Racecar go Vroom
Grid features beautiful presentation and excellent, responsive driving controls that scale from mindlessly-satisfying arcade style to realistic brutality.
The career mode is a shining example of how to give players the freedom to choose the activities they want to play while still rewarding risk taking and giving a framework for the on track action. Each event brings up a difficulty menu that encourages you to ramp up the challenge by rewarding you with more advancement points by turning off crutches like driver assists, time rewind, and locking the camera to the game's beautiful driver perspective. This smart design decision gives you room to make mistakes as you improve your lines as you learn the nuances of courses without sacrificing progression through the career unlocks.
There are a wide variety of events from open wheel circuits, to drifting, to demolition derby on a figure eight track. There is a great sense of speed as you jockey for position with the scrappy and challenging AI drivers. Handling feels videogamey but just right on the 360's game pad (I have not tried a wheel). Grid does have a learning curve though, so be prepared for some accidental spinouts in the gravel and head-on collisions with road divides.
All of these elements mesh together like the high performance vehicles depicted in game to make Grid absolutely worth a look.
