Finally, I get to play the game I most wanted to play. The opportunity to confront my own nostalgia once again and see if a game I love holds up to my memories. I've done this before, and it has turned out rather poorly almost every time. I am pleased to report that this is not the case for GRID.
Moment one, the interface the game presents to you fully sets the tone for the rest of the game. Its visual style, audio style, and musical style all perfectly encapsulate the atmosphere of the rest of the game, and being a 3D menu, it's a joy to look at. Then it sends you to the main menu instead of dropping you straight into a race like so many other games, which I hugely appreciate since it allows me to actually set up my controls before seeing a car on screen. Press the button to start the game, then it drops you straight in, as all games should.
The first race has you in a gray Viper on the streets of San Francisco, a fast car on a technical track, but not too fast or too technical. The game wants you to feel afraid, like you're barely in control, which is further aided by the fact that there are several jumps on this track. One lap, and you're done. It doesn't matter where you finished, you just needed to finish for the game to open up to you. After that, you're introduced to your garage - which is actually the main menu - and the ability to race for other teams, which you need to do so you can make enough money to restore a classic Mustang that's been set up for you. These offers from other teams immediately demonstrate the variety on offer in this game and give you a chance to get a feel for some new things, but before too long, you've made your money, you've got your Mustang, and now you have your own team with your own livery and sponsors.
Once you have your team, you gain access to the real game. You see all the different leagues - USA, Europe, and Japan - open up for you, and your Mustang qualifies for one event in each. The paychecks for these events are much higher than you got before, allowing you to quite quickly build up a large garage and be able to race in more and more event types. Win enough races in a league, you unlock the next level of that league. Win all the races in a league...
In one of these leagues, you are introduced early to Ravenwest. The team behind that sleek gray livery on the Viper you got to drive in the beginning of the game, the livery that looks so much more imposing than any other team. Over the radio, unlike every other race, you are told with a reluctant, even slightly fearful delivery to simply do your best, because that's all you can do against them. They're world class. Sure enough, they are far more difficult than any other opponents you've faced, entirely in a league of their own. When a racing game creates difficulty by making one or two opponents way faster than the rest, it usually sucks, but when you frame that gap as an actual in-universe skill gap, it becomes compelling. If you win all the races in a league, you unlock a one-on-one race against a member of this team, and the reward for winning is astronomically high compared to any other event. They have been firmly established as the rivals to beat, their cars stand out compared to any other in the game, they are ever-present from start to finish, and they make you work to win. But of course, they never speak, they have no faces, the only personality you can assign to them is what you see on track. This is why I call them iconic. If you've played this game, particularly if you played it when you were young and less than a perfect driver, you remember the fear of facing the most difficult opponents in the game and how amazing it felt every time you managed to beat them. You remember Ravenwest as an icon of glory. A name that stands above all the rest. Maybe you even remember them as something above you, despite being second place by the time you finished. I know I did, I projected a lot of admiration onto that faceless team when I was young.
This is all excellent presentation, but that's not the end of it. Every single opponent is a consistently reoccurring name, and they're all members of their own teams, many of them based on real teams, and each with its own unique and good looking livery. They all have their own specialties, many of them have identifiable driving styles, and they all exist on the same leaderboards as you, always reminding you that they exist during your quest to reach the top. Not only that, but you also have the ability to hire all of them to drive for you instead. Every name on the leaderboard can be hired if you have the money they want and the reputation they expect, and they all have different skill sets. In races, when someone spins out or crashes, you're also very likely to hear their names spoken verbally to you, either over the radio or by an announcer. It may not be much, but combined with the rest of the game's presentation and atmosphere, it really ties the bow on top of the immersive package. And that's before considering the great soundtrack, or how tense races begin to feel whenever the in-race music kicks in, or the fact that the crowd noise actually makes sense and only comes from places where there are crowds. Also, mercifully, there are no air horns in the crowd here.
But for me, the best part of the presentation by a humongous margin is the fact that this is a racing game about racing. That's all. Just racing. Motorsport is the draw, motorsport is the cool factor, motorsport is the thing that you're playing for, and motorsport is the only thing you're getting. No clout chasing, no media breaks, no interviews, no public image, no fans, no corporate interest, nothing. Just. Racing. And it's enough! GRID isn't just a driving game to pick up and put down whenever and not think about, it's a genuinely compelling single player experience, without adding any extra maddening nonsense, because surprise surprise, racing is cool, and it doesn't need to be juiced up with gimmicks to be compelling. The only thing close to a gimmick here is the money, because you have to keep earning more and the woman in the menu always talks about how much money you're making, but I don't mind that, because it's your money for your team that you earn by winning races, there is no extra nonsense putting undue focus on the money.
