GRID Autosport is Codemasters back to basics attempt to recapture the glory days of multi-disciplinary racing. It will include innovations such as decent handling, a lack of overarching social media narrative and in-car camera views. The latest trailer shows street racing events, with the landmarks of various cities popping on screen as orientation guides. It's attractive and the cars really are going very fast indeed. The editor of motoring website PistonHeads.com provides commentary, telling us that "racing is exciting and if you can accurately replicate that in a game...it's gonna be exciting." His t-shirt displays a list of dire warnings.
]]>Race Driver GRID still stands as a benchmark for racing games. Way back in 2008 it drove a path between sim and arcade, offering powerful, weighted cars in a structure that was approachable and accessible.
GRID 2 skidded off that path. It pushed too far into accessibility and bundled weak handling with a tedious structure. Now GRID Autosport is out at the end of June - barely a year after GRID 2 - and it comes with a promise of going back to the magic of 2008, but leaning even further to the "sim" side. Being an avid sim racer, I caught up with Clive Moody (Senior Executive Producer) and James Nicholson (Chief Game Designer) to talk in-depth about tyre simulation, ride heights, commanding teammates in endurance races and more.
]]>GRID Autosport wants you to know something. It isn't like the other GRID games, with menus more finely engineered than their car handling and plots about automotive megalomaniacs. Autosport has no truck with that sort of thing - in fact, I have the feeling it won't have any trucks at all. There will be a variety of cars though, all with handling 'one or two steps further towards simulation than Race Driver: GRID'. Touring Cars are one of the vehicle types included and to show how serious the implementation is, actual men of motorsport talk about the game in the trailer below.
]]>I liked GRID 2 quite a lot but I'm some kind of racing simulation heathen who has no qualms incorporating a little bump and grind into the art of the automobile. Codemasters manage to avoid the phrase 'going back to our roots' when describing the newly announced follow-up, GRID Autosport, but a lengthy and informative blogpost suggests that's exactly what they aim to do.
On release of GRID 2, I think it’s fair to say that through listening to you guys and a after a substantial amount of reflection, we hadn’t quite achieved everything we set out to do...we’re not above admitting that we made a few decisions that perhaps we shouldn’t have, and perhaps moved some of the aspects of the game too far away from our core fanbase.
What does it all mean? A flashy teaser, an enticingly close June 27th release date and a pile of information to wrap your head around.
]]>I hadn't realised that GRID 2 is a game about global domination disguised as a competitive automobile racing simulation but, following an Americar trailer, there's now a video of European tracks and vehicles narrated by fictional Racing Lord and Man of Business, Patrick Callahan. He is an entrepreneur who dreams of recruiting drivers for a global, multi-discipline Cars Wot Go Fast Championship and he is particularly attracted to Europe because, in his own words, "that desire to race is in the blood here". I can't speak for the rest of Europe, but given how much of an average Brit's blood is taken up by 'the desire to queue', I don't know how much room is left for racing.
]]>I haven't played a car game for aaaaages. Much like my real-world driving, I've always been rubbish at them but secretly enjoyed them, and Codemasters' original GRID, with its subtle silliness and invaluable rewind mechanic, very much hit the sweetspot of pandering to incompetence without chucking out all vestiges of believability. I'll probably be driving into walls and accelerating into rather than out of corners in the upcoming sequel, which we now have in-game footage of to look at.
]]>Mr Craig Lager of GamingDaily fame takes to the podium to present a two-part guide to getting started in - and ultimately mastering - racing games. You can do it!
“You’re not braking to slow down here, you’re braking to put weight at the front of the car so it’s easier to turn in” - my driving instructor shouts to be heard over the Lotus’s engine. “Pull it in here. No, more! I want to feel it rumbling over the curb”. I’m driving a Lotus Exige around a short circuit at Silverstone - part of a track day I got invited to. Earlier I’d taken a Megane touring car around, and next they were putting me in a Ferrari 430 and at some point on this day, something clicked and I wanted to race cars forever.
I‘ve always liked racing games, sure. I played the popular stuff where you can happily fling a car around a track with the expectation of winning if not on the first go, then at least in a couple of tries - but that day opened my eyes. Racing isn’t about burying the accelerator as much as possible and power-sliding around corners.
]]>We're not content with just one high-concept ultromegoXmasfeature this year, oh no. As well as a wry look at the year that was, we've also distilled the many, many games we enjoyed over the course of 2008 into a mere 12. Why? Because 12 is a Christmassy number, dummkopf. It does mean there have been sacrifices. We mourn for the games that did not make the cut, and will never forget them. Somehow, though, we've managed to agree on this shortlist. So, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we'll be doing our Best 2008 Ever thingy, and on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays it's long-form natters about our fave games. Exciting!
Let's get on with it, then. Whatever could be beneath that festive snowfall? For the first game of Christmas, my true blog gave to me...
]]>The lovely people at Codemasters have provided three copies of their spectacular new racer, GRID, to give away to RPS readers. Do you want to race ever-so beautifully? If so then you need to answer the question, after the jump...
]]>Well, that headline just didn't work, did it? Sorry.
Nevertheless, news is in: Codemasters' Race Driver GRID is on that there Steam- and this one is available to multiple territories, not just to you ever-priveleged Americans. $40, it is - or $47 in the UK, once VAT is added. Which is about the same as the boxed copy, sadly. To American Steamers, it's $60 - Europe treated with respect by games publisher shocker.
]]>Since I'm now in That There London I decided I should grab the opportunity to pop along to one of these PR-events which I hear are corrupting our journalists. I joined a small group of men taking a photo of a small group of men in jump-suits and helmets, buying console versions of Race Driver: GRID and the consoles to go with them.
It's on the PC too, you heartless bastards.
]]>Just in case anyone missed it, the GRID demo is out now. It's 893mb and some excellent racing fun. There are three events in those megabytes, including a Ford Mustang GT-R in San Francisco, a Nissan S15 Silvia in Yokohama Docks, and a BMW 320si touring car for the crashing into other cars on every bend. Officially quite a good demo.
]]>Codies release another GRID trailer, this time with Le Mans drivers talking up the realism of the game.
]]>So it turns out that GRID is just another MarioKart clone. Sigh!
]]>Codemasters' Ralph Fulton takes a couple of minutes to talk about the astonishing-looking racing game, GRID, in which the crash damage and race physics are in danger of looking better than real life.
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