‘GRID Legends’ is a damn fun simcade racing game.
My virtual ‘racing claim to fame’ is when I finished ahead of 4-time iRacing Coke Champion Ray Alfala in last year’s ‘FireCracker 400’ Prelim 2. There’s something about taking a massive piece of machinery and just pushing it right to the limit of you and it. I know it’s cheesy but there’s that line in ‘Speed Racer’ where Speed talks about being behind the wheel and just everything making sense. That’s me. Sadly, unless you are rich racing most likely won’t be in your future (like me). Enter the great world of racing games, the ability to afford me the luxury of being in a hypercar in France. The genre of racing games/simcades seems to be having lots of fun recently for the industry, and an old name makes a return. ‘GRID Legends’ is the latest in the franchise from Codemasters. The ‘GRID’ franchise hadn’t put out a release since 2019’s ‘GRID’ and with the 2022 release of ‘Legends’ they are looking to take to the track.
Leading us off is ‘Driven To Glory’ which is the narrative-driven campaign (car pun because driven). You play as a faceless racer only going by your number, Driver 22. You are the new rookie joining team Seneca who has seen better days and looking to get back to the front of the pack and win. A classic underdog tale for you and the team, but this has a twist. Like most of the racing world, we all have seen Netflix’s ‘Drive to Survive’ docuseries based around F1. ‘GRID Legends’ takes a similar approach by breaking up the races with pre-filmed cutscenes featuring real actors and actresses. Not gonna lie, Ncuti Gatwa from ‘Sex Education’ was cool and he continued to be as fabulous an actor here. There’s something about this story that is charming and honestly enticing at times. There were nights that I could barely pull myself away from the desk just because it was too fun to stay behind the wheel.
Gameplay is about what you would expect overall. I mostly played on my wheel and pedals set. I want to note you CAN play this on a controller and by all means, have a great time, but a wheel will add that extra bit of gameplay experience. Several different classes showcase a wide array of handling features, all different from the other. The classic Porsche feels heavy and floaty while the Electric Series car feels nimble and ready to pounce on the competition. The Stadium trucks handle like crap. They lean to one side and need the entire size of Daytona International Speedway to turn and make a corner. That’s how they are in real life though (NOTE: Please pause your reading here and go to YouTube and look at Robby Gordon’s Stadium SuperTruck Series. It’s the most fun on the planet). The devs did a great job with this, even on a controller, you feel the differences between car classes.
‘GRIDThe AI is also fun to be around and compete with. They are a similar design to ‘NASCAR Thunder 2004’ (yeah, I’m dating myself here). Essentially, rubbing is racing. You piss them off, and you bet they will race you just as angry. The cooldown period felt a little inconsistent on this. Sometimes taking races for them to chill, others just seemingly chiller the next few corners. There also was a section where they felt WAY overpowered to me. When running a race in the rain, up to that point in ‘Driven to Glory’ I was making goals, but then during this race, I just kept getting my teeth kicked in by the AI. The way devs handled the competition side is also good. They introduced a ‘conveyer’ system to help keep the AI strong and realistic. This shows big time. Plus there is a bit of randomness with incidents and collisions and that adds to the experience.
The visuals for the game are stunning as well. So I played on an ultrawide 2K monitor and had the settings on high (some of the screenshots here are from the said monitor) and this game is so stinking pretty. The rain and weather physicals are a sizeable improvement and honestly just some of the best I’ve seen in gaming at times. I did have some framerate and graphics hiccups though. If I used ‘rewind’ at times the screen would get some pillar bars and cut off a good chunk of the screen and hud, though if you pause and resume the game then fixes itself. Not enough to ruin the experience, but a bit bothersome and kinda frustrating to deal with. The soundtrack and just overall sound are so satisfying. Music during races varies but any form of trouble causes it to fuzz and fade and adds to the tension. Slam the wall out a corner? Music drops to add drama and it’s honestly a nice and small feature that brings a newer level of gameplay.
‘GRID Legends’ is a damn fun simcade racing game. While it’s not the most riveting story, ‘Driven to Glory’ is honestly a fun and intriguing story to make you want to keep going for hours and hours. The gameplay and overall game quality are solid, but not perfect, and visually it’s worth the time and energy ripping up the street or the track. EA and Codemasters are working to make this game evergreen with upcoming content and what they describe to be a cool online mode (didn’t report on that due it error issues on my end). This is definitely worth your time and money for sure. It gives those early 2000s games like ‘Need for Speed: Most Wanted’. Games that feel fun to drive in but yet have a weight to them and feel tense at times. ‘GRID Legends’ is out now for Xbox, Playstation, and PC.