I haven't even talked about the gameplay yet, and we've already identified the biggest problem with every GRID game that came after this one. This is what made us love GRID. Nobody was playing GRID because they wanted to feel like they're famous, or to pretend they're playing with the rich kids, we all played GRID because we enjoyed the feeling of being an up-and-coming independent racing driver, and that's all. No nonsense, it's a compelling single player experience that delivers the independent racing driver fantasy, and nothing else. This is the identity that the later games abandoned. This is the identity that GRID 2 threw away so it could poison the franchise with all the gimmicks that GRID was better off without.
So, the gameplay then. The pattern continues, because not only does this game present itself completely differently from the rest of the franchise, it also feels completely different. Cars are still prone to oversteer and they feel a bit floaty, yes, but the cars also all have weight to them, and in spite of the slipperiness, tons more grip than any of the later games. The handling here is tuned specifically for thrills, because the fast and loose handling combined with high grip, high slip angles, and weighty cars, makes for races where you feel like you're on the edge of control all the time. It's one of the most mechanically satisfying handling models in any pseudo-realistic racing game I've ever played. Sure, hardcore simulators will be more satisfying in their own way, and wild arcade racers where the vehicles may not even have wheels and travel at 500 miles an hour will definitely be more satisfying in the fast fun factor, but GRID, I think, is the best combination of those two extremes. The cars still handle like cars and come with all the same challenges, but with just enough silliness on top to keep you on your toes and smiling all the time, while also being simple enough to avoid being taken seriously and taking away from the pure fun of it. Only adding to that fun factor is that every car has its own unique driving feel, so picking your favorites is more than just a cosmetic choice. Some people, both past and present, complain that the car selection is a bit sparse for this game, but considering how good they all feel and the fact that they're all actually unique unlike so many other games, particularly from this time, I can't accept that criticism.
There is only one caveat to the handling model. Don't turn the assists off. It doesn't make the game more challenging, driving without assists in GRID will not make you faster, and it will not make you look cooler or feel better about yourself. Turning the assists off makes the game feel downright awful. The options shouldn't even exist, if you ask me. My first reflex in most racing games is to turn off all assists, because usually I prefer that, but all it did here was spoil my first few races, and had me thinking that something was deeply wrong.
The track variety in GRID is also excellent, having a lot more actual race circuits than the sequel, better race circuits than the sequel, vastly more variety within those circuits than the sequel, and vastly more interesting street circuits than the sequel due to the fact that each one is actually hand crafted and has extremely distinct character to differentiate them from each other instead of being built out of generic blocks in a sea of boring architecture. Who would have guessed that a racing game about racing would focus more on, you know, good race tracks? One of the circuits happens to be Circuit de la Sarthe, which GRID will make you very familiar with as you are given the opportunity to compete in a condensed, 12 minute version of the 24 Hours of Le Mans at the end of each season, complete with a day-night-day cycle on fast forward and a wonderfully over the top piece of music that starts playing near the end of the race and builds tension until finally reaching the crescendo when the race ends, which is great fun... but it does happen a lot, so I'm happy the option to skip that race is also available.
The fact that a 24 hour race is condensed down to 12 minutes should also make abundantly clear just how fast paced this game is. Aside from that admittedly frequent event, it is very rare to have a race last more than four minutes in GRID. Each event in a league consists of multiple rounds, so the very short races keep things quick and varied, never giving you the chance to get bored as you are continuously rapidly shuffled across regions and car types. The only way to stagnate is to specifically seek out the same race types over and over again. A few event types do last a bit longer than others due to having more rounds, like the knockout tournament events, but to compensate, each round is shorter, so the total event time is only slightly longer if that. And even with all of that said, you can still choose to quit at any time in the middle of an event, then resume later. The whole game is designed to keep things moving with fast action at all times, always keeping the fun factor maximized while delivering the racing fantasy in an effective way, while also truly respecting your time and allowing you to put it down whenever you want without consequence. You bought the game, and the game is here simply to please you, not to monopolize your attention. Refreshing.
