The tires are like the howl of the hounds of hell, the roar of the engine is like a lion in your heart and the handling? Well, that’s a thing I’m not a huge fan of. I love driving games, specifically racing games by Codemasters; at least while EA aren’t making any closed circuit Burnout games.

My love of Codemasters’ games is well documented here, I still regularly play F1 2019; when I have several podcasts and a spare day to play a full race weekend. Then earlier this year, before I knew there would be a Grid game this year, I reviewed Grid 2. My favorite in the series, will it be after this? Maybe. You see, I’m kind of biased because I like switching off and driving very fast. That’s what racing games are perfect at doing; Grid (2019) would have to stab my cats and then defecate on their corpses for me to think its the worst of all racing games.

I’m more than happy to say, Grid (2019) hasn’t stabbed my cats; though when they pounce on my chest at 3 AM I sometimes wish it would. Nevertheless, I do want to comment on my issues with the handling first, it’s not the worst by far. However, the series is known for having a heavier feeling to the driving; and coming off the back of F1 2019 where you’re driving something lighter than the average games console, you can notice the difference. It is this difference that has taken several hours to get used to.

For example, I thought I’d be smart and drive the Formula 1000 cars from the outset. This was a massive mistake of over and understeering. It was the equivalent of going from driving a simple Fiat 500 with traction control and all the other stability bits, then hopping into an F1 car with none of that. I’d suggest doing a couple of races and twiddling with the setting for a while. This and using the tuning settings to be a little more precise with the cars themselves.

Otherwise, it is everything you could ever want from a racing game. There are lots of tracks, lots of cars, and lots of points to never use the brake button. That’s a lie, I did spend the first few hours playing like a normal human to get acclimatized towards the heavy handling. After a while, I did start using the hand brake to slide around corners like a cartoon character. Then about an hour later I started doing something much more sensible. I started smashing into other cars, as there’s no penalty for doing it; other than the man on the radio telling me, “Come on now, behave.” If the man tutted, I’d have cared more of his opinion.

The stewards will yell at you once during the week and twice on Sunday if you spit anywhere outside the track limits; even when going backward. However, they don’t care when you kill a man (or woman). Many of the cars you drive may not be the jet engines with wheels that an F1 car happens to be, but when you take an old Mini and T-bone someone on a corner at 50 miles an hour, you do some damage. The thing is you don’t take proper damage; no tires get stuck in wheel arches, no engines stop, and no bits fall off making the car less aerodynamic.

There was one race in Shanghai where I did have a fatal crash; however, this was a head-on collision with the terrain. Yet for every car I’d either sent into the barrier or next field over, they didn’t give me more than a superficial scratch. This may be a bug, or I’ve broken the game. I just assume that this was how the game was designed or how the game isn’t meant to be played. Either way, I’m pretty sure I’ve killed some drivers.

The thing is, as much as you can and will be aggressive the AI will attempt murder upon you if you are too forceful in the corners. This also applies to your teammate, who you have to have a reasonable relationship with or they won’t follow team orders. The issue is, there’s no sense of the relationship growing after several races; they are just there as a metric that could help, hinder, or as they often do, suck all your money away. As much as it is an improvement over Sebastian doing nothing in F1 2019; Dave, or whatever his name is, does nothing either.

This brings me to the drivers and their nonsense, or at least I assume it is nothing more than nonsense. Each driver has a name, number, and team they are affiliated to. I assumed they would all be made up nonsense for each bit such as the Nascar and Fernando Alonso championships. It turns out Fernando is in the game, or his name anyway, and Jamie Chadwick who raced in the W Series is also in there. This is where I’ll annoy fans of Nascar: I don’t know if the Buck, Bill, Dale, Dick, Donnie, Buddy, Rusty, and Ernie are real or not.

In conclusion, I don’t think Grid (2019) will be replacing my time switching off with F1 2019. Not because the game is bad, but just the long load times for short bursts out on track outweigh what I want. The variety of cars and tracks make up for a large amount of that; however, some of these tracks or cars get a little boring after several races around them or in them. It is a much prettier Grid over Grid 2; but you may have noticed, I don’t care about graphics as is evident by my love for Burnout 3.

An Xbox One review copy of Grid Ultimate Edition was provided by Codemasters for this review.

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Grid

$59.99 USD

7.5

Score

7.5/10

Pros

• Lots of cars and lots of tracks.
• AI Drivers are more aggressive.

Cons

• Long load times for short burst of gameplay.
• Handling can take a long time to get used to.