Game: Codemasters: GRID Autosport

Archie411

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This dropped out of nowhere


GRID is back and it's going back to its roots!

GRID: Autosport aims to move the series back in line as a more authentic racing game. Set to include a more authentic handling model (more Sim than Race Driver: GRID), five distinct disciplines; Touring, Endurance, Open Wheel, Tuner and Street. Race at 22 locations (primarily circuit based) with a combined route list that totals over 100.

This game is, at its heart, inspired by you guys, our core community.


I do like that sound of that. Grid 2 was alright but I never liked it as much as the original Grid. So looking forward for this.


Joysitq said:
Codemasters whisked off the sheet on Grid Autosport today, a new entry in the racer series that's swerving onto retail shelves as soon as June 24 in North America and June 27 in Europe. The UK studio unveiled the game for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, which are the same platforms Grid 2 was released on last summer.

In an extensive introduction, Community Manager Ben Walke said Codemasters is building GRID Autosport based on community feedback to Grid 2. According to Walke, the prevailing message the studio heard was the wish for a more authentic racer experience that tracked closer to some of the studio's previous games.

"If Grid 2 raced off into a more narrative-led world of racing with more accessible controls," Walke said, "it's clear that for many of you, that wasn't what you wanted or expected from Grid 2. So with Grid Autosport we had the opportunity to make a much more focused motorsport game, a desire that many of you have expressed directly to us, and a game that in spirit goes back to some of our earlier titles in terms of content and handling."

To that effect, Walke explained car handling in Grid Autosport veers slightly closer to a simulation than the original Race Driver: Grid, with the game's five different disciplines offering distinctly different drives. While the game is targeted to offer a more realistic experience, Walke noted that Codemasters' aim is for something "authentic, not clinical."

Also, just to stress that Codies is listening to the fans, Autosport features the return of the cockpit view, as well as a dashboard view to provide a total of two in-car cameras. In terms of more on-the-box features, Autosport promises 22 locations with 100 different routes to drive, a single-player career mode and once again RaceNet support for multiplayer.


Autosport_Announce_Feat.jpg
 
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Why would this not be on the current generation of consoles (I'm not going to call it next gen because that suggests that the X360 and PS3 are current gen. and they aren't)? Seems crazy to me, especially with the price of them and lack of backwards compatibility.

Should be interesting, I got the original GRID for free and hated it but I've been a Codemasters fan since Colin McRae Rally and the Micro machines games on PS1.
 
.... I've been a Codemasters fan since Colin McRae Rally and the Micro machines games on PS1.

Don't forget the Toca Toring Car series (1+2), that was pretty impressive as an PS1 game.

 
This makes like the 5th or 6th new car game in development of the moment. Sadly, I can't say I'm overly excited about any of them. Some promise great physics, others innovative multiplayer options, but they all fail in one key area - car selection. There is still no Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport equivalent for PC, and I really don't understand why. Test Drive Unlimited came close...really close...but that was almost 10 years ago now.

Let's hope at least one of these new games proves me wrong.
 
There is still no Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport equivalent for PC, and I really don't understand why.

I ask myself the same question every time a new racing game comes out. I can't bring myself to buy an xbone just for Forza 5, even though it looks like so much fun. I remember being so excited playing the beta for Motor City Online, with all the customization with real cars, and then the end result was such a turd. The only other PC racing game that I can remember having the same sense of collection and car specific mods as Gran Turismo or Forza was NFS: Porsche Unleashed, and it only had one make.

I seriously don't understand how game developers either don't see the huge demand there is for a GT/Forza game on PC, or they choose to ignore it because of some crazy conspiracy with the console manufacturers.

This new Grid looks like it will be fun. I've enjoyed all of the Grids and Dirts that codemasters have put out in the past. The handling is fun but challenging on a gamepad and I'm too poor to have a space for a wheel setup. I'm excited to see how the different disciplines work out when they say that you can just start at whatever one you like and stay there. In the most recent Grid, I had the most fun sliding around in the lower level Silvia and really wished there was more to do with the low tier cars.
 
There is still no Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport equivalent for PC, and I really don't understand why.

Assetto Corsa and Project Cars are both aiming to be that game but they're still both in development at the moment. I don't know why M$ didn't port Forza over to PC, how hard can it be?

Don't forget the Toca Toring Car series (1+2), that was pretty impressive as an PS1 game.

For some reason I never had those games but I played them a few times with friends. I had TOCA: Race Driver 2 on PSP... it was rubbish.
 
Assetto Corsa and Project Cars are both aiming to be that game but they're still both in development at the moment. I don't know why M$ didn't port Forza over to PC, how hard can it be?

the whole idea behind forza is to have a title to compete with gran turismo so that people don't buy playstations for a lack of a massive driving game.
it wouldn't make sense to release this title for the pc.


what i miss even more than a GT/forza competitor on the pc is a game that features sim-like handling with open roads like TDU.
i would still be playing TDU if the roads had some more polys in them. its incredible how they could fuck up TDU2 so hard after what they've done with TDU.
 
the whole idea behind forza is to have a title to compete with gran turismo so that people don't buy playstations for a lack of a massive driving game.
it wouldn't make sense to release this title for the pc.