There are more positives I could talk about, but I don't think they're particularly important, and I could probably go into more depth about a lot of what I said, but I believe my point is made. The game is great, unquestionably the best in the franchise. But that's not to say it is without its flaws. There are a lot of little things that could have been better, small details that could have added more, nitpicks here and there, but I'm not going to bother talking about any of those because none of them are important either, they didn't detract from my experience at all. Only two major flaws did, so that's all you get.
Obviously this game has an intense yellow filter, because of course it would, every game from this time did that. I hate it... but not nearly as much as I thought I would. Yellow filters make games look worse and cause environments to blend together into a bland indistinguishable mess, sure... but in GRID, they didn't just put on a gross filter, they leaned all the way into it. The filter in this game is actually part of its style, and it's treated as such, so all of the different environments still manage to stand out from one another despite being forced to share such similar colors, which I think is a testament to excellent design work on the tracks themselves. It would still absolutely look better without the filter, all games do, but I can live with this one considering how much work went into making this game work with it.
The biggest problem I have with GRID in the present day is definitely the difficulty. This game is very, very easy. Even against Ravenwest, I had pretty much no trouble. Growing up and getting good at things took a little bit of fun away. Now, I am definitely pretty good at racing games, but I'm nowhere near pro level, and I struggle to imagine my skill level being considered much more than "decently above average" at the best of times. My skill level is one shared by many, many people, quite the sizable audience I'd like to think, and the hardest difficulty in GRID is nowhere near enough to challenge it. I do appreciate the availability of easier options, and in this case, the lowest difficulty likely makes this game accessible to even the most casual of racing fans... but I wish there were more options higher up. It's a lot of fun to simply play the game thanks to how mechanically satisfying it is, sure, but I must admit that I sometimes miss the feeling of actually racing in a racing game. This complaint probably sounds like a humble brag to someone, and to that person I say play the game and see for yourself.
And that's the conclusion. Play this game. I don't care whether or not you've played GRID in the past, I'm telling you to play it now. Pick it up, download it by any means necessary, do whatever it takes to get this game and play it. Not only do I wish for more people to experience this game and see what a good, well crafted, well thought out, very well presented racing game - not a sim, a game - should be like, or because I want to prove that a racing game doesn't need annoying gimmicks to be compelling... I just think it's a good game and you deserve to have fun with it.
(from my web zone: https://kerosyn.link/i-played-every-codemasters-racing-game-to-prove-a-point/#grid)
Moment one, the interface the game presents to you fully sets the tone for the rest of the game. Its visual style, audio style, and musical style all perfectly encapsulate the atmosphere of the rest of the game, and being a 3D menu, it's a joy to look at. Then it sends you to the main menu instead of dropping you straight into a race like so many other games, which I hugely appreciate since it allows me to actually set up my controls before seeing a car on screen. Press the button to start the game, then it drops you straight in, as all games should.
The first race has you in a gray Viper on the streets of San Francisco, a fast car on a technical track, but not too fast or too technical. The game wants you to feel afraid, like you're barely in control, which is further aided by the fact that there are several jumps on this track. One lap, and you're done. It doesn't matter where you finished, you just needed to finish for the game to open up to you. After that, you're introduced to your garage - which is actually the main menu - and the ability to race for other teams, which you need to do so you can make enough money to restore a classic Mustang that's been set up for you. These offers from other teams immediately demonstrate the variety on offer in this game and give you a chance to get a feel for some new things, but before too long, you've made your money, you've got your Mustang, and now you have your own team with your own livery and sponsors.
Once you have your team, you gain access to the real game. You see all the different leagues - USA, Europe, and Japan - open up for you, and your Mustang qualifies for one event in each. The paychecks for these events are much higher than you got before, allowing you to quite quickly build up a large garage and be able to race in more and more event types. Win enough races in a league, you unlock the next level of that league. Win all the races in a league...
In one of these leagues, you are introduced early to Ravenwest. The team behind that sleek gray livery on the Viper you got to drive in the beginning of the game, the livery that looks so much more imposing than any other team. Over the radio, unlike every other race, you are told with a reluctant, even slightly fearful delivery to simply do your best, because that's all you can do against them. They're world class. Sure enough, they are far more difficult than any other opponents you've faced, entirely in a league of their own. When a racing game creates difficulty by making one or two opponents way faster than the rest, it usually sucks, but when you frame that gap as an actual in-universe skill gap, it becomes compelling. If you win all the races in a league, you unlock a one-on-one race against a member of this team, and the reward for winning is astronomically high compared to any other event. They have been firmly established as the rivals to beat, their cars stand out compared to any other in the game, they are ever-present from start to finish, and they make you work to win. But of course, they never speak, they have no faces, the only personality you can assign to them is what you see on track. This is why I call them iconic. If you've played this game, particularly if you played it when you were young and less than a perfect driver, you remember the fear of facing the most difficult opponents in the game and how amazing it felt every time you managed to beat them. You remember Ravenwest as an icon of glory. A name that stands above all the rest. Maybe you even remember them as something above you, despite being second place by the time you finished. I know I did, I projected a lot of admiration onto that faceless team when I was young.
