The GRID series has been CodeMasters premier racing game series birthed from the ashes of the old TOCA Race Driver games on the Playstation 2. Back in 2008 GRID made a seismic impact when it roared onto the racing game scene with outstanding visuals, a gritty and authentically immersive driving experience and a slick presentation that matched its scintillating race-day vibes. GRID was and still is one of the best racing games around. In 2019 CodeMasters decided to reboot the series instead of offering up a third mainline instalment (no Autosport doesn't count), which despite showing glimpses on promise was a failure-so let's explore why.
Let's start this probing with a few positive bright spots GRID Reboot does well. As with other CodeMasters games, it's extremely polished and very good looking, watching cars randomly barrel roll out of control is a cool sight, the Nemesis system is a pretty swell idea, and if you haven't played a GRID game before you will probably think it's a decent game. Taken on its own merits, GRID is solid and enjoyable-but if you've been playing racing games for years and years you will identify with how much of a departure GRID 2019 is from what its forebears established-and what you're left with is a very disappointing racer that is almost depressing in how it scuppers the high expectations surrounding it.
One of the major problems right off the bat is how the career menu is set out-it's just a metric dump of events-no care and consideration was made in how the career should be presented to the player, it's just a huge shambling mess of events with the disciplines labelled down the left hand side of the screen-the result feels like a huge grind where you're merely racing to get to the next event and then ultimately racing the discipline's final challenge and then moving onto the next one to do it all over again. Rote, cut and dry-GRID 2019 does very little to stand out and does a worse job of reminding you of the glory days of the previous GRID games-it might be a reboot but it's a bloody poor one and based on how the career is laid out in front of you-that's just the start of this really drab racing game.
Let's start this probing with a few positive bright spots GRID Reboot does well. As with other CodeMasters games, it's extremely polished and very good looking, watching cars randomly barrel roll out of control is a cool sight, the Nemesis system is a pretty swell idea, and if you haven't played a GRID game before you will probably think it's a decent game. Taken on its own merits, GRID is solid and enjoyable-but if you've been playing racing games for years and years you will identify with how much of a departure GRID 2019 is from what its forebears established-and what you're left with is a very disappointing racer that is almost depressing in how it scuppers the high expectations surrounding it.
One of the major problems right off the bat is how the career menu is set out-it's just a metric dump of events-no care and consideration was made in how the career should be presented to the player, it's just a huge shambling mess of events with the disciplines labelled down the left hand side of the screen-the result feels like a huge grind where you're merely racing to get to the next event and then ultimately racing the discipline's final challenge and then moving onto the next one to do it all over again. Rote, cut and dry-GRID 2019 does very little to stand out and does a worse job of reminding you of the glory days of the previous GRID games-it might be a reboot but it's a bloody poor one and based on how the career is laid out in front of you-that's just the start of this really drab racing game.
The on-track presentation suffers from being very vanilla-a far cry from the exciting races and adrenaline-infused tussles found in prior GRID games. Save for a few generic event types, the GRID reboot has nothing truly exciting to offer, not even a glitzy spectacle save for the fireworks display that features towards the end of the career-the same crescendos you get in other CodeMasters racing games like DIRT. Furthermore GRID 2019 fails to capitalise on the specialities of each discipline that features-meaning that the Fernando Alonso Invitational isn't going to make you feel like you're rubbing elbows with the two-time F1 World Champion and Spaniard legend himself, and rather it'll make you feel like you're going through familiar motions-being just another race you have to finish to make progress through the game.
Adding to the whole grind is the lack of tracks to race on. You will inevitably stumble upon deja vu when you're racing on circuits you've previously raced on in other GRID instalments. Okutama looks fantastic and radiant, but beauty looks skin-deep when you're driving in circles around it yet again with nary an ounce of interest in the scenery because you're more pressed to get the bloomin race over and done with.
Player agency often sucks in racing games because you are given little choice but to take on event after event with little incentive other than to proceed onwards and hope to best every challenge before you lose your sanity. In the latest GRID game, you will feel overstuffed by the game's onslaught of events that you will eventually grow fatigued by it. Race types are lacklustre to the extreme featuring no drift or eliminator-style events or anything remotely new-so staleness is quickly discovered and you will wish you were playing a more varied and substantial experience.
Adding to the whole grind is the lack of tracks to race on. You will inevitably stumble upon deja vu when you're racing on circuits you've previously raced on in other GRID instalments. Okutama looks fantastic and radiant, but beauty looks skin-deep when you're driving in circles around it yet again with nary an ounce of interest in the scenery because you're more pressed to get the bloomin race over and done with.
Player agency often sucks in racing games because you are given little choice but to take on event after event with little incentive other than to proceed onwards and hope to best every challenge before you lose your sanity. In the latest GRID game, you will feel overstuffed by the game's onslaught of events that you will eventually grow fatigued by it. Race types are lacklustre to the extreme featuring no drift or eliminator-style events or anything remotely new-so staleness is quickly discovered and you will wish you were playing a more varied and substantial experience.
GRID Reboot is a failure chiefly because it does the bare-minimum to its overall presentation and the results is a game that looks, sounds and plays fine but a GRID game should never be fine or just acceptable-it has to make us excited, it has to get us stoked, it's got to give us a reason to keep playing and booting up the game over and over again. Once you're done with GRID Reboot you will feel exhausted and will want to move as far away from it as possible-it's a very sad state for any CodeMasters game let alone GRID to suffer. Perhaps in the future GRID will get the revival it really deserves but the reboot certainly isn't that game.