720P GRID AUTOSPORT IMAGE DRIVER

720P GRID AUTOSPORT IMAGE DRIVER

The more easily distracted, impulsive racing games fan in you will occasionally lament the game's familiarity the growing sense that you're playing Race Driver Grid: Remastered, and it's unfair to shout that voice down completely. There isn't much going on off it, and though the EGO engine looks prettier than ever there's no hiding the crows' feet and frown lines that come with its advancing age of-er, about six years. You're getting the picture by now: Autosport is the best bits of Grid 1 & 2, distilled into a focussed and finely tuned racer capable of delivering joy on the track. It's less twitchy than Grid 2, with a forgiving slip angle that lets you wrestle a drifting car back from the edge of disaster (handy if you're out of Flashbacks and can no longer screw with the space-time continuum) and gives great feedback that lets you feel where the car's weight it at all times. Handling isn't a revelation-Autosport neither attempts nor succeeds in beating artisanal projects like Assetto Corsa or Project CARS at their own game-but it is a further improvement on an hugely gratifying drive. Trying to fulfil a sponsor objective that demands you drive a clean race and still bag the podium necessary to win the championship becomes the single hardest and most rewarding thing you've recently done in a racing game. Suddenly, 5th place becomes a towering achievement. In either event, they usually repass you. That means in order to take a place, you need to line up an opponent, anticipate his braking point, then either brake slightly later or pick a wider line and brake earlier, hoping to carry more speed out of the apex. You're used to having slightly better acceleration than the AI in racing games (spoilers: that's why you always win) but here, you don't. There probably is some rubber-banding at work (a term our friend in games marketing no doubt hates, and would rather see replaced by PackSense or some such), but it's much subtler than any of Autosport's contemporaries. Perhaps the best thing Grid Autosport does is place you more often than not in the middle of the pack. Compete for teams in these disciplines to fulfil sponsor objectives and earn XP, then unlock more events in faster cars. Instead, Codemasters focuses on improving the series' already impressive AI, delivering a firm and fun handling model and setting it to task in five key disciplines: Touring Cars, Endurance, Open Wheel, Tuner and Street.

There's no expanded management element here, nor any new curios like Grid 2's dynamically changing track layouts. Grid Autosport succeeds because it doesn't over-stretch itself. Of course, I feel for them particularly because now I have to explain its mercurial qualities too.

Back to the drawing board, marketing person. Er, the racing feels really, really real? No dice. But you have to feel for whoever was in charge of penning Grid Autosport's back-of-box brags it's a fantastic game, but its strengths lie in perfectly nailed fundamentals rather than new features. They use portmanteaus like RealFeel or TrueDrive when they mean handling, and talk about that sweet spot between arcade and simulation like it's a slider on the dev's toolset that no-one thought to include before. Ordinarily it's hard to feel sympathy for games marketing folks.

720p grid autosport image