[dropcap size=small]I[/dropcap]f you’re looking to be immersed into the world of professional race car driving then I might recommend that you play Gran Turismo 6. However, if you’re looking to kill a few hours pretending to be a race car driver without having to go out to an arcade, then Codemasters Racing’s Grid Autosport might be for you.
As you begin the game, you are given five playing options:
- CAREER (Execute challenges to move up the rankings)
- ONLINE (Race against the online community)
- CUSTOM CUP (Create your own custom challenges)
- TIME TRIAL (Beat the clock)
- SPLITSCREEN (Two-player mode)
For my first playthrough, I chose to begin a career. Upon making my selection, I was immediately thrown into a test race in which I was meant to learn the game controls. If you’ve ever played any video game where racing was involved, I’m sure you will have no problem picking up the basics. Right trigger is the accelerator, left trigger is the brake, and B is your handbrake — that’s pretty much all you need to know. By my third test race, I was practically a pro placing 15th…out of 16.
Regardless, I’d say I learned as much as I needed to to carry on.
As far as first impressions go, Grid Autosport has a very old-school arcade feeling to it, like something you’d play for hours at a Chuck E. Cheese or Nickel Nickel (remember that place? 5 cent games!). What it might lack in hyper-realistic graphics it well makes up for with its smooth 70’s style porn music soundtrack. Although there isn’t any music that plays in your car during the races, only in the menu screens. I get that it’s trying to be authentic, but at least the option to hear some tunes as I raced would have been nice.
While in career mode, the racer chooses a team to race for and then must excel in six different racing disciplines: Touring, Endurance, Open Wheel, Tuner, Street, and Grid. In order to advance, one must compete in a series of races within each individual discipline. Each race contains a different set of challenges such as placing in a specific position, or placing higher than a specific opponent. The overall objective of the races/challenges is to collect XP, necessary points that unlock new races.
As with many racing games, Grid can become somewhat repetitive. However, if you’re into racing games, there might be enough to do within this game to keep you coming back for more. There are countless customization options for your cars which will help improve your its racing abilities over time, and there are plenty of cars to do it with, from the Ford Focus ST all the way up to the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Super Sport. Aside from the cars, I also have to commend the attention to detail throughout this game. Everything moves as it should: the dirt, the dust, the parts flying off of the cars as they get damaged, even the radio antenna on your car moves along as you drive.
If you’re lucky enough to have a simple name (thankfully John made the cut), you can have your in-game teammate refer to you by name as you race. I must admit, there is something very encouraging about hearing the game say: “Come on John, you need to push a little harder around this next turn, let’s try to take some places.” Did it help my racing skills? No, but the detail is still cool. There is also a special “flashback” feature that works by pressing Y during a race. Flashbacks allow the racer to reverse time in the game in order to redo a section of the race that they might have originally made a mistake on. This is usually limited to a few times per race, but it’s definitely a handy feature for those of us that might make a wrong turn here and there.
I was lucky enough to get my hands on the Limited Black Edition of the game which included a handful of add-ons, such as:
- The Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Coupé Black Series
- Black Edition white Ravenwest liveries
- 20 Black Edition online livery patterns
- 10 New premium sponsors with objectives
This is the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Coupé Black Series… sexy.
I didn’t try out any of the other modes this time around, but one can assume that they would all be very similar to the overall career mode. The differentiator of online mode being that it’s a race against other users around the world and is connected to RaceNet which allows users to participate in weekly challenges, and the splitscreen mode being a race against a friend.
Overall I’d say that Grid Autosport kept my interest as much as a racing game can. It has decent enough graphics, plenty of racing styles and car types, and many customization/personalization options. I guess if I had one criticism it’s that there is no real storyline to the game, you’re pretty much just racing for the sake of climbing the ranks. Not that that’s really a terrible thing though because sometimes that’s all I want, and for those times I’ll gladly pull out my copy of Grid and shut my brain off for a few hours.
Grid Autosport is available now for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC.