This is all excellent presentation, but that's not the end of it. Every single opponent is a consistently reoccurring name, and they're all members of their own teams, many of them based on real teams, and each with its own unique and good looking livery. They all have their own specialties, many of them have identifiable driving styles, and they all exist on the same leaderboards as you, always reminding you that they exist during your quest to reach the top. Not only that, but you also have the ability to hire all of them to drive for you instead. Every name on the leaderboard can be hired if you have the money they want and the reputation they expect, and they all have different skill sets. In races, when someone spins out or crashes, you're also very likely to hear their names spoken verbally to you, either over the radio or by an announcer. It may not be much, but combined with the rest of the game's presentation and atmosphere, it really ties the bow on top of the immersive package. And that's before considering the great soundtrack, or how tense races begin to feel whenever the in-race music kicks in, or the fact that the crowd noise actually makes sense and only comes from places where there are crowds. Also, mercifully, there are no air horns in the crowd here.
But for me, the best part of the presentation by a humongous margin is the fact that this is a racing game about racing. That's all. Just racing. Motorsport is the draw, motorsport is the cool factor, motorsport is the thing that you're playing for, and motorsport is the only thing you're getting. No clout chasing, no media breaks, no interviews, no public image, no fans, no corporate interest, nothing. Just. Racing. And it's enough! GRID isn't just a driving game to pick up and put down whenever and not think about, it's a genuinely compelling single player experience, without adding any extra maddening nonsense, because surprise surprise, racing is cool, and it doesn't need to be juiced up with gimmicks to be compelling. The only thing close to a gimmick here is the money, because you have to keep earning more and the woman in the menu always talks about how much money you're making, but I don't mind that, because it's your money for your team that you earn by winning races, there is no extra nonsense putting undue focus on the money.
I haven't even talked about the gameplay yet, and we've already identified the biggest problem with every GRID game that came after this one. This is what made us love GRID. Nobody was playing GRID because they wanted to feel like they're famous, or to pretend they're playing with the rich kids, we all played GRID because we enjoyed the feeling of being an up-and-coming independent racing driver, and that's all. No nonsense, it's a compelling single player experience that delivers the independent racing driver fantasy, and nothing else. This is the identity that the later games abandoned. This is the identity that GRID 2 threw away so it could poison the franchise with all the gimmicks that GRID was better off without.
So, the gameplay then. The pattern continues, because not only does this game present itself completely differently from the rest of the franchise, it also feels completely different. Cars are still prone to oversteer and they feel a bit floaty, yes, but the cars also all have weight to them, and in spite of the slipperiness, tons more grip than any of the later games. The handling here is tuned specifically for thrills, because the fast and loose handling combined with high grip, high slip angles, and weighty cars, makes for races where you feel like you're on the edge of control all the time. It's one of the most mechanically satisfying handling models in any pseudo-realistic racing game I've ever played. Sure, hardcore simulators will be more satisfying in their own way, and wild arcade racers where the vehicles may not even have wheels and travel at 500 miles an hour will definitely be more satisfying in the fast fun factor, but GRID, I think, is the best combination of those two extremes. The cars still handle like cars and come with all the same challenges, but with just enough silliness on top to keep you on your toes and smiling all the time, while also being simple enough to avoid being taken seriously and taking away from the pure fun of it. Only adding to that fun factor is that every car has its own unique driving feel, so picking your favorites is more than just a cosmetic choice. Some people, both past and present, complain that the car selection is a bit sparse for this game, but considering how good they all feel and the fact that they're all actually unique unlike so many other games, particularly from this time, I can't accept that criticism.
There is only one caveat to the handling model. Don't turn the assists off. It doesn't make the game more challenging, driving without assists in GRID will not make you faster, and it will not make you look cooler or feel better about yourself. Turning the assists off makes the game feel downright awful. The options shouldn't even exist, if you ask me. My first reflex in most racing games is to turn off all assists, because usually I prefer that, but all it did here was spoil my first few races, and had me thinking that something was deeply wrong.
