Then GRID drops back to more manageable touring cars, before gradually escalating up again to heavenly-horsepower brutes. While there’s no need to win these earliest races - in fact, it’s possible to hack through much of the game with low placings - they may daunt the less practised driver. For a genre increasingly in danger of painting itself into the same preaching-only-to-the-converted corner as flight sims have, it’s odd that the game completely overlooks even basic newbie assistance. Moreover, in recent interviews, GRID’s developers have worried aloud about this problem.
The drift races, for instance, which are a dramatically different discipline to anything else in the game (and to most other racing games), sport only this advice: “use the handbrake.” Right. Thanks. If we’re honest, we really don’t enjoy the crazy wobbles and slides of drift racing at the best of times, and GRID’s particularly punitive take on them only reinforces that. Fortunately, the campaign’s designed in such a way that you can effectively bypass a discipline you don’t dig. It’s split into Project Gothamy American street races, GTRy European track races and Need For Speedy Japanese touge and drift, and for the most part you can pursue just one or two while neglecting the others. GRID’s big on choices - it understands that you’ve bought it to entertain yourself, not to slavishly follow someone else’s arbitrary rules.
For all its barriers to entry, if and when you’ve got a handle on the handling, you’ll spot the cheerful liberties GRID takes with reality. A spill onto the gravel or grass would end the race in other games, but often enough you’ll power through adverse terrain or neatly cut a should-be-fatal corner. A reasonably vicious damage system means you can’t survive too many scrapes without your steering breaking or the radiator overheating, but on the other hand it’s eminently possible to draw ahead of the pack by deliberately causing a 12-car pile up on a sharp corner. Personally, we love this - our preferred racing games are those that throw in a little bit of fantasy to keep things thrilling, not just cheerless scientific recreation. Baby bear’s porridge is just right.
Yet, though it’s hardly Burnout, hardcore simheads won’t be impressed that you can grind your side along a wall at 150mph and carry on regardless. Similarly, they won’t like the fact that even the lowest-end cars seem to travel at the same impossible speeds as $2m uber-vehicles - this is a hyper-fast game throughout. This is slightly to GRID’s detriment with the super- and open-wheel cars, in that they don’t seem to be traveling much faster than the touring cars and the like, though a cursory glance at the speedo reveals they most certainly are. You’ll overshoot a corner massively and wonder why - it felt like you were only doing about 40mph. Actually you were doing 110, so no wonder. It’s one of those vertical learning curve moments at first, but you’ll adapt without too much practice.
There’s also discreet rubber-banding at play - you’ll never leave the pack far behind, but equally, when you’re lagging somewhat, you’ll occasionally find yourself granted exhilarating but inexplicable bonus acceleration come a long straight. In fact, watch the replays closely and you’ll spot AI racers quietly cheating all over the shop. A slight nudge from a rival car will often send you into a disorientating spin-out and a probable end to your race (unless you have an instant replay in the bank - more on that in a second). They, though, will recover from all but the most deadly collisions within milliseconds, making unearthly horizontal glides back onto the track without even a whiff of the pinballing you’d suffer in the rare event you did manage to steer back on course.
