At a recent event in the Sin City of Las Vegas we managed to get our hands on an early preview of the upcoming Codemasters arcade/sim hybrid racer GRID: Autosport. The third in the series it looks to build upon what made the first two games successful but with more options and race styles than ever before.
In this round you’re being offered five different race styles right out of the gate: Touring Cars, Endurance Racing, Open Wheel Racing, Street Racing and Tuner Competition. Each category has their own unique features, the cars being the obvious one, but they also handle differently, have more or less aggressive opponents, tight turn courses or wide open road. It’s as if the world is there for you to race in any way you feel. Codemasters has put countless hours of development time into making this the best offering in the series yet and it was easy to tell by their enthusiasm that they’re extremely proud of what they’ve created so far.
When we got our hands on the game we were able to play three of the categories on three separate courses and the differences in handling and feel was apparent immediately. The Touring cars had fairly aggressive opponents and they weren’t afraid to bump and grind a little bit as the pack seemed to move very close together. When we moved over to the Open Wheel category it was far less jostling for position with aggression and much more focused on taking your time, slipstreaming your opponent and waiting for them to make a mistake so you could take them on an inside corner. Luckily, as is with more and more racing games it seems, the opponents do in fact make mistakes and can wipe out on a tough corner just as likely as you might.
The Street Racing category, the third we were able to play hands on, was a personal favorite as we raced through the ups and downs of the gorgeous ocean side city of San Francisco. Quick 90 degree turns on a tight track with hyper aggressive opponents not afraid to give you a tap and spin you out in a quick pass. The adrenaline was pumping hard as I desperately tried to keep up with the pack.
In keeping with the balance between sim and arcade there were lots of assist options available to the player to keep them competitive. For an arcade racer like myself (ie: WHAT ARE BRAKES?) it was easy to transition over with the assists for a few races and slowly wean myself off of them to make the game more challenging. With all the assists off you need to know how to race with every minute touch of the throttle or brake causing your vehicle to react noticeably.
When speaking about the multiplayer capacity of the game they made sure to mention to us how they are incorporating their already existing RaceNet into GRID: Autosport. Racers will be able to form clubs of up to 100 racers and create their own livery that all team members will race with. Collecting points on every race they can compete against other clubs from around the world to gain top spots in the leaderboards. Much like being a part of a team in the single player version you will be able to communicate with team members to have them help block or pass opponents mid-race and boost your club up the rankings.
Despite being released on last gen systems and PC only the group at Codemasters still seem to be pushing the limits of what these machines can do. It was stunningly beautiful and the details of not only the tracks, but the cars themselves, are very well done. When speaking with a couple members of the development team they were happy to let us know that cities such as Barcelona, Washington D.C. and many more famous tracks around the world would be making a showing in GRID: Autosport.
Now only playing three tracks out of a game is hardly enough to call whether or not a game will be amazing or not but it is just enough of a taste to get your interest piqued. If the rest of the game feels and plays anything like we were able to see it is something to get excited about if you’re a racing fan. GRID: Autosport, at a quick glance, offers enough customization and sim-like qualities to appease the Forza/GT crowd but also is just loose and high action enough to hopefully draw in the NFS crowd too. Striking a balance between full simulator and arcade racing in a tricky act indeed but Codemasters knows racing from the GRID series to the fantastic Dirt series so we can count on them to give us their best.
