Gearheads of War

Ok so I might not sound as sexy as the lady who will welcome you to GRID , but I gave it a shot.  She'll call you by your real name too, assuming it is in the list provided upon start up of the game.  This nice little addition and much more can be found on the GRID demo that is available right now on the Xbox Live Marketplace.  Let me tell you, GRID is a remarkably beautiful game and worth every bit of the 795 Mb's of love needed on your hard-drive to keep you busy before the game's release in June.  

Jam on the accelerator.

As you start your first race and your finger squeezes the same trigger that's shot so many bullets and revved so many chainsaws, you'll immediately get a jolt of acceleration.  The thrust of the engine is visible on both your car and driver as you swiftly speed between cars.  The intensity of GRID is really impressive and one of the most in your face games I've played in a long time.  The feel of your car sliding around curves just feels...right. Going along with the feeling that you are really driving a supped up racer is the thrill you are really in a supped up race.  The graphics of GRID will rival the best in the business right now, GT5 included.  The crowd looks and cheers beautifully as you fly by them on the track and will even offer blood-curdling screams when you crash.  Switch to the "cockpit" camera view and you'll forget all about the crowd and be fixated on all the switches and buttons inside your car.  The cockpit in GRID is the most impressive iteration of this view I've ever seen; although I'd advice you not to use it seriously until you get really good at the game.  With all these pretty things to look it's easy to momentarily forget that supped up racecar you are driving.  And that's when it hits you...

Crash.

Within a minute of playing GRID I had already slammed into four other cars sending car pieces and glass all over the track.  To start, I was playing this like PGR4, where GRID's gameplay calls for more of a Forza 2 feel.  Make no mistake about it this is a driving simulation game, meaning, it isn't easy at first.  I must have hit the "restart race" option three or four times before I finished my first race.  In turn, this means for the first thirty minutes to an hour you'll be spinning out, slamming into your opponents and sliding all over the track.  But there's good news-it gets better, and quite frankly looks amazing.  I often didn't mind crashing because hearing the crunching and smashing between cars and watching the damage occur realistically before my eyes was enough to keep me playing.  However there comes a time in every man's life when he wants to win...

Replay.

The option to restart a race has almost always been available in racing games and for good reason.  But GRID takes cleaning up your mistakes to a whole new level.  If (more likely, when) you total your car, the gameplay goes into a slow motion, outside of your body type of experience where your manager of sorts tells you what's going on.  From here you can either retire from this race (quit), restart the race, or pick a spot in the race to continue at.  Upon picking the third option, you are able to rewind your race, replay style and watch everything that was going down right up to and including your crash.  You can pick any point to jump back in time into your race and try again.  This is all done extremely quickly and can have you back in the race in less than a minute.  Replays don't stop there though; at any time during your race by pushing the `Back' button you are sent into replay mode and can watch the last 15-30 seconds of your race instantly.  All the options of your classic VCR are included allowing you to fast-forward, rewind and pause your replay.  Also on the palette is the ability to watch your replay in slow motion.  Watching GRID in this way makes you feel like you had put together a trailer for the game and were watching the fireworks of the finished product.  Watching a crash is especially cool, although the damage on your car is exposed, aka not perfect.  That said, the replay options in GRID are truly impressive and the game is fun to watch.  Maybe if you're perceptive enough you'll even improve your racing by catching mistakes and in turn...

Finish First.

More than anything, GRID really makes you feel like you're a professional race driver.  The difficulty is ramped up enough to make you put a bit of time into it but reasonable enough that you can start winning races pretty quickly.  With extraordinary AI, sliding around corners at 100 mph and watching your opponent's crash as you slide around them makes finishing even a lap satisfying and totally worth the time you put into it.  Included in the demo is three tracks and two game modes with "Drift" accompanying standard races.   Drift played nicely, essentially being a "How cool of a drift can you do" mode where it seems you have two fire extinguishers going off every time you turn.  Heh.  Also included in the demo is the ability to play matches online, although I didn't have a chance to check that out.

So if you haven't already, stop readying and start downloading.  GRID offers extremely fast paced, in your face racing that rivals the best out there.  Time will only tell if it is able to beat out that other driving simulator...