Race Driver: GRID

TOCA is a racing video game series developed and published by Codemasters. Initially created especially for the British Touring Car Championship, the first two games features only drivers and cars particularly from this championship. Beginning with the third part, Codemasters expanded the gameplay to cover a wide variety of motorsport disciplines. It also featured a story based career mode, the player taking control of Ryan McKane, a fictive driver. The next two sequels were pretty similar to the first TOCA Race Driver except the story-based gameplay. From 2002 the game became a multiplatform product, many times being compared with Gran Turismo series from the quality point of view. Unfortunately from sequel to sequel the game lost its simulation aspect, becoming a combination of simulation and arcade elements. Race Driver GRID comes after long expectations,with a gameplay emphasized more on the fun factor. Based on the Neon graphical engine present for the first time in Colin McRae DIRT, the game makes the first step into the next-gen era.

Race Driver GRID includes every type of races that was not included in Colin McRae DIRT. This means every asphalt race that can be found in US, Europe and Japan. Overall Codemasters decided to move away from official championships (such as DTM, BTCC, V8 Supercar, present in former Race Driver games). The only true official event is the 24h Le Mans Race which is compressed in 25 minutes and features day/night cycle. They created instead new events and tournaments inspired from the official ones with 43 official cars on real tracks such as Jarama, Le Mans, Spa Francorchamps, Donington Park etc. An original addition would be the imaginary track inside the city of Milan, a track that was created based on the real surroundings from the center of the city.

First time you make contact with the game you will be introduced to an interface similar in functionality with the previous one from DIRT. Extremely simple to use and represented in full 3D environment, the interface is not so dynamic this time, but still full of statistics during the loading times. From the beginning you can choose between the GRID World, Race Day, or Multiplayer options. Race Day is the substitute of the Quick race mode in which you can choose the track, car, number of laps, and then jump into the race. The assist mode is present here too like in the Grid World mode. So let's see what the GRID World mode can offer us, while the multiplayer will be left for later comments.

Team-mate

GRID World is the substitute for a Career mode in which you have to choose a name for your profile and additionally a nickname which will be used by your chief in his commentaries. Your so-called team and its manager will offer you an old car bought from a second hand auction, which has to be reconditioned in order to be able to run in official events. So all you have to do is to race for other teams. A good idea in terms of training mode, as you can race for the first time on the important tracks and learn them. After you earn enough money and reputation points you can start your first race as a member of your own team. After a couple of winnings, the team manager decides that is time to hire a co-driver (which like in Juiced will be controlled by the A.I.). This team mate can bring you additional income if you choose the right one. Every additional driver is represented by a statistic based on aggression, awareness, reactions, consistency, and skill, which are fundamental in hiring the right one for you. Let's not forget each ones specialty based on class events (don't hire a pro-muscle specialist if you compete in GT class, for example).

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Income system

The whole career is based on income and reputation points, and the whole system is quite well balanced. So each financial decisions is important for your team. Sometimes the lack of money will force you again to race for other teams, or to sell your own cars. You can buy and sell your vehicles through a simulated e-bay service. By setting selling parameters such as start price, fixed price, or listing duration, you can create an offer for every car you want. In general the game will offer you a slightly higher price compared to the start price which is much better than the normal way of selling it. So pay attention with every transaction.

Besides your teammate and sporadic car sells, the most important additional income for your team is the sponsorship system. Depending on your results, you will receive more and more sponsorship offers which increase your income very fast if you complete there additional tasks (don't end the race under fifth place, don't damage the car, etc). The sponsors have also an aesthetic importance, as every sponsor will be placed as a sticker with original fonts on the bodywork of the your car. The purpose of the career is to win the Global Race License which is the sum of all the points gathered from all three championships (USA, Europe, Japan). Every location is defined by its traditional class races. USA comes with Destruction Derby, Muscle and Pro Muscle competitions, Europe with GT series and Le Mans Series, and Japan with Drift and Touge competitions.

