I like to think of myself as a racing game fan, its one of my favourite genres and I have played a fair few and like to get properly invested into them. Now whilst names like Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo fanny about with micro-transactions, hyper realism, and doing their best to alienate their established fanbase; there is still a racing developer that likes to provide their fans with exactly what they want even if it means taking a few risks here and there, that developer is Codemasters.
Now the original GRID managed to drive itself into my heart and provide me with one of the most unique and thrilling racing experiences I have ever had with its mix of simulation structure but arcade handling physics, a game that was simply about the pure thrill of burning some rubber on the tarmac. The 2nd iteration, GRID 2 was by no means a bad game but it failed to live up to the standards of the original due to a focus on street racing and drifty car physics. Now on its third entry, GRID Autosport serves as a love letter to fans of both games by taking the best tracks & cars from both and throwing in a physics engine that manages to cater for lovers of either previous titles physics and newcomers. GRID Autosport is what could be best described as a 'best of' title, though it has a lot of new gameplay additions and different ways to play so I'm going to break it down as best I can.
The biggest change to Autosport over the previous games is that it is split into five distinct gameplay styles or 'disciplines'. These are Touring, Endurance, Open Wheel, Tuner, and Street. Each one plays differently to another and you'll be hard pressed to find one that doesn't cater to your personal tastes. I'll go more into depth about these in a bit so first I'll move onto major overall gameplay changes. Firstly, the way teams work have changed. In the last two games you set up your own racing team and manage it alongside racing for them, in Autosport this is no longer the case as instead you choose a contract at the beginning of the season and race for that team. Big name companies like Intel, Monster Energy, and Razer are among the roster as well as the infamous fictitious Ravenwest team.
You are often given the choice of two or three teams with each one varying in objectives to complete, cars provided for races, and team mate ability, as well as how much you will get paid to race for them. Do well and higher paying teams will become interested in you and you can begin to climb the ranks to join the folks at Ravenwest themselves. Difficulty is extremely customisable, ranging from standard A.I difficulty down to whether damage is simply cosmetic or gradually destroys your car, you can tweak how many flashbacks you can have and multiply the amount of laps a race normally has.
Cars can also be slightly tuned by making brakes harder or softer, or allowing wheels to have a more open turning or a narrower closed one and various other small tweaks that ultimately make your car more agile or more stable. Cockpit view also makes a return though its not as good as you would hope it is, being perhaps one of the worst cockpit cameras in a racing game thanks to an excessive use of blur and general lack of detail.
Now the original GRID managed to drive itself into my heart and provide me with one of the most unique and thrilling racing experiences I have ever had with its mix of simulation structure but arcade handling physics, a game that was simply about the pure thrill of burning some rubber on the tarmac. The 2nd iteration, GRID 2 was by no means a bad game but it failed to live up to the standards of the original due to a focus on street racing and drifty car physics. Now on its third entry, GRID Autosport serves as a love letter to fans of both games by taking the best tracks & cars from both and throwing in a physics engine that manages to cater for lovers of either previous titles physics and newcomers. GRID Autosport is what could be best described as a 'best of' title, though it has a lot of new gameplay additions and different ways to play so I'm going to break it down as best I can.
The biggest change to Autosport over the previous games is that it is split into five distinct gameplay styles or 'disciplines'. These are Touring, Endurance, Open Wheel, Tuner, and Street. Each one plays differently to another and you'll be hard pressed to find one that doesn't cater to your personal tastes. I'll go more into depth about these in a bit so first I'll move onto major overall gameplay changes. Firstly, the way teams work have changed. In the last two games you set up your own racing team and manage it alongside racing for them, in Autosport this is no longer the case as instead you choose a contract at the beginning of the season and race for that team. Big name companies like Intel, Monster Energy, and Razer are among the roster as well as the infamous fictitious Ravenwest team.
You are often given the choice of two or three teams with each one varying in objectives to complete, cars provided for races, and team mate ability, as well as how much you will get paid to race for them. Do well and higher paying teams will become interested in you and you can begin to climb the ranks to join the folks at Ravenwest themselves. Difficulty is extremely customisable, ranging from standard A.I difficulty down to whether damage is simply cosmetic or gradually destroys your car, you can tweak how many flashbacks you can have and multiply the amount of laps a race normally has.
Cars can also be slightly tuned by making brakes harder or softer, or allowing wheels to have a more open turning or a narrower closed one and various other small tweaks that ultimately make your car more agile or more stable. Cockpit view also makes a return though its not as good as you would hope it is, being perhaps one of the worst cockpit cameras in a racing game thanks to an excessive use of blur and general lack of detail.
