Grid

When your first transformation sets the racing world on fire, why stop there? Last year’s Dirt catapulted the franchise formerly know as Colin McRae Rally to stardom, and Codemasters is set to repeat that magic with Grid, the re-imagining of its superb TOCA Race Driver series.

Alex Grimbley, Codemasters’ senior producer, instantly won us over by confessing that Grid’s team has “feature fatigue,” so they’re focusing simply on delivering an exciting race experience. “We wanted to get away from car-collecting and decals,” he says. “Yes, we know it’s popular, but a lot of the feedback on Dirt was that people weren’t too fussed with that. [So] we haven’t just gone, ‘Let’s put in 200 cars.’ All our cars are aspirational in the race-driver sense.”

What that means is 50 real-life race cars that Grimbley calls “thoroughbreds,” although Codemasters isn’t yet revealing specifics beyond the usual blend of exotics, tuners, and muscle cars. There’s no tuning — the cars mimic their very specific real-life set-ups, and remember: Grid’s all about the racing. That means no pit stops either. “We don’t want to go too far down the simulation route and punish you,” Grimbley explains.

A key part of that promise is the behavior of A.I. drivers in the pack, and the Grid team knows that well. “[We] thought a lot about what makes a race cool, so you’ll see lots of human errors [from the pack] — it’s not just a procession around the track.” We had a few turns behind the wheel of the preview version, and could quickly confirm that Grimbley wasn’t just spouting well-rehearsed hype. The CPU opponents we faced took different lines, made mistakes, and even spun out right in front of us — it was kinda thrilling, actually. All told, Grid includes 600 A.I. characters with their own personalities (aggressive, corners too fast, hangs back at start, and so on), and as you progress in your career, you’ll get to know them and be better able to decide who you want to hire and fire.

Speaking of that career, Grid follows the familiar formula of the rookie driver making his way to the top and forming his own superstar team. While it doesn’t use Dirt’s pyramid of events, it’s equally nonlinear, and you can skip whatever you like. The U.S. events involve city-based circuits, the European ones visit famous race tracks, and in Japan, it’s all about the drift. “There’s no Vin Diesel and loud music,” Grimbley laughs. “We included it because it’s a legitimate form of racing in Japan.” On the multiplayer side, the Grid team wants you to “just have fun,” so all the cars and tracks are unlocked from the start for 12-player action over Xbox Live.

Last but not least, Grid is already ridiculously fast and pretty. Remember how Dirt’s graphics blew everyone away last year? Grimbley’s team spent a year tearing apart the Dirt engine, damage modeling, and visuals to improve them all. So get ready — part deux is inbound, and it’s looking like the 360’s new king of circuit racing.

SIDEBAR: Be Kind, Don't Crash

One of the niftiest things about Grid is that Codemasters agrees with you — crashing sucks. So in single-player races, you can pause and rewind the action about 10 seconds, pick your respawn point, and not screw up that turn the next time. Yes, there will be a price. Rewinding prevents a lap time from being posted to the leaderboards, and Codemasters is still deciding how to otherwise limit it — once per race, reduced earnings, that sort of thing. Still, we’re not ashamed to admit that bad wrecks make us quit and restart anyway, so props to Codemasters for saving us the trouble.