the fairly limited selection of cars within each vehicle class, it feels as though that Grid’s vehicular menu isn’t really diverse enough to maintain long-term interest – especially as you simply aren’t allowed to put cars from one category up against cars from another. A TCR-versus-Super Modified battle would be entertaining, we think, but you just can’t do it.
There’s only a handful of tracks too, and the race roster can start to feel mighty repetitive real quick. Grid attempts to inject some variety by mixing things up with reverse configurations and short/long versions of the same track, but that just means it takes you forever to actually come to grips with a single circuit.
Codemasters promises more cars and tracks in DLC and running updates, but right now it’s a bit sparse in there.
Graphics aren’t what we’d call cutting-edge, at least not on the Xbox One S version we tested. Texture quality and vehicle model detail levels are generally on the low side, and dynamic shadows and other lighting effects aren’t employed to any great extent.
That said, the game looks pretty cool at night or at dusk, with rich colours and plenty of environmental animations (such as fireworks in Shanghai, or crashing waves on the Havana seafront) to distract you from your racing line. All cars also get fairly detailed in-car views as well, something that isn’t common in the sub-simulator racing game category, and cars accumulate scratches, road grime and paint chips over time though, which is a cool detail.
There’s no real scope to fine-tune the feel of a gaming wheel, neither for force feedback levels or rotation limits or wheel sensitivity. Once again, if you came to Grid expecting a high degree of customisability and fidelity, you’re going to be disappointed.
Less forgivable is the poor multiplayer experience. We tried multiple times to join a multiplayer game, but the server browser never showed us any open matches that we could hop into and the quick match option gave us nothing either.
F1 and esports: what’s next?
Even starting our own public match and keeping it active for a full half-hour didn’t see any takers. We’re not sure if that’s just an issue with Australian local servers, but for now it seems that Grid’s multiplayer arena is full of tumbleweeds and little else.
Verdict
One thing is abundantly clear – despite dwelling in the weird no-man’s land between ‘arcade fun’ and ‘gritty sim realism’, Codemasters’ Grid delivers an exceptional pick-up-and-play racing experience. It’s fun, it’s easy to jump in and get going, and it’s accessible – getting the best out of it doesn’t require heaps of fiddling in menus and pre-race planning, or heaps of practice.
However, at times it can come across as a bit of a hollow experience. The menu music is elevator-grade, the playlist of tracks is too small, the performance differences between cars are too subtle (though that does ensure close competition) and there’s no real sense that you’re ascending up through the tiers as you go through the career mode.
With the limited tracks on hand, it eventually starts to feel like Groundhog Day. After a while our willingness to keep playing just evaporated, as we felt we’d “seen it all”. Plus, given that the car lineup is largely centered around real-world racecars there’s a confusing over-reliance on fictional street circuits.
That may change over time, though. Codemasters says there will be additional content coming – and they’ve already added the Red Bull Ring, the Ferrari FXX, Aston Martin Vulcan AMR Pro, Brabham BT62, and Pagani Zonda Revolución, and we hope that means a bevy of cars and tracks to inject some more longevity into what is otherwise a super fun and reasonably challenging racing game.