2025-05-02 20:58:14

Good fun racing

2025-04-30 20:43:52

Game deserves better if they don't release it at the worst time possible (they released it same week as Elden ring and a week before GT7, basically a recipe for failure), now I gonna assume the Grid franchise is dead

2025-04-27 14:59:22

My playtime in GRID Legends has been split between the EA app and Steam - on the EA app I won every single race within story mode on the highest difficulty.

GRID Legends is a re-packaging of GRID '19 with additional race disciplines, a bigger car & track roster, and a story mode in addition to a traditional "do the races and make money" career experience.

On the surface, it would appear this is the better, more complete game, but unfortunately that's not the case. '19 is still the better purchase overall.

The meta-game is significantly more grindy than Grid '19. You can't just buy whatever you can afford in a sort of realistic-but-simplified racing sandbox that lets you access any vehicle in the game and make it yours, quite quickly, About a third of the game's car roster is locked behind progression milestones in both story mode *and* career, requiring excessive playtime and participation in events you might not care for, which puts this title at a disadvantage. They broke something that didn't need to be fixed, and was a large portion of why I enjoyed '19. Yes, you can "rent" any car you'd like, but locking simple customization away unless I do a series of completely unrelated events is an outdated mechanic in the racing genre.

The big addition to GRID Legends is a proper story mode as well as additional DLC chapters. Constantly you're bombarded with headshots of the main cast, and encouraged to try out story mode if you haven't already. This concept clearly stems from the "Braking Point" anthology seen in Codies' F1 series, and offers bite-sized race scenarios tied together with a heavy dose of live-action cutscenes. The overall goal is to expand on the "Team Ravenwest" antagonists seen in each GRID game dating back to the original in 2008.

The problem is that the writing had a chance to draw inspiration from real world racing, yet failed to explore any of this territory. Real racing has demonstrably been full of unique plot twists - untimely deaths of legendary drivers, wealthy sponsors suddenly being barred from advertising at all, new cars being introduced that ruin the racing product, questionable sponsors not having the funding they say they do, series folding overnight, team orders controversies, surprise underdog wins, females struggling to gain a foothold in the professional ranks, narcotics smuggling, fraud, and fist-fights in the pits. There was a lot to draw inspiration from.

All of this has been neglected in favor of a very one-dimensional plot, with less substance than children's entertainment such as the 90's cartoon "NASCAR Racers," or the straight-to-VHS series HotWheels Acceleracers. You know Team Seneca are the good guys, and they'll win. You know Team Ravenwest are the bad guys, and they'll lose. That's the entire story. I don't doubt licensing played a role in this - no car brand wants to be associated with crime, match fixing, or financial troubles - but if telling a basic interesting story inspired by real motorsports lore isn't possible, bin the idea. Scrap the mode and allocate development resources elsewhere. Codies pushed onward anyways, convinced they could tell a story in which nothing happens except good guys win races, bad guys lose races.

The cherry on top is the very obvious DEI initiatives enacted, an awkward relic of the era this thing was developed - this doesn't just apply to the core cast but faceless AI bots as well, often sporting nationalities and names from countries with zero racing history at all. Before I'm accused of several things, it's akin to playing a few years into Madden NFL's franchise mode, and seeing an overwhelming number of Japanese or Russian quarterbacks in a draft class. At no point am I able to buy into the world they're selling me.

The new race types, such as drifting, stadium trucks, electric cars, and demolition derbies, give the game decent variety. The roster has also been fleshed out with a few more usual suspects from the Slightly Mad Studios asset library that otherwise didn't appear in Grid '19. But there's a catch to this - it's not really "variety", but rather a full-priced demo of Codemasters' back catalog.

If you're any sort of racing game enthusiast and own previous Codemasters products, you're merely paying money to access the same content you already own somewhere else. Drifting already exists in Grid Autosport, and the discipline is done to the same level of quality despite the game being 11 years older. Stadium trucks, both RWD and 4WD variants, are already in DiRT 4. If you want a complete demo derby fix, DiRT Showdown is still available for a few bucks, and a lot of the assets in GRID Legends are directly recycled from that game. The new stuff in GRID Legends, isn't really new. It's stuff brought over from older titles that still hold up visually, and that you can realistically still buy and enjoy for much cheaper.

Other odd design decisions pop up with regularity. There's a feature in online races that lets you drop into a race already in progress and take over one of the AI bots used to fill the field, so you aren't waiting around in a lobby for the current session to end. Interesting idea, but I don't recall a single person ever asking for this. This isn't an off-road game, but one of the DLC packs introduced snow as a weather option; again, I don't know who was asking for this. There are ways to instruct your teammate in the race to either attack or defend for you, but I've never actually seen this work to any degree, and talented drivers will be so busy fighting for the lead that it's hard to feel like there's a need to micromanage your boy back in 8th place. In short, there features in here that don't seem to add much of anything, making you wonder what this game could have looked like if Codies didn't allocate resources to strange areas.