Handling

Unlike in Race Day mode, in Grid World you can change the assists options to get a more difficult handling. Not realistic, but difficult. If you are playing with all the assists turned on, the handling of the car is similar with the one present in NFS series, which doesn't allow too much spins and drifts. Thank God, the wheels are spinning and smoking in every corner, and the suspensions are working on every bumpy section of the road. Otherwise the whole experience would be limited to a fade NFS clone. If you feel that this is not enough (like I did) then turn off every assist option and go on racing. The handling gets much more unrealistic (but still controllable), and instead of using the handbreak in every corner, you have to control the acceleration slightly after you exit it. In Drift events the handling slightly changes. The cars tend to spin their wheels easily even on a straight line so there's always a struggle in getting the car on the right angle. But it's not something frustrating but more of a challenge between controlling the car in extreme conditions and at the same time keeping it always sideways at every corner. For a better score I suggest you to play without traction control. At least this type of handling brings much more fun and many more chances to hit a wall or an opponent. And here comes the best part of this game: the damage system.

Damage system

The damage system has been rewritten especially for this game and surprisingly the result is astonishing. From the visual point of view your car will suffer scratches, bodywork deformations on impact surfaces, fallen body parts, shards, etc.

From the physical point of view the damage is not so spectacular. You can still drive quite well after you have bumped your car for several times. The only fragile parts of the car are the wheels which can influence the handling if you hit them too hard. So avoid to hit the car edgewise. A good addition is the ability to totally crash your car. Full wall smashes or powerful cars hits, will lead you to a definitive crash that ends your race. Or not entirely! An instant replay will be activated immediately after the crash in order to control the scene. Do you remember Prince of Persia? Exactly like the sands of time, here you can turn back time to the point where you were in full control of your car. By using flashback points you can rewrite history in that race by replaying the scene.

Multiplayer mode is just there for all the online maniacs. It brings nothing new, just the LAN or the Online option. Either you create the game session or join an already created one. Even if the single player features a co-driver, there's no way you can play in co-op mode with another friend any of the races in multiplayer. As classic as it can be, the multiplayer is much more consistent than the one present in DIRT.

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Conclusion

Race Driver GRID comes with a well combined content that can satisfy every racing-games fan. From the graphics point of view, the game raises the standard bar with good results on medium and high systems. Unfortunately if you enter deeper into details you will discover some unpolished gameplay elements as reminiscent of a commercial approach.

Gameplay: 88

Excellent career mode with lots of racing classes to please every racing fan. A plus for the 24h Le Mans race with its day/night cycle and all the official teams.

Codemasters created a powerful feeling of actually owning the team by giving the player enough additional elements to control the destiny of it. The so-called e-bay service and sponsorship systems adds more flexibility in the virtual team management. The franchise is losing again more simulation characteristics especially in handling, but is compensated with a spectacular damage system which increases the fun part.

Graphics: 95

The updated NEON graphics engine used also in DIRT, brings the ultimate quality in racing-games based on a middleware platform. Most amazing is the fact that even if it looks better than DIRT, the game runs much more smoothly than its predecessor. The frame-rate problems are almost non existent here even in races with maximum number of opponents. There are some issues though regarding the night races where the graphical engine "tends to run on diesel".

Multiplayer: 79

A racing game without multiplayer is like a BigMac without french fries. So here it is. A simple multiplayer mode based on a classic receipt which includes Online and LAN support. Nothing fancy like Test Drive Unlimited, but it's there for you to beat any human opponents that you meet.

Sound: 80

The cars sound much better than in DIRT. Accompanied by environmental sounds, any race can become a memorable experience if you have at home at least a 5.1 THX audio system. A minus for the annoying and repeated commentaries of the team manager and chief.

Hardware: 81

The game is looking better than DIRT and runs smoother. An obvious approach as the game features races with multiple opponents, so an optimized code was the only solution. And all these remarks without installing the first official patch!