So to start off on the disciplines is Touring. Touring cars are what made the original GRID so awesome because its arguably what the series does best thanks to its routes coming from the TOCA Race Driver series. This stands true in Autosport with a much more realistic and weighty physics system. No longer can you pelt round a tight corner at 80MPH and stick to the road like you're glued to it, now you must make use of braking and time your acceleration out of corners in order to get a good start out of it. The A.I takes a more aggressive stance in this mode with several close call crashes and sparks flying from car to car contact. Though these races take place on real life circuits, often with wide tracks, the racing is tight and extremely competitive. Clawing your way through the pack and then leading it is something that will take several laps and a lot of skill compared to most other games thanks to the smart A.I and the heavy physics.
Endurance is in many ways similar to Touring but at the same time very different. The physics are still quite weighty however the cars are much more powerful this time and you will also suffer from tyre wear. Races last 8 minutes and the goal is to finish in the highest position possible, whilst not having your tyres wear out completely due to an omission of pit-stops to top up the grip. Endurance is in my eyes the weakest discipline as it has been handled better in the original game, though it's still fun to play and by no means badly designed. It's challenging and requires you to think a few corners ahead before acting as one wrong move could spin you out and potentially cost you the entire race, no matter how early on it happens.
Open Wheel is another returning favourite from the original game but bigger and better than before. Race in Formula 3's, Indy Car's, T1's and more. High power, high risk manoeuvring in a handling style that is extremely lightweight but requires fast reflexes and good timing to ensure you're going slow enough to make the corner. Touching opponents in Open Wheel is an extremely risky thing to do as even the slightest tap at the speeds you'll travel at will send both cars ricocheting into the barriers in spectacular style. This style is most reminiscent of the original GRID due to its high risk, high reward design. The more you push your machine, the closer you come to losing it all, the more likely you are to succeed.
Tuner is a discipline made up of the weakest events from the previous games. However thanks to some mighty fine work on the physics it comes together to make a package that's not actually too bad. Time Trials put you in American Muscle cars and see you trying to post the best lap time on a track, this is accompanied by Drift events wherein you must earn points by holding long drifts or big angles in a single lap in order to place higher on the rankings; penalty's are issued by coming off the track, hitting obstacles and spinning out. This discipline has a physics system reminiscent of GRID 2's but with a bit less traction. A system that's very floaty but hard to regain grip once sliding. Its a discipline that's hard to pick up and even harder to master, but its something had has had significant improvements since even last years GRID 2.
Finally Street is pretty much what GRID 2 was known for and has remained largely unchanged however drifting is pretty much non-existent in it now. Cars are grippy and heavy, but tacks consist only of narrow city streets and aggressive A.I meaning you'll need precision and have the guts to take a few risks every now and again in order to progress up the pack. It's a discipline that hasn't really advanced itself in anyway and therefore comes off fairly middling in terms of overall greatness against the other four disciplines. You also have the GRID events which unlock after reaching a certain proficiency level with each discipline. This tournament contains all five disciplines and will alternate between them after each event, meaning your driving tactics will need to be changed up on the fly. These are also slightly higher paying and more difficult than standard racing seasons.
Endurance is in many ways similar to Touring but at the same time very different. The physics are still quite weighty however the cars are much more powerful this time and you will also suffer from tyre wear. Races last 8 minutes and the goal is to finish in the highest position possible, whilst not having your tyres wear out completely due to an omission of pit-stops to top up the grip. Endurance is in my eyes the weakest discipline as it has been handled better in the original game, though it's still fun to play and by no means badly designed. It's challenging and requires you to think a few corners ahead before acting as one wrong move could spin you out and potentially cost you the entire race, no matter how early on it happens.
Open Wheel is another returning favourite from the original game but bigger and better than before. Race in Formula 3's, Indy Car's, T1's and more. High power, high risk manoeuvring in a handling style that is extremely lightweight but requires fast reflexes and good timing to ensure you're going slow enough to make the corner. Touching opponents in Open Wheel is an extremely risky thing to do as even the slightest tap at the speeds you'll travel at will send both cars ricocheting into the barriers in spectacular style. This style is most reminiscent of the original GRID due to its high risk, high reward design. The more you push your machine, the closer you come to losing it all, the more likely you are to succeed.
