Picture this: it’s a sunny day and you’re standing in a wooded area. The dappled sunlight rains down from above like liquid gold, the wind softly ruffling your hair.

Click the ‘continue reading’ button for a full review of Race Driver: GRID. Will it be a boring spread sheet program that involves grids, or an excellent griddle frying pan that cooks juicy burgers? Find out inside.

What? Oh right, the random description at the beginning. Yeah, that has nothing to do with this review.

Trust me, the review will not carry on like this. Click on over for the full, box free, video game review.

From the same team that made DIRT, is an all new racing game, GRID. While DIRT was a rally game, GRID is an on-track racer that sits nicely between arcade and simulation.

As soon as you boot up GRID you will be confronted with a menu asking you to choose your name. There’s a wide selection of pre-set first names and, if your name is not on the list, then there are several nicknames. Why is this important? Because the name you choose will be included in the voice acting throughout the game. So, if you choose the name ‘Alex’, then the announcer might say something like ‘Ok Alex, there’s been a crash up ahead’. It’s a nice touch and makes you feel involved with the game from the start. Luckily my name was on the list, but I was sorely tempted to go for the nickname ‘Dumptruck’.

This is also the first time you meet GRID’s menu system. Like DIRT, its very flashy and modern and a joy to use. The menu options hang in mid air in front of a fully moving background (such as your garage), while you can rotate the camera around them. Every time you click a button you get the feeling that you’ve set something in motion as you’re whizzed away to the next screen. During the lading times the game presents you with some stats of your career so far, as well as your progress in the achievements. These fly in and out with a satisfying ‘woosh’ and give you something to watch during the game’s fairly short load times.

After this you’re chucked straight into a race with no tutorial or anything. Upon completing the race you meet your team manager. She boldly announces herself in audio form (you never see her), and she tells you that she has got you a deal on a car, but she needs £40,000. And so your career begins. The races are split into three areas: USA, Europe and Japan that are all unlocked from the get go. Each country has a reputation meter that, when filled up, earns you a new license and a new set of events. Rinse and repeat. However GRID adds another layer of depth to the mix/ While you can tweak or upgrade your cars, you can hire and fire drivers. The other drivers in your team will give you a higher chance of winning, but they will take a cut of your earnings. There is also a sponsorship management system, where you have to balance out your sponsor’s decals on your car for maximum profit. It may not sound like much, but it’s a fun little mini-game in itself.

There are many different events in GRID ranging from standard races to demolition derbies. There are also Togue events that see you racing two legs against one other opponent with various setting such as civilian cars, allowing contact with the opponent car and so on, but the most interesting is the Le Mans 24 hour races. These involve an endurance race where each hour last 1 minute, and a full day and night cycle is completed during your time racing. There is also an option for each hour to last one real life hour, but that’s just plain stupid.

The actual racing mechanics themselves are fairly straight forward, though you initially may find the cars over-responsive. The learning curve is very short and you’ll find yourself charging round the tracks in no time. Luckily, for those that take a little longer to get used to the controls there are 5 difficulty settings: basic, normal, serious, savage and extreme. After a couple of hours play I found myself settling into the ’serious ‘difficulty level, but the others are available if you need them.

The game features full damage so you can expect loose bonnets, doors and body work all over the track. You’re not punished for crashing (other than some small performance decreases) so feel free to let loose and smash a few cars out your way. If you do go a little over the top and blow up your car the Flashback feature is available. This is very similar to that found in Full Auto, you just pause the game, hit the ‘instant replay’ button and rewind to where you want to continue from. For instance if I spun out on a corner, I can rewind back 5 or 6 seconds so I can take the corner again. It’s a very useful feature, but having to load up the instant replay menu gets tedious after a while (I much preferred Full Auto, where you just hit a button and hold until you get to the place where you want to rewind to. It’s just a shame that the rest of the game wasn’t that great).

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