The track variety in GRID is also excellent, having a lot more actual race circuits than the sequel, better race circuits than the sequel, vastly more variety within those circuits than the sequel, and vastly more interesting street circuits than the sequel due to the fact that each one is actually hand crafted and has extremely distinct character to differentiate them from each other instead of being built out of generic blocks in a sea of boring architecture. Who would have guessed that a racing game about racing would focus more on, you know, good race tracks? One of the circuits happens to be Circuit de la Sarthe, which GRID will make you very familiar with as you are given the opportunity to compete in a condensed, 12 minute version of the 24 Hours of Le Mans at the end of each season, complete with a day-night-day cycle on fast forward and a wonderfully over the top piece of music that starts playing near the end of the race and builds tension until finally reaching the crescendo when the race ends, which is great fun... but it does happen a lot, so I'm happy the option to skip that race is also available.
The fact that a 24 hour race is condensed down to 12 minutes should also make abundantly clear just how fast paced this game is. Aside from that admittedly frequent event, it is very rare to have a race last more than four minutes in GRID. Each event in a league consists of multiple rounds, so the very short races keep things quick and varied, never giving you the chance to get bored as you are continuously rapidly shuffled across regions and car types. The only way to stagnate is to specifically seek out the same race types over and over again. A few event types do last a bit longer than others due to having more rounds, like the knockout tournament events, but to compensate, each round is shorter, so the total event time is only slightly longer if that. And even with all of that said, you can still choose to quit at any time in the middle of an event, then resume later. The whole game is designed to keep things moving with fast action at all times, always keeping the fun factor maximized while delivering the racing fantasy in an effective way, while also truly respecting your time and allowing you to put it down whenever you want without consequence. You bought the game, and the game is here simply to please you, not to monopolize your attention. Refreshing.
There are more positives I could talk about, but I don't think they're particularly important, and I could probably go into more depth about a lot of what I said, but I believe my point is made. The game is great, unquestionably the best in the franchise. But that's not to say it is without its flaws. There are a lot of little things that could have been better, small details that could have added more, nitpicks here and there, but I'm not going to bother talking about any of those because none of them are important either, they didn't detract from my experience at all. Only two major flaws did, so that's all you get.
Obviously this game has an intense yellow filter, because of course it would, every game from this time did that. I hate it... but not nearly as much as I thought I would. Yellow filters make games look worse and cause environments to blend together into a bland indistinguishable mess, sure... but in GRID, they didn't just put on a gross filter, they leaned all the way into it. The filter in this game is actually part of its style, and it's treated as such, so all of the different environments still manage to stand out from one another despite being forced to share such similar colors, which I think is a testament to excellent design work on the tracks themselves. It would still absolutely look better without the filter, all games do, but I can live with this one considering how much work went into making this game work with it.
The biggest problem I have with GRID in the present day is definitely the difficulty. This game is very, very easy. Even against Ravenwest, I had pretty much no trouble. Growing up and getting good at things took a little bit of fun away. Now, I am definitely pretty good at racing games, but I'm nowhere near pro level, and I struggle to imagine my skill level being considered much more than "decently above average" at the best of times. My skill level is one shared by many, many people, quite the sizable audience I'd like to think, and the hardest difficulty in GRID is nowhere near enough to challenge it. I do appreciate the availability of easier options, and in this case, the lowest difficulty likely makes this game accessible to even the most casual of racing fans... but I wish there were more options higher up. It's a lot of fun to simply play the game thanks to how mechanically satisfying it is, sure, but I must admit that I sometimes miss the feeling of actually racing in a racing game. This complaint probably sounds like a humble brag to someone, and to that person I say play the game and see for yourself.
And that's the conclusion. Play this game. I don't care whether or not you've played GRID in the past, I'm telling you to play it now. Pick it up, download it by any means necessary, do whatever it takes to get this game and play it. Not only do I wish for more people to experience this game and see what a good, well crafted, well thought out, very well presented racing game - not a sim, a game - should be like, or because I want to prove that a racing game doesn't need annoying gimmicks to be compelling... I just think it's a good game and you deserve to have fun with it.
(from my web zone: https://kerosyn.link/i-played-every-codemasters-racing-game-to-prove-a-point/#grid)