Tuner is a discipline made up of the weakest events from the previous games. However thanks to some mighty fine work on the physics it comes together to make a package that's not actually too bad. Time Trials put you in American Muscle cars and see you trying to post the best lap time on a track, this is accompanied by Drift events wherein you must earn points by holding long drifts or big angles in a single lap in order to place higher on the rankings; penalty's are issued by coming off the track, hitting obstacles and spinning out. This discipline has a physics system reminiscent of GRID 2's but with a bit less traction. A system that's very floaty but hard to regain grip once sliding. Its a discipline that's hard to pick up and even harder to master, but its something had has had significant improvements since even last years GRID 2.
Finally Street is pretty much what GRID 2 was known for and has remained largely unchanged however drifting is pretty much non-existent in it now. Cars are grippy and heavy, but tacks consist only of narrow city streets and aggressive A.I meaning you'll need precision and have the guts to take a few risks every now and again in order to progress up the pack. It's a discipline that hasn't really advanced itself in anyway and therefore comes off fairly middling in terms of overall greatness against the other four disciplines. You also have the GRID events which unlock after reaching a certain proficiency level with each discipline. This tournament contains all five disciplines and will alternate between them after each event, meaning your driving tactics will need to be changed up on the fly. These are also slightly higher paying and more difficult than standard racing seasons.
Autosport released for previous generation consoles and though in some respects it is a visual upgrade from its predecessor, it's very obvious how held back it is by the ageing hardware. Lighting has been improved, Autosport looks great when the sun is beaming down on the track and other cars, but once you move into the shade you see that many things aren't as highly detailed or as impressive as they looked with the lighting bloom on them. GRID still lacks dynamic weather and though seeing as the game only looks beautiful in light this is no major problem on the graphical front, it does put it one peg behind many other big racing titles.
Shadows and the edges of cars are rough, plus the cockpit view mentioned earlier is simply ugly. Crowds are equally awful with models being made of just a few polygons and being a blur of colours. I feel that it should have been held back another year or so and been released on current gen systems as to have a better graphical standard, however I'm sure the PC version may not have the same low quality textures and lighting mishaps as the console variants do.
The sound however is great. Engines roar with a meaty and realistic feel to them, tyres screech and you can even notice the different sounds related to different types of concrete when you pass over them. But yet again, my biggest criticism of the GRID series, that there is still no soundtrack. Other sims such as GT have good, sometimes great soundtracks each instalment and though it probably helps keep the cost of the game down, not having it can at times make the game a chore due to only having the engine to appeal to your sense of sound. As I said earlier, Autosport is a love letter to fans and a chance for Codies to bring in some new fans to a series that has been relatively underground for much of this generation. A series that deserves to be recognised and appreciated as one of the best racing franchises in recent memory.
Autosport takes what was awesome from the original GRID and moulds it into something new yet not too unfamiliar for fans. It then takes the good from GRID 2 and applies it where it fits most and changing it where it doesn't. The game features 100 track routes and 78 cars so you're getting a fair bit of content for your money, not to mention none of this is locked out for release via DLC or behind a micro-transaction pay-wall. If you're a racing fan I can guarantee that Autosport will have something to satisfy you, and you might fall in love with something you may not have liked before.
Shadows and the edges of cars are rough, plus the cockpit view mentioned earlier is simply ugly. Crowds are equally awful with models being made of just a few polygons and being a blur of colours. I feel that it should have been held back another year or so and been released on current gen systems as to have a better graphical standard, however I'm sure the PC version may not have the same low quality textures and lighting mishaps as the console variants do.
The sound however is great. Engines roar with a meaty and realistic feel to them, tyres screech and you can even notice the different sounds related to different types of concrete when you pass over them. But yet again, my biggest criticism of the GRID series, that there is still no soundtrack. Other sims such as GT have good, sometimes great soundtracks each instalment and though it probably helps keep the cost of the game down, not having it can at times make the game a chore due to only having the engine to appeal to your sense of sound. As I said earlier, Autosport is a love letter to fans and a chance for Codies to bring in some new fans to a series that has been relatively underground for much of this generation. A series that deserves to be recognised and appreciated as one of the best racing franchises in recent memory.
Autosport takes what was awesome from the original GRID and moulds it into something new yet not too unfamiliar for fans. It then takes the good from GRID 2 and applies it where it fits most and changing it where it doesn't. The game features 100 track routes and 78 cars so you're getting a fair bit of content for your money, not to mention none of this is locked out for release via DLC or behind a micro-transaction pay-wall. If you're a racing fan I can guarantee that Autosport will have something to satisfy you, and you might fall in love with something you may not have liked before.
STORY: N/A
GAMEPLAY: 8/10
PRESENTATION: 6/10
LIFESPAN: 7/10
SCORE: 7/10
GRID Autosport may not be a classic like the original, but what it provides is something you would be foolish to miss.