It’s now half past 11 on Monday night, and I have been playing GRID 2 almost constantly for the past four days. I’ve hardly slept, surviving only on pizza, Red Bull and handfuls of Pro Plus. I smell like an armpit, my hands are shaking, my eyes are bleeding and my heart is about to explode from the caffeine overload, so if this review is a little incoherent at times please forgive me. Right! Here we go – GRID 2 is amazing. You may know by now that I am a driving game fanatic so I feel that I am in a reasonable position to make this statement, and in the interest of balance I will ignore my own opinions on Codemasters so that I may give you a fair and considered review.

As the name suggests, this is the sequel to the hugely successful Race Driver: GRID, one of the most well put together driving games to appear on the current console generation. Codemasters have taken their time in bringing the follow up to market and now, five years later it’s finally here. You can immediately see that they’ve used that time wisely. The detail this game goes into is absolutely spectacular. I am a huge car nut; to the extent that I could identify a car based on the exhaust note alone and clearly the developers have pre-empted someone like me getting a copy of this game. The sounds are absolutely spot on and are the first thing you’ll notice, even before the graphics. The Mustang you find yourself in when you first drop in to the game sounds like bottled rage, the Bugatti Veyron sounds like a whale clearing its throat and the touring cars sound like a sack of spanners falling down the stairs while the world comes to an end around you. It is a joy.

The next thing you’re going to notice is that graphically, the game is stunning. The cars are perfectly rendered and the tracks and scenery are beautiful, particularly the night races and the Yas Marina track. The way that lights and scenery reflect from the cars as you pound round the tracks is just perfect, and the closer you look the better the attention to detail gets. A quick motoring lesson for context; on cars with a big turbo, when changing gear the pressure will cause a small amount of fuel shoot straight through the engine, ignites on the scorching hot exhausts and burns out as a spit of flame. This is common in many driving games and it’s been around for ages. GRID 2 takes it further and you can see the exhausts rattle as a small bomb goes off inside, you see the suspension flex as you wrestle through the corners and the sense of speed you get as you fly through the tight street races is just fantastic.

Next up are the racing physics. This the most important factor in making a truly great racing sim and not an easy one to pull off. As a regular man on the street, you and I simply cannot imagine the violent forces involved in an actual racing car. Put it this way; in the heavy breaking areas of a lot of race circuits, there is often a problem where bumps form in the tarmac as the breaking forces in a race car are so strong they actually crease the track. Race drivers often go home at night covered in bruises from the assault they receive from driving their cars, and this is something extremely difficult to replicate in games. As perfect as I think Forza 4 is, it is almost completely absent, and in the Formula One series the cars are so stiff its difficult to portray. GRID 2 however is completely immersive. The car flings into corners and throws you back in your seat when you accelerate and when braking in some of the touring cars you feel like it might just stop the world from turning.

GRID 2 also has line-ups of cars and tracks that are really very impressive, with seldom seen cars like the Ariel Atom and BAC Mono thrashing round equally infrequently seen tracks like Brands Hatch, the Algarve circuit and the Red Bull Ring in Austria (formerly F1 circuit the A1 Ring). They are something different than the usual racing sim fare, and complement the street circuits like Chicago and Dubai which are more aesthetically pleasing very nicely.

Gameplay is very good. As my review copy was for the PC, I fruitlessly tried to play using the keyboard controls for about half an hour before I gave up, raced round to a friend’s house and came back with an Xbox type game pad and suddenly it was much much better. The controls (when they aren’t a keyboard) are fluid and responsive, and you when you throw the car into a corner it stays thrown.

As you should know by now the story mode follows the creation of the World Racing Series, pitching cars of various categories against each other in various different racing formats. You’ll find yourself hitting circuits, street tracks and drift courses, so there’s always something different to enjoy. I’ll be honest, I don’t really like the story-mode element of this, as I don’t think it adds anything to the game as a whole. Ignoring Forza Horizon (like I did), the Forza series has shown that it really isn’t necessary in terms of tying the game together and while I get what they’re trying to do (trying to give you the sense of the global superstar status), it doesn’t really do anything for me. All I want to do is race, and when the race ends I want the next one to appear as quickly as possible.

Also, I have a bit of an issue with the track changing thing that Codemasters have added this time around. For those not already aware, on some tracks you will go round one lap and there will be a left hand turn, the next lap it will be a right and then the next a straight. Codemasters say that the point of this is to keep you on your toes; that players can’t pound round lap after lap on autopilot; you always have to pay attention. Fortunately this only appears on the non-real world circuits, and even then is relatively infrequent. Again, it’s not an addition that I’m happy to see as it’s such a detraction from the realism instilled throughout everything else, and it pushes the game a little bit further into the ‘Need For Speed/Burnout Paradise end of the driving game spectrum. If that’s you’re thing you’ll like it, if you’re like me and like realism you’ll be grateful that it doesn’t happen that often.

I’ve heard a few people complain about the AI being quite aggressive and in fairness there were moments where the Flashbacks came in very handy late on in the race, however I would argue that this is welcome as I found this game challenging. As I said earlier, I consider myself a driving sim enthusiast and for too long I have been able to coast through games even on the professional difficulty settings but GRID 2 right from the off is challenging, meaning that when you get on the podium you actually feel a sense of achievement. And it is this, if I’m perfectly honest, that has prevented me from switching it off for four days now.

I’ll wrap this up for you now; if you are like me and you like your driving sims, this is a must for you. It is a game aimed at you, the race hardened gamer who thinks they have seen it all before. Let me assure you, you haven’t seen this before. This game doesn’t want you to be a success, it wants you to earn it; and it gives you the most glorious of settings to do it in. I doubted that I could enjoy this as much as its predecessor, but I’m very happy to stand corrected.

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