You turn the key, and the engine roars to life. All of a sudden you hear what sounds like thunder from all around you. The thunder turns into the sound of an announcer getting everyone ready to go. You check your mirrors, and then you look in front of you. The race is about to begin and you need to win. This is how it goes in our PlayStation 4 review for Grid.
From publisher and developer Codemasters comes the next big racing game, which also comes as a reboot for the Grid series. Originally, the series was more about touring car races but now it has expanded into other racing types such as a Stock car, Invitational, Tuner, GT, and even Indy car racing. Featuring over 90 different racing events, and each of those could have two to four rounds in them, this game is so expansive that it is one of the biggest racing games I have ever played.
The mechanics of Grid are similar to that of the F1 Series. Why wouldn’t they be since Codemasters made that as well? You drive your cars very similar to the racing lines, the track layouts, how much you control your drift and the passing of other cars in the game. You even have a teammate to help you out as you race around the track. The cars each handle a little bit differently from each other as there are different types, and weights of cars to go through.
The number of cars available in the game isn’t too bad. However, it feels like there are a lot of cars that aren’t represented in this racing game and there really is room for more. Perhaps more vehicles will be added through DLC or expansions.
One other thing that is lacking is track diversity. There are a ton of events, but they all take place on the same few handfuls of tracks. They only vary based on weather effects and time of day. While the quantity of options is missing, the quality of the options available is very good. The maps feel like they are vibrant and alive, even down to cars showing damage from race to race and damage that occurs during the races.
Weather and time of day affect your races differently. While it’s raining your car will slip a little bit more which makes it a little more difficult to control your car. At night time you will have the lights of your car to illuminate the track. You will see fireworks in the background in some of these situations, and the lighting off of buildings is a bright distraction for you sometimes as well. These types of effects make the game look a lot better than other games attempt to do.
There are other modes besides the campaign mode as well including free play and multiplayer. In free play mode, you are able to choose the map selection, weather and more. With multiplayer, you will log into the gaming server automatically and you can choose to pick a race type or just to do a quick match mode. Each option has its merits, but I prefer quick matching. This is probably the most fun option because you are always lined up against other players and not AI, and the maps and car types are always random.
All in all, Grid provides a ton of hours of gameplay goodness, though there are a few things that could be done to make it straight up one of the best racing games out there.
Note: Our copy was reviewed on the PlayStation 4 with a code provided by PR.
