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Grid 2 review
I've just gotten Grid 2 and have spent the last few hours playing with it.
It's awesome. If you like racing games, you should check this out for sure. It's the prettiest racer I've ever played, the controls are tight and responsive, and it's more arcade racer than sim. It's easy to play and get into.
The A.I. is very interesting too. There are about 80 different 'qualities' and each CPU controlled racer in the game gets a random set of 3 of them. So, some racers will come after you for revenge if you hit them, others will try to avoid contact, another might refuse to allow passing, where as another might let you pass. It creates a very dynamic race where no two racers behave the same way. It's really cool so far and the behaviors can vary wildly and you never know exactly what kind of racer's you'll be up against in a given race.
Another neat feature are the 'Live Routes' in which the tracks actually dynamically change as you race them. That forces you to pay attention and keeps you on your toes. There are also overtake events, in which you have to drive past a line of slow moving trucks without crashing gaining score for each one passed without incident. Hitting something knocks your score down as does not passing something in a set amount of time. The rest of the races are the standard group of track rules that have shown up in various racing titles like elimination, drift events, face off, Togue, and your standard, but not any less well done 'finish first' standard race.
I could do without the annoying guy talking to me on the menu screens. I think it's the same guy from Burnout Paradise, but he's not trying quite as hard to be a hipster douchebag because he's not pretending to be a fake radio announcer this time. It does bear some similarities to Burnout Paradise, as well as Need for Speed. It's not open world, the cars are destructible but more realistically so and a bit tougher than Burnout or NFS's vehicles.
The tracks seem very alive. Squirrels dart across the road, geese fly through the air, and tons of people line the sides of the raceways. Seriously, there's a lot and they are well animated. The human models are actually kind of low res and muddy, but you won't notice it during a race because they go by so fast. It can be a little jarring in the pre-race scenes where the camera pans about a little around the starting point.
Oh, and up to twelve cars on the tracks at once. That's quite something to see, especially when they are all controlled by human players. For those who don't know, that's very impressive for this sort of game.
Anyway, high speed fun, destructible cars [either realistic or cosmetic damage], and an awesome rewind feature that makes giving into the urge to do something stupid just to see what happens all the more easy to give into.
Check my screenshots. These are all at Ultra settings BTW:
This game is seriously sweet so far. The original Grid was a game changing racer that had a huge influence on the genre. It appears that Grid 2 is no different. Amazing game and well worth the wait. I highly recommend that you pick this up.
Last edited by Contrabardus; 28 May 2013 at 14:14.
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