GRID Autosport Review

Stung by the sins of the previous GRID entry, Codemasters set out to right those wrongs by stripping down the excessive elements that plagued Grid 2 and leaving Grid Autosport a leaner, keener beast that’s a few shunts short of pole position.

Ok, that’s enough of the racing puns. Grid: Autosport is the third entry in the Grid series and comes after Codemasters were berated for taking the series into arcade territory with Grid 2. Autosport looks to correct that dead end and achieves much by simply stripping out the globe-trotting narrative and concentrating first and foremost on being a great driving game.

The cockpit cam is back but don't look for interior satisfaction

Closer to a simulation, Grid Autosport strikes a good balance between accessibility and nuts ‘n bolts realism, though many petrol heads may bemoan that the level of customisation options aren’t exhaustive as they might wish.



That means taking your race day seriously and understanding that if you’re going to play this game on ‘easy’, like I did to begin with, then you’re better off not bothering at all. On that setting with many of the driving assists turned on you can belt up the grid from 16th to 1st within four laps. Great for arcade racers but this isn’t Mario Kart and by turning up the difficulty to medium or hard Grid: Autosport starts to show you what it’s got under the hood.

Divided into five disciplines: Street, Touring, Endurance, Open Wheel and Tuner, you gain experience as you complete each race and achieve team goals like beating your rival or managing a race without collision. The experience gained is increased the higher the difficulty setting so there’s certainly motive to loosen those guide wheels and be a big boy as soon as possible.

I say that because on lower difficulty it’ll take ages to unlock the larger Grid tournaments which require you to reach a certain level in all five disciplines. It’s quite possible to gain more XP for finishing well down the grid on Hard than it is to just breeze through the races on Easy. It’s refreshing to find Codemasters turning its back, shamanic-style, on Grid 2’s mass appeal remit and making a racing game for racing game enthusiasts, stripping out any resemblance to a narrative and being almost old-school in its approach to the game in general.

It’s almost as if the developers felt so ashamed for their previous work that they’ve deliberately gone out to excise the rotten limbs of that game’s body, replacing them with sleek new chrome parts that do one thing and one thing only - race really well.

That level of remorse includes the return of the cockpit and dashboard camera. Though the textures look poor, motion blurred out of use to make the experience more dramatic, it does at least show that this game is taking itself seriously.

For us on the PC master race system, the inclusion of second screen functionality is also a nice touch, giving you a permanent overview of the track and a dynamic camera that mostly lets you know who’s behind you or provides a cinematic overview of the race. It’s pretty cool but you’d be a fool to look at it for too long, like I did, as you can easily get distracted and end up a tyre and metal sandwich.

Night time races and a good variety of race types keep it fresh

Both tracks and cars are in abundant supply with the variety being no less short of amazing. Though it can seem backwards to be racing in a VW Golf or Mini in the early stages of the game, switching from that to a high-performance vehicle the very next race lets you appreciate the difference and ensures you don’t get bored of driving the same class car every race.

There’s over 100 tracks here as well, from the intense street races of San Francisco to the fiery dust of Dubai you’ll never lack for variety of circuits, especially when they’re combined with the multi-discipline approach of Autosport.

These changes translate into a greater racing experience not because of what they offer but because it allows the racing engine itself to take centre stage. For a start the connection you feel with the track has always been vitally important to me. As none of what we experience in these games is real, the way driving games can (or most often can’t) bridge that gap between pixels and our brains with subtle sound cues or camera shake can make all the difference.

Grid: Autosport combines a lot of those elements into a melting pot of multi-disciplined racing and gets pretty much each one spot on. From the jostling of the grid at the start, to each corner you take that little bit too fast it constantly tells you what’s going on with your brakes, engine and tyres by sound design and visual cues.

That glorious shudder of your vehicle as it roars into life off the grid to braking hard in order to overtake a rival, the feeling of speed, power and balance is here and represented harder and better than ever.

Learning the tracks in practice mode and taking part in qualifying feel just as important than race day itself and if you’ve decided to treat this properly and bump the difficulty up to hard the battle to get a finish in the top ten is as exhilarating as any blood-pumping shooter - more so as you’ve crafted your own narrative to get there.

This is what makes racing games like Grid so appealing and rewarding. There’s a meditative quality to getting each corner correct and by rhythmically linking these successes into an entire race.

The second screen option adds a dynamic camera and displays positions. Very cool

I may have been effusive in praise so far but that doesn’t mean Grid Autosport gets away with a clean bill of health. The lack of narrative is pleasing when you’re reminded of Grid 2’s direction. It means however, that there’s a distinct lack of ownership over your driver name. There’s no garage to house a car collection and nothing especially gripping linking each season of the game together. It’s a racing game, you pick a team, and off you go and race. For some that will be acceptable, needed even. But I like a purpose to my games and aside from just levelling up each discipline in order to unlock more races there was little sense of direction or point to keep me playing apart from my own desire for more races.

It makes progression through the long and winding career mode a touch tedious despite the excellent racing experience the game crafts. The more you play it the more it feels like a patched version of previous entries and less like a new iteration of the series. It doesn’t mean you should avoid Autosport if you’re looking for a return to form from Codemasters and the Grid name. Far from it. But it’s a warning that the stripped down nature of this entry has taken away a bit too much to feel a complete experience even though the actual racing is the best I’ve played in years.