GRID 2 (PC) (2013)

-- Removed from Steam* --

*20191207: In August 2019, the game was removed from Steam.

20141017:
At first I spent some time with the tutorial on the speedway - about half an hour.

After ending the session, I'm asked to enter some information and choose some settings. I decide to set the difficulty level at medium and the damage level at full. While I don't know the effect of the damage level, I thought the difficulty level was appropriate for me, at least for most races.

In particular, after playing the game for a while, I mostly got a hang of the controls.

Anyways, I thought the graphics and game mechanics were pretty good. I don't usually play racing games though, so I have nothing to compare this game with.

Regardless, one small complaint I have is that I couldn't see the car design changes as I made them.

I was also a bit confused about the sponsor mechanism. I guess it makes sense to commit to three sponsors, but it wasn't well explained and I was under the impression you can switch them.

In the end, I enjoyed shifting gears and drifting. While I wish there was a better tutorial than a narrator making vague suggestions and comments using technical jargon.

While I eventually got the gist of how to drive efficiently, I still don't know the finer details and ultimately depended on the rewind mechanism to win races.

Speaking of which, the rewind mechanism is pretty fun. It's basically what you get if you were to combine Prince of Persia: Sands of Time with a racing game.

At its simplest, the time rewind can be used to undo situations like ramming into a tree. However, say you realized you can cut an opponent off if had veered on the inside instead of the outside. Well, then just rewind time and do it! The caveat is you get a limited number of rewinds per race, so use them wisely!

In summary, I enjoyed the game enough to put a solid two and a half hours into the game. So why did I stop? Because I had the toughest time trying to complete an annoying (and difficult) objective race: pass more rally trucks than your opponent, lose points for crashing.

[20141124 Edit]

GRID 2 (PC) (2013)