What's In Your Garage?

However, while the range of events certainly bests many modern racers, the car selection seems disappointingly sparse. While Gran Turismo Prologue boasts 70+ cars, GRID can only manage a few dozen, and you frequently find yourself racing against fields composed of identical vehicles.

While this is fine for some races, you’d certainly expect more than three car types in a field of 12 in a San Francisco street race, and the limited car choice in the game is a little unfortunate. However, each car has been lovingly crafted by the designers and not only looks fantastic, but handles completely uniquely.

Open wheel formula racers stick to the track like glue, stop on a penny and rarely drop below fourth, drifting cars get sideways with the nudge of an analogue stick, and require a great deal of skill to control their skid, and super cars are ferociously fast and require a great degree of concentration to avoid a certain trip to see Mr. Crash Barrier.

The difference between vehicles is enormous, and is almost to the game's detriment. There are just so many different handling styles to learn, that having spent 10 minutes roaring round the Nürburgring in a super car, jumping behind the wheel of a high revving drift car can be a little confusing, as you try to remember the nuances of its handling.

This isn’t like other racing games, where once you’ve mastered how to drive a rear wheel drive or four wheel drive car, you can basically drive them all – here the difference between a TVR Tuscan and a Porsche 911 is very discernible, and you’ll need to get used to switching between cars that handle very differently. However, following a few spectacular crashes and their accompanying restarts, you’ll get the hang of a car's handling and braking ability and start to move up through the positions.

No Flux Capacitor Required

Speaking of restarts, GRID has one particular feature that I just absolutely love, so much so that the thought of ever playing a racing game without it leaves me a little saddened. The feature is called Flashback, and it made an enormous difference to my enjoyment of GRID. Picture the situation.

You’ve just driven five laps of your chosen course, using your skill and control to move through the pack of opponents, and at the beginning of your final lap, you overtake the leader and move into first position. You push to extend your lead, ever growing your advantage, and then at last all that’s between you and victory is the last corner. Then, as you make your turn, your rear wheels slip off the road, spinning helplessly on the grass, and with your car pitching wildly, you disappear in a grey cloud of failure. The trailing pack all cruise past, and leave you to either limp home in a disappointing position, or restart the whole race. We’ve all been there, so I won’t bother to relate just how frustrating this situation can be, but I’m sure many game controllers lie broken due to similar circumstances.


But in GRID, you’re handed your very own time machine, with Flashback, the ability to reset your crumpled, broken car a few seconds back in time, thus avoiding that heartbreaking crash and giving you a second chance to take that corner and not get it so disastrously wrong. Just press the replay button, and select at which point in the last ten seconds you’d like to rejoin the race, and in true Prince of Persia style, you’re sat behind the wheel once again, free to take that last corner properly and drive on to victory!

While this feature won’t completely remove the continued restarts so common in some racing games (you only get a limited number of flashbacks per race, dependant on the difficulty on which you’ve set the AI), it certainly makes most races much more fun, with the knowledge that if you do completely mess up, you won’t have to redo the entire race.