Race Driver: GRID Comments by Tom Bramwell

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That's not a Mustang, my guess is it's a Koenigsegg?

Please provide us with a racing team option in the PS3 version.
So we can clan-war on something else for a change.

This reads like my 'other' racing game, after Forza.

I thought PGR4 was impressive in areas, but overall a bit dissapointing as a game.

This game looks exceptionally good from the footage I've seen so far. I was particularly struck by the brilliant sense of speed, it makes Forza 2 and GT5 Prologue look slow. So impressed was I in fact that I immediately placed a pre-order for the game. Hope it really is as good it appears to be.

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It's not San Francisco either!

.......I don't think I missed it, but we all know it looks pretty good now.

But how does it handle? the last lot of vid's made it look terrible!

I'm just disappointed that the best tracks and cars from TOCA Race Driver aren't in it any more. V8 Supercars blasting around Bathurst is one of the best things in Motorsport. This Americanisation of stuff is such a shame. I understand it from a profit point of view for Codemasters but what the hell do those oval loving, spongy car making Yanks know about proper motorsport.

Yet another game from codies in the same format as the others. Great looks, crap everything else.

Great looks, great everything else tbh.

So thank goodness for Race Driver: GRID, which has something called Flashback that you can use to undo catastrophic errors.

Nooo. Stupid idea imo.

Race Driver seems to me like some crappy hybrid of NFS and PGR. I'd rather they just did a new BTCC or touring car game myself.

Whether I buy this game or not pretty much entirely comes down to the damge model. The level seen in Forza is the minimum I will accept, whilst the bumper cars of PGR4 and GT5 can fuck off.

@Altrezia
Turning Point: Fall of Liberty begs to differ. That looked shite too :)

FooAtari and UltimateWarrior

You're both right.
Super V8 was the ultimate racing experience. And the rewind this, that's just for pussies.
That was cool thing, knowing you made it to the head of the pack, but still having no certainty whatsoever. 1 mistake and you're out.
And now, that'll be two or three mistakes, which will just make it more Meh.

But rewind stuff can't be in the multiplayer, so that'll be ace. To bad about the silly drifting stuff and all. They should have just kept the old set-up, and added new stuff on top of that.

By the way, I'll shell out for V8 and Bathurst DLC.
Who's with me?!

@FooAtari - There may be an option to disable the Flashback feature or you could always just... you know... not use it! ;)

Seems to be an odd addition really for a "serious" racing game and sounds a lot like the the one used in the Full Auto games.

Interested in this moreso than GT5p

I could live without the whole drift event contrivance (ever again, ever) but this does look really good. It will almost certainly wind up in my library of XBox360 racers I don't have time to play - alongside Forza, DiRT, PGR4, etc...

Please god, hopefully no fecking cone challenges. Totally ruined PGR4 for me.

\wants to race

What's the frame rate?

Judging by the slowdown in some of those vids, pretty piss poor...

If it's that bad in single player it's going to be abortionate online.

"...a film we hoped never to admit having seen. Twice."

So funny! :-)

I

Sounds pretty good!

I

Ok, I'm not going to knock this, I've enjoyed every racing game from Codemasters in the past but does anyone know if this has anything like the Ford Fiestas, open wheel racing cars and truck racing of previous TOCA/Race Drivers? I like a bit of variation

Its built on the Dirt engine, I heard, which would explain the amazing graphics :)

Should be a good game, is the previous Race Driver games are anything to go by... I hope they have the same ranking system as Race Driver 2.
----
"Race Driver seems to me like some crappy hybrid of NFS and PGR. I'd rather they just did a new BTCC or touring car game myself."

Prat - the TC in BTCC stands for Touring Car :P

Damn i was hoping this would be based on the Race 07 game for pc which used the GTR2 engine, need a proper sim and less of the drifting crap imo

some licensed tourers would give this one a great point of difference to other racers. Dunno if i'll bother if they don't get some DTMs or V8s in there.

I can't decide whether to be excited or not about this game :).
Back when the first screenshots and previews arrived I was really looking forward to it - but then game the gameplay videos with drifting events (arghh!), weak engine sounds (at least that 320i compared to its real world touring car counterpart) and what looked distinctly like very dodgy driving physics.

After reading this I'm sort of getting my hopes up again, but I guess there's just a chance all the praise could come from Mr. Bramwell never having played a good racing game :p.
On the other hand, I did sort of like the older TOCA Race Driver games myself (even though the physics were obviously already here heavily arcadified compared to the excellent old TOCA 2) - so if the driving model isn't any worse in GRID (and the engine sounds better than that BMW video indicated), I guess the (seemingly forced) drifting might turn out to be the only thing I'll hate about this game.
And I do love those in-car views :) - looks like that's fortunately, and finally, starting to become almost standard on console racers, as it has been in PC sims for years.

"Race Driver seems to me like some crappy hybrid of NFS and PGR. I'd rather they just did a new BTCC or touring car game myself."

Prat - the TC in BTCC stands for Touring Car :P"

No shit...

There just seems to be to much NFS/2 Fast 2 Furious/Pimp My ride about this game thats all i meant.

Played VERY early code at Play.com Live and it was superb. Game of the show for me (closely followed by Bourne).

There was a very minor amount of slowdown, but it was incredibly minor (can't remember the name of the course, but it was a race track) and only happened at the first corner and on one other corner when there was a huge pile-up.

AI looked superb, with unforced errors, rivals bashing into each other etc. Handling was also lifelike (I've raced cars before, not professionally but I know what to expect from handling, and it felt 'right') and much more weighty than something like GT5P.

I was suitably impressed, as everyone else appeared to me. Amazing visuals as well.

@ FooAtari

Yeh, I agree with that. I really didn't expect drifting events in this game - that's low.

i really want this to be good but i said the same about Dirt.
its a real shame that companies insist on dumbing their games down too apeal to a wider audience, I know its about making money but its happening way too much these days
not just driving games.

I worked in QA at codies for a while so I know how shocking their development practices are. Fingers crossed with this one though :D

Agreed Dan.

what annoys me is that it's not about making money any more. Devs/publishers are not happy just making money they want to make as much as possible.

Which a lot of people would say of course they do. But soon enough we are just going end up with games and clones of games. All driving games, FPS etc etc will feel the same. Devs no longer seem to make the games they love, just the games that will make every last penny they possibly squeeze out of the market.

@FooAtari
+1

This is looking the business after GT5 disappointment...fingers crossed.
Just hope drift bollocks doesn't spoil it.

And a +1 from me too, FooAtari

Although I can't see the designers of TOCA throwing what they know and love overboard 100%
I hope it turns out to be a TOCA 3 with less tech stuff and some drifting (which I'll never play, and hopefully don't get forced to play)

And once again, Please let us set up online racing teams. I'll forgive them all the 'drifting' and 'no more tuning' choices for it.

Bunny

Looks great,but so did DIRT and the arcadey driving sucked so much!

If this beats GT5 's physics or even comes close,i will eat my DFP.

if this plays like dirt, which is fine for some, then i'll be sticking to GT5P till the full game arrives.