In fact it’s refreshingly straightforward.įor a racing game with these sensibilities to succeed, it needs to be three things: smooth, pretty and full of spectacle. Without wanting to oversimplify such a proficient creation, it’s an ‘accelerate or brake and turn left or right’ kind of game - and there’s nothing wrong with that. The mods seem ultimately pointless too, as the game just isn’t the kind where you’ll hunt for a tenth here or there. Annoyingly, some events only open up once you’ve hit a certain upgrade level on a specific vehicle type, which can mean replaying already-completed career events just to get enough miles in that car to unlock its mods. You can also create your own race with any combination of tracks and cars - even choosing two completely different disciplines to share the track at the same time, complete with a head-start for the slower vehicles.īesides story mode there’s also a large career mode, though it does feel like filler, with the usual tiered events to unlock by basically grinding the same gameplay. It’s surprisingly good fun seeing 20 drivers drifting as ghosts around the same track. It’s silly, not too fast, and perfect for online play, as is the returning drifting discipline. Adding trucks to the racing mix has proved a great idea, as they lean precariously around Parisian streets, leaping over jumps and bunnyhopping each other with abandon. There are still outlier races that are too hard or too easy throughout the game, so sadly there’s no one setting that works for everything.įor realistic opponents, there’s another commendably solid multiplayer offering, now with 22 cars on-track at the same time, with mid-race drop-in enabled. Difficulty in general is a little unbalanced, and the hardest difficulty can feel too hard compared to the next one down, which can be too easy. Story mode is done and dusted in about seven hours if you’re reasonably proficient, although that will vary depending on your difficulty level choice. Suddenly you’ve got nemeses all around as you protest your innocence, but it all adds to the entertainment. Just drafting them down a straight can cause the nemesis state to engage or, worse still, they’ll spin out of their own accord and slew into you as they roll sideways across the track, which apparently is your fault too. They do indeed lunge for you when they’re triggered, which is fun, but the actual criteria for them turning against you feels arbitrary. Just look at his smug little face.Ĭomplementing this is the returning Nemesis feature, which turns AI opponents nasty if you bump into them too much. I genuinely wanted to beat him and the rest of the core cast every time I saw their names in front of me. It makes a huge difference to your emotional investment when you have a named rival to chase during races, and Grid Legends leverages McKane’s presence to great effect. But what wholly justifies the inclusion of the story mode is that all-important sense of rivalry. It’s of similar quality, so if you enjoyed that then you should like this too, though it’s perhaps fair to point out that there’s only so much you can do when it comes to a racing game story. While the story is reasonably well-scripted and acted by the ensemble cast, it nonetheless feels almost exactly like Braking Point, the CG-rendered story mode from F1 2021. It’s great to put a face to that name after all these years and he’s suitable greasy. Channeling Codemasters' own TOCA Race Driver 2 from 2004, there are cutscenes before each of the races in Story Mode, as you join the struggling Seneca racing team and take on long-time rivals Ravenwest with their star driver, Nathan McKane. The second biggest change is that headline addition of a live-action story mode. Even though your car slides at every opportunity, it’s actually disguising the fact there’s a great deal of grip here, making for an enjoyable experience whatever your skill level. It just didn’t feel quite right in the last game, whereas here it’s arguably the most playable handling system of any modern racer that doesn’t have ‘Kart’ in its title. No, not the added story mode, it’s more fundamental than that it’s the handling. It is very clearly similar to 2019’s Grid reboot, although there is immediately one thing that’s changed that makes this offering worth the upgrade. Instantly beautiful, fast and playable, Grid Legends provides the perfect counterpoint to serious sim racing. Super-slick, arcade-leaning racing from Codemasters, now with better handling and a live-action story mode to enjoy.
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