This is all a shame, really, as the underlying core racing experience and driving model in GRID Legends is pretty good. Portions of Codies are capable of building really great mass market racing games, but the ideas department for GRID Legends was clearly lost. Between unappealing grind mechanics, an utterly pointless story championed as the focal point of the game, recycling content that is done better in the company's back catalog, and introducing features that seem to be a mix of random proof-of-concept ideas, GRID Legends is a weird buy. So don't.

2025-04-21 15:29:18

Awesome, not sim but so fun to play!

2025-04-18 16:24:52

I do like this game and I do not like this game.

Most time it's fun, mostly I spent my time on the story mode, playing on hard but there were so many events I need to go to easy, especially for drifting, to make it through. Three of the DLCs I not even finished because it was no fun at all.

Playing with the controller was alright, wheel and pedals are a nightmare tho.

And yeah, the drift events definitely ruined it for me... I'm just so bad in it that I couldn't enjoy the game and the rest of the respective story parts. So yeah... Very mixed for me.

2025-04-11 23:18:40

Nothing like the original GRID, no sense of accomplishment, you don't build your own team and branding, this is much more AAA type racing game. The original GRiD was great because it was different and didn't feel like all the other racers.

With that being said, if you like racing games, this is fun. You can race all different kinds of classes, you can hit objectives, etc. Just not what I thought it would be and didn't scratch the itch I had for GRiD.

2025-04-09 12:55:43

Great racing simcade experience. The story is beyond cringe, but they at least went through the effort for the live action stuff. Some have complained about grind, but that's literally what the story is about, a racing rookie making their way to the top. If anything there is plethora of events in the mainline career without being nauseating. I never feel as if I'm cheated or just racing for nothing. The races can be adjusted in length if you prefer, and there is an insane amount of visual (livery-based) customization. I haven't gotten bored of the various cars and classes, or the big selection of tracks and conditions.

The sound design is awesome. A lot of other games simply "vroom" with their cars, but these cars have personality. Even the VW Bug Cup car pops bangs and burbles on liftoff. Loud transmissions on some cars sound like straight cut gears. There are at least 20 sponsor challenges with 3x objectives each, with a reward event upon completion. The team mate system is unique; you can improve both your track team mate and engineer(?) to help you during races. Make the team mate push for position, hold, or even give your rival a hard time with door to door contact or blocking. You can make other drivers have a vendetta against you. This makes for an individual experience as different drivers wind up being adversaries based on track incidents.

From trophy truck to formula 1, time attack to drift, kei car to LeMans prototype, there is something for everyone here. Please give it a shot on sale bundled with the DLC and leave a review! We need fun in games again.

2025-04-07 17:16:13

One of the most complete single-player simcade racing experiences money can buy. Well optimized, it even runs reasonably on Steam Deck at 30fps. It drives great, way better than its 2019 predecessor, and it looks spectacular. Money very well spent.

2025-04-05 21:15:37

This game is cool but have so many small problems that it becomes hard to play. Handling its cool (on most of the cars), the game looks great, tracks are interesting because instead of just being 1:1 replica of real life tracks, it adds some details like grid banners, confetti at finish, spark cannons around map and fireworks at night. But this is all what's cool about this game. Story mode its alright nothing wrong there, but the main campaign when you start your own team its other story. Its super grindy, you have to replay same events to even progress, handling upgrades on cars usually don't upgrade handling, but downgrade it instead by making them understeering, AI its stupid AF, I played on expert difficulty and not even ones I had any problem beating them by being ahead +10 second, they just drive on green line and nothing more. But there's one difficulty higher then this, and its called legendary. But instead of making AI more difficult or smarted in any way, its just give them max upgrades on cars, which makes them unbeatable unless you also have your car on max upgrades (engine upgrades are crazy in this game). AI also likes to clip there wheels into the ground or just spin out of the truck when they drive on straight line, and there is a system called nemesis which is cool on paper, if you bump/block enemy to much they become your nemesis, its supposed to make them more aggresive against you, but usually you just overtake them and forget about that thing. There is also your teammate that should help you in races but usually its just blocking you by slowing on your face or just by blocking turns, you can't turn him off or just even change him for better teammate. The game just have so many stupid bugs in game and in menu (btw menu design its also a disaster), one of them being when you pause game and then press pause button again instead on click continue there, you will have a big red PAUSED banner on top of your screen. You don't have car that feels like yours, you have 120 cars in this game but for some reason there are all group into like 60 classes, so you usually can pick between 2 cars (usually you can't even choose because there is only 1 in class). Also achievements in this game are just tedious to make, the worst one forces you to drive 159 km in one of the slowest cars in the game, which is locked to derby maps (because why not). Demolition derby in this game its also tragic, damage on cars in this mode works like that - you drive 30km/h faster then opponents and bump them? they lost 1/20 hp, you drive 200km/h faster then them? Doesn't matter they still lost only 1/20 on they hp. It also doesn't matter if you hit them from behind, front or side. Also all enemies in this mode have perma nemesis mode on you, so they are only agressive to you and no one else (I love casual driving on demolition derby).
So yeah, there are more things that annoyed me but I don't feel like making this review any longer.

2025-04-05 11:25:32

looks and functions as advertised. fun game.