Why not? The Xbox is Microsoft after all, and they surely aren't going to turn down PC sales resulting from a ported (at low relative cost) version of their game. They don't care if the player buys an Xbox or a PC as long as it isn't a Playstation, they're still rolling in it.
 
They don't care if the player buys an Xbox or a PC as long as it isn't a Playstation, they're still rolling in it.

Xbox is it's own brand at this point. The people that market Xbox games are completely separate from the people that market Games for Windows, or whatever Microsoft want to call PC games these days. The people making decisions at Xbox want to sell as many Xboxes as possible and eliminate as much possibility for people to be using other devices. Any way for them to maintain exclusivity is going to be in their favor. If I could play Halo and Forza on my PC I would have never bought a 360, nor would I buy an Xbone. Even going so far as to not officially support the kinect on PC or the new Controller despite the 360 pad being the de facto standard now. They want to give people every possible reason to need an Xbox product.

Profitability trumps user satisfaction. If it were all about user satisfaction then xbox live would be free and have no ads, there would be a bundle that doesn't include the kinect, you would be able to take the thing apart without having to tiptoe around anti-tamper screws and stickers and put your own hard drive in it, and there would be no DRM.
 
This seems to have come out today. Has anyone tried it yet? Worth the price? Most of all, how is the gameplay? As in good arcade (Dirt series) or bad arcade (Shift series without mods)?
 
Oh yeah its June. Totally forgot about. The blogs I follow didn't mention a thing about it. Goes to watch some videos.
 
Tried it, didn't like it.
 
Tried for a few hours with just my keyboard. Menu visuals are extremely sub-par from and Codemasters previous games, the "teammate" system sucks (why would you be able to influence your AI teammate to do anything?)
I miss the "starting your own team" thing in GRID 1. It doesn't seem to have returned, which makes every race ever more repetitive.
 
Another potentially great game ruined by a horrible career mode.

You can't pick your own car... You get to pick from two 'contracts' that offer different xp rewards. The only way to drive the s13 Silvia in the Tuner group is to pick the team that offers less XP reward. Same thing with the Focus in the Touring Car group. You don't even have an option to drive the BMW that the 'bad guys' are driving. So you get to watch them have fun with RWD and zoom away on the straights while you're stuck dragging your ass around in a FWD Cruise. Pretending to be Plato is only fun for so long. I've finished all of the Category C Touring car seasons and it never let me choose anything but the Focus or the Cruise.

Grid was a lot more fun when you got to build up your team, choose your livery, and choose your own car for every race. There is no sense of anything being your own in this game. You just drive other people's cars and drive the tracks that they have determined. They tease you with an upgrade option on the race menu, but so far it's always said that no upgrades are available. Why couldn't there be some kind of progression system like in the F1 games where you get different small upgrades throughout the season?

As others have stated, the teammate controls are pointless. The teammate sucks donkey balls, so he is always near the back if not in last place. The Touring car races have the grid order flipped for the second race, but he goes from 1st to 5th in one lap most of the time; and the races are so short, so why wouldn't he be attacking the entire time? Maybe it has more of an effect on the Endurance races, but I haven't done any yet. What really sucks is that the team's championship points include your teammate's points. So if you don't get first in every single race in a season, the other team will win the championship easily and you won't get the XP bonus.

The physics are pretty good. You can feel the car's weight transfer and wheels load up. Finding the right braking points has been a fun challenge. The interior views are blurry as shit, but I use the hood cam, and there are mods out there to kinda fix them. The graphics engine is pretty old, so it runs really well on my aging hardware with everything on max. The splitscreen local multiplayer is great to see, but the demolition derby cars spin out so easily that my wife gets frustrated and can't have any fun.

I don't understand why developers keep trying to reinvent the racing game genre. Everybody has been asking for Gran Turismo on PC and nobody comes close. I had more fun with Grid 2, which looks almost the same. Autosport's driving is definitely improved, but I just can't forgive that awful career mode.
 
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Tried it a bit with the keyboard, will give it another try with the wheel. It's not bad for an arcadish game, can't talk a lot about the career mode.

Codies really is trying to push the whole "Be a racing driver" with this one, but Idk. I would have liked running my own team like in the original GRID

That being said, Im not sure if the engine has been updated, upgraded, or what, but it's performing very well for me, as far as smoothness and framerate, compared to F1 2013. If they're gonna use this engine for F1 2014 then I am excited about that.
 
Got the game a few days ago, I really like it. Probally my favourite GRID game so far. The F3 car is I feel the best car i've driven so far, just feels tight, but with the right amount of slip to make it feel like a lower level formula car. I love the BTCC/WTCC cars too, they feel quite a lot looser than I expect though.

Something I feel Codies have got perfect are the car sounds. Race engines feel visceral, touring cars especially sound almost exactly like what i've heard in person. I belive it's also the only game which I feel has correct exhaust backfire sounds.

I too would love to have the build a team feature back, i'm sick of the awful team mates in the lower teams. Guess it's kind of there online.

Overall, it's a fun game. I could see this being the base of a great sim if Codies ever go that way.
 
So the career is a bit of a hit-or-a-miss deal, where you either like it or you don't, but the driving model seems to be getting a universal approval?

I'm tempted. I'll need to check out local Gamestops to see if I could try this out before buying. Although I'm off to travels at the end of the week anyway so I'll probably wait for more opinions.
 
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