I rarely play racing games but i really liked GRID 1. As a casual player i managed to do reasonably well and it had enough cars and tracks to keep me entertained for a while. Grid 2 is more of the same, except worse.
By far the worst part is the whole "career thing". You have to acquire 'fans' to …
I rarely play racing games but i really liked GRID 1. As a casual player i managed to do reasonably well and it had enough cars and tracks to keep me entertained for a while. Grid 2 is more of the same, except worse.
By far the worst part is the whole "career thing". You have to acquire 'fans' to progress. These are indicated by a big number on the screen. Winning races gives you x amount of fans, always a nice rounded number which makes it even sillier. If you don't have enough fans you can't progress to second tier of races in a season. It's mostly just an annoyance but the way the game pushes it gets on your nerves. "Why don't you try a promo event?" "There's a new promo event available." "Yada yada promo event." They recorded only a handful of these lines and one is played after each event. Ugh. Just let me race.
Another problem i don't remember having in GRID 1 is the mountain tracks. I play on Easy and i can almost always win races the first time. Except when they're in the mountains. It's harder to pass so the fact that you always start at the back is worse. The AI isn't bother by obscured roads, nighttime, rock walls that make you crash at the lightest touch or anything really. These tracks are often quite long and you still only get 5 "reverse time" bonses. It often takes multiple tries to win mountain races. When trying to unlock a car i've even had to set the game to Very Easy twice. I've won non-mountain races on Easy with 10+ seconds on the #2 so this is balanced poorly.
GRID 2 has a few other problems as well. There are too few tracks and too many cars. You quickly realise you're racing on the same tracks over and over again. Conversely, there are so many cars (i was at 44 cars in S4) with such similar names that they're hard to tell apart. Ideally it's the other way around. It's also a pain that you have to hit Enter 6 times and sit through at least 3 loading screens before you can select a racing event. I've never played a game that's so terrible in this regard.
Oh yeah, and the AI cheats. This is actually the thing that made me quit. I had restarted a mountain race for the 5th time or so, one time because the "reverse time" button simply refused to work. But i had finally managed to get a huge headstart of over 5 seconds. Then i noticed the AI closing that gap at an unnatural speed. I was so distracted i fell over the edge. Instead of letting you reverse time the game puts you back on the track at a full stop. So i came in second because of two stupid design choices.
I still think GRID 2 is worth playing though. The racing itself is lots of fun and for the most part you can skip annoying types of racing (drift, overtake). It's super-satisfying to round a difficult corner perfectly and speed away from the rest of the pack. Sometimes you manage to make another driver crash and it's fun to see them fly. The first 3 seasons and some of season 4 are very enjoyable, but after ~12 hours its flaws really hurt replayability.
