GRID 2 was a widely well received game, but the exclusion of the driver seat view didn’t go down to well with fans of the original game. Now fans that wanted that viewpoint to feature in the last game has made its return, well in fact there are two driver seat views to choose from. This is extra safe tactics from the talented Codemasters studio. There is however one feature that has been removed from the last outing and that is with a singleplayer story mode. Unlike GRID 2 in which you assumed the role of a budding up and coming racer in the typical Rags to Riches tale, there is no story mode in GRID Autosport.
Taking the place of the singleplayer story is a stripped down basic formula of simply picking your chosen discipline for that season, pick a team and see what bonuses they have to offer you and away you go. I suppose it all comes down to personal preference on which you prefer, personally I like a simple story to help me get attached to the mode in which I am playing, but many others will prefer the other.
During the career mode you will have five disciplines to choose from, six if you include the special event once you reach level three in each of the five disciplines. You have Touring, Endurance, Tuner, Street and Open-Wheel.
Fans of the Toca Touring Car series all those years back will surely appreciate the Touring discipline, Touring is in fact one of my favourite categories to choose from. It’s a packed race that will endure much bumper to bumper, door to door racing, all at a fast and frantic pace. It’s a nice mix of strategy and a hint of rough and ready, it’s a combination that makes it a personal favourite of mine.
Endurance is quite possibly my least favourite of the disciplines. The reason for this is that there’s not all that much endurance involved, well until the later stages of the season at least. To begin with races will last around eight minutes each and will gradually increase as you progress further into the game. Though out of all the categories this perhaps requires the most strategy, which is still at a relatively basic level. Over the course of the race your tyres will soon wear thin, so you must be careful when and where you put your foot down, especially when powering out of those corners. As you reach the later stages of the race, you will gradually loose grip and the car will increasingly become more difficult to control.
Traditionally in most racers, the Endurance category doesn’t become available until the very late stages of the career. In GRID Autosport this discipline is available from the offset and due to its less challenging gameplay compared to other Endurance racers out there, it doesn’t quite have the tension or strategy that others might have. What is even odder is that there are no pit stops available. This becomes further more frustrating in the longer races when your tyres wear thin. Personally I would have preferred longer races in the later stages (with less event races), allowing you to have one pit stop to change your tyres per race. I believe this would have added some much needed strategy.
Tuner is another category that I’m not all that keen on, the reason being is that it feels like a category that seems a little out of place. Throughout the Tuner season the events will mostly consist of Time Trials and Drift events, with the occasional race, which is fine if you like those events, but I believe that these events would have been better served as bonus events to the Street discipline. The Drift events can also become a little tedious as the events often feel far more stretched out then they should and participating on the same circuit throughout that event can become a little repetitive.
The Street category is arguably my favourite discipline, along with Touring. This is basically a bite sized GRID 2, where you will race on the claustrophobic streets with opponent A.I that will be more than happy to collide with your rear bumper. Open-Wheel is a blend of super cart racing and Formula One type cars, or perhaps more so Formula Three to be a little more accurate (though I could wrong). The cart racing is especially fun, as the cars are not only incredibly fast, but they also fly around those corners, just don’t expect them to take much damage. The same can almost go for the Formula type racing, fans of Codemasters F1 2013 will instantly feel at home here, but they can also expect it to be far more forgiving, which will surely please casual F1 fans.
In most part GRID Autosport plays fantastic and the variety in disciplines helps keep you on your toes. If I was to have one criticism here, then it would be that many of the events feel far too drawn out. This perhaps wouldn’t be so bad, if it wasn’t for the tight XP rewards. Each race will earn you valuable XP and bonus XP for achieving targets set by your sponsor. It just feels that the amount of time and effort that you put into a season, the rewards don’t seem to quite match up and can leave you feeling a little deflated, for me at least anyway.
On the last gen systems (PS3/Xbox 360), opponent A.I has not been the strongest point among racers. Computer A.I often seems to follow the exact same path in single file and do not tend to make any human-like error. This has been a somewhat widespread problem across the genre (not including the revolutionary Drivatar from Forza Motorsport 5).
Now while much of the computer A.I in GRID Autosport will follow a particular line, I have seen the A.I make plenty of errors. It will also not be above the A.I to hit your rear bumper late on in a race as they attempt to take the lead, nor too will they think twice to cut you up on the odd occasion when you attempt a pass. These seemingly little element’s are refreshing to see in this genre as it makes the races that little more unpredictable from time to time.
Before I talk of GRID Autosport’s visuals, it’s worth noting that the screenshots used in this review are via the far superior PC version. At the time of writing this review, I could not find screenshots taken from the PS3 or Xbox 360. Now let’s talk more about the visuals. While GRID Autosport does look visually decent on the console, I can’t help but feel that with it not releasing on the PS4 or Xbox One it is a huge missed opportunity, especially when you consider that this game has made its way on to PC. During the course of this week, I’ve been checking out some PC gameplay footage uploaded to YouTube and as you can imagine, it looks far superior on the PC and quite frankly looks stunning. This leaves a slight sour taste in your mouth when playing on PS3 as you can’t help but think “what if?”
On the console version of GRID Autosport it runs at 30fps, which would be fine for most games, even many racers. But when the action gets a little bit packed you can see the framerate suffer a little and on many occasions when there’s been a high impact collision, an odd visual glitch has been appearing on screen at times. Hopefully with it only releasing last week, this might be ironed out with a patch by Codemasters in the coming weeks.
Aside from the lengthy career mode, of course there is the online mode to sink your teeth into. Much like GRID 2, GRID Autosport has a version of its own online career. As you partake in each race you will earn some XP along the way. If you can get into a match, the online races run very smoothly and during my brief playtime in the online modes I not once suffered any lag, though I did have the odd difficulty getting into a race, but that will improve over time as more gamers buy GRID Autosport and get online.
RaceNet, Codemasters online community HUB plays more of a role than ever before in GRID Autosport, now allowing gamers to form their own clubs to compete against over clubs within the online community. Each time you race you will earn points for your club and you can also race using the same livery designs to represent your club. The ‘club’ aspect certainly seems a key direction for race games to head towards, especially with Driveclub and Forza Horizon 2 releasing this year.
RaceNet will also bring six new challenges per week across the five key disciplines, as well as an extra mode called Party. The Party mode is far more relaxed then the other disciplines and certainly takes the edge off the competitive nature from the other modes, by having such races as the good old Demolition Derby and more. While GRID Autosport doesn’t have many flaws and has some inclusions such as the return of the driver seat view to please fans, I still can’t but help think “what if?”
I’m not afraid to admit it, but when games such as GRID Autosport is concerned, I look at the PC gamers with their juiced up PC’s and continually think to myself this is a major disappointment that this game never made its way over to the PS4 and Xbox One. I get this feeling more so because I am a lifelong Codemasters fan and I just want to play the best versions of their games. Prior to the new gen consoles, this wouldn’t be a problem, because obviously when GRID 2 was released, these consoles were not in our homes, but the same can’t be said with this instalment. GRID Autosport is a good game, though my personal preference will still sway towards GRID 2.
If you’re looking for the definitive version of GRID Autosport, sadly you won’t find it on the gaming console with it not being released on the PS4 or Xbox One (dam you PC Master Race), but that’s not to say that GRID Autosport isn’t among the best racers out there for the PS3 and Xbox 360, because it is. I just hope that we’ll see that new Dirt game and of course F1 2014 release on the new gen consoles this year, because Codemasters and console gamers truly do deserve a definitive Codies racer.