The Racing Game Grid(or, if your a intolerable cunt who goes solely by “proper names” : Race Driver: Grid) is like crack for me…though unlike crack-heads i absolutely hate my addiction; i receive no jittery moments of bliss, completely ignorant of the fact that you just sold your car for money and you had to suck your dealers dirty dirty wang.
Grid starts out as unrealistic as possible, you are a driver who has yet to receive their rookie license and yet, somehow, you start the first race off in a Dodge Viper…with your own guardian angel…and a business manager. You climb up the ladder of racing fame, progressing from simple muscle cars and touring cars up to GT cars and above. Pretty standard for a racing career game.
Once you achieve enough fame in one racing area(by which i mean area of land) you can eventually hire a partner…who magically comes with the same cars as you and you magically get 2 for 1 deals from then on out. Ofcourse your first partner is about as useful as having an 80 year old man as your team mate. The only positive about these partners is no matter what nationality they are from, they come with that stereotypical accent. An Italian partner of mine constantly said things like “passion” and “we finish this as brothers” all in a mencia like italian accent; a french partner said in a snooty voice “Now you are almost as good as me” while i was generally beating him by about 11 spots(me in first, him in last). The best time-waster with these chimps is to crash into them in which they say “sorry, my bad” its Hilarius, i spend hours crushing my team-mates car into a mechanical cluster-fuck and apparently it is all his fault.
In game advertising in this game has been taken to a whole new level which is amazing because its a racing game and logos are about everywhere you look. Instead of having to buy cars new you can buy them off of ebay motors which is the worst idea ive ever heard. Other Pro racers are selling their 5 million dollar vehicles for slightly reduced prices on ebay motors cause if your gonna spend 4.8 million, you might aswell spend it on ebay. The worst part was prototype races. Its where you race prototypes(which the company DOESN’T give to you, you have to buy it) against other racers in the same prototype cars(which makes me believe these arnt prototypes at all). The best part? THESE GODDAMN PROTOTYPES CAN BE BOUGHT OFF OF EBAY. the stupidity in that is just remarkable.
The game contains a very limited selection of cars, only in the 70s or something, the focus is heavily on supercars and there arnt any long races(24 hours de le mans is only 24 minutes long), so that makes this an arcade racer right? apparently not because this game incorporates realistic damage to your cars(and gives you 5 backups because your car can break easily). So what this game has tried to do is combine the best of racing sim games and the best of arcade games…and it fails…horribly. It adds the limited selection of cars of the arcade games with the realism of car damage of a racing sim…but without any goddamn pit stops! if your car gets damaged and you cant instant replay your way out of the damage then you are fucked!
In the end this game could have been pretty good, but unfortunately it just fails. More importantly though for some reason I cannot quit this goddamn game!
Tags: game review, grid, race driver: grid, racing game
