I've played all of the GRID games, so I was excited to see a new entry in the series. Overall this game is good, but not great.



For gameplay, the driving feels pretty smooth overall and there seems to be less of a tendency to spin out compared to older GRID games. Other racers will occasionally make mistakes and hit a barrier or spin out, which can in turn cause bigger wrecks or pile-ups. This is in line with older titles in the series, nothing new here. I would recommend setting the difficulty to at least Hard (second from highest), as anything less will see you leaving your opponents behind in the first or second laps. I've found that your teammate can be hit or miss on their performance, although you can issue a Push or Hold command to influence their behavior (if unlocked).



The newest addition to this game really seems to be the fresh coat of paint the graphics received. On the Series X at least, it appears that Codemasters has swapped out the lighting system for raytracing. You can tell it does work the console much more than older games. Overall it looks great, especially on rainy road surfaces with all of GRID's colorful track lighting. It does bog down the system in some spots, especially when there are lots of detailed shadows (like sun shining through a chainlink fence). As a result the framerates can drop all the way to the lower 20s (again, on Series X). Overall it didn't affect the gameplay too often, but you can tell it's missing a bit of polish/optimization. There are also some weird visual artifacts every now and then, I'm guessing related to this new lighting system and some mistakes with the LoD (Level of Detail) system.



One other cool addition I appreciated is that when playing the Career mode, sometimes other (real) people will be in your races, and sometimes you'll be in theirs. It just depends on whether you happen to be doing the same race in your career at the same time. I thought this was pretty cool, and added a challenge that AI simply can't. You can also search ongoing sessions and join one if you'd like. I did however have an issue with getting my game to connect to the online services, which are required for this feature. So for a lot of my gameplay, I just played single player in "offline mode."



In the Story mode, Codemasters opted to use live action video with actors for the cutscenes. It was nice that they were trying something different, but the script wasn't anything crazy. It would have been nice for the characters to have a bit more depth, especially the McKanes who have appeared in the series for quite some time now as your arch rivals. All in all, this live action stuff was a bit cringe.

There is a revised Team section that includes upgrades for your teammate in races and your mechanic, which will net you cheaper repairs, purchases, upgrades, and more sponsor choices. I thought this was a cool touch, but would have appreciated a bit more depth as I felt like I acquired all of the upgrades rather quickly.

There are over 140 cars in the game, with some of them being added in post-launch DLC, compared to Race Driver: GRID's 43. It's no Forza, but more than doubling the number of drivable cars is still a nice addition. Speaking of DLC, each pack adds a few races and cars, but can be completed in an hour or two. I don't feel like Codemasters put a lot of effort into these packs. I would only buy them if everything is on sale.

I don't think this game offers quite the same charm that DiRT and the original GRID gave me, but it's still a fun time and the ray-traced graphics look great when they're not slowing down the framerate.