GRID Autosport

A glorious return to form for the series.

Codemasters demonstrates once again that they truly are the masters of racing game code. GRID Autosport is the most fun you'll have at the virtual track. Bet on it.

Codies triggered a flashback rewind to correct the mistake that was Grid 2. Weighted towards sim, but fun as well. [August 2014, p72]

Grid Autosport is a fine racing game with enjoyable driving experience, a lot of variety in types of (race) cars and an extensive online multiplayer mode. We can forgive the fact that the game doesn't look good in every respect: it has no negative influence on the experience of racing. By far the most impressive thing about the game is the AI, that asks everything of you to win races, again and again.

Better late than never: the third Grid game is the best one yet, especially when it comes to variety of racing classes, highly developed driving and artificial intelligence. The rough visual edges do not affect the strength of the experience that is reminiscent of the TOCA and DTM heyday of Codemasters.

Ultimately though, GRID Autosport is a consistently satisfying, intense and rewarding game, one that I can’t wait to continue playing.

GRID Autosport is one of Playstation 3's best driving games. A wide range of places, tracks and disciplines are its benefits. As bad counterparts: the terrible quality of its textures and the resolution at which the game works.

Grid Autosport promised proper motor racing, and that’s exactly what it delivers (and plenty of it, to boot). It falls a bit short in the visual stakes compared to the hotter, new generation completion, but few developers get pack racing right like Grid Autosport does. The spirit of the classic TOCA games is finally back.

It’s kind of hard to recommend this as a $60 purchase, but if you loved either GRID game before, you’ll enjoy GRID Autosport – just be prepared for a visual shock to the senses when you see how bland the menus look.

Codemasters did an outstanding job by delivering a medley of racing options and styles with GRID Autosport. It’s not perfect, but it’s damn close to a perfect experience when you want to try everything on the racing menu.

GRID Autosport combines interesting cars, entertaining tracks, excellent AI, and a quality handling engine to deliver a terrific racing experience. Unfortunately its career mode lacks depth and isn't particularly engaging.

Grid Autosport is far from a pick-up and play racing game, but franchise veterans and those willing to spend the time mastering its intricacies will find it all the more rewarding for it.

The different racing styles provide a hugely diverse experience that really highlights Codemasters' strengths as one of the best developers of racing games.

GRID Autosport mixes simulation and the arcade experience. There are five different game modes (Touring, Endurance, Open Wheel, Tuner and Street) on 100 tracks, in Barcelona, Dubai or Washington. It's interesting and fun, again, to race with the cars made by Codemasters.

While we might sound a bit harsh on GRID Autosport, it really is a solid racer with tight controls and competitive opponents. It is an improvement over over GRID 2 in some ways, but with so much repurposed content, it's more like a best-of collection than a completely new game.

Last year's Grid 2 was different than the original racer, but even though Autosport tries to return the series to its roots, it has lost its bite and raison d'être.

Overall, Autosport does things well enough and offers a decent compromise of customization versus accessibility without going off the deep end for serious gearheads the way Gran Turismo does.

Just as in GRID 2, gloom of single player races diluted by adrenaline of online modes. They offer not only the same five career disciplines, but also essential management, easy tuning, leveling and weekly competitions on the RaceNet site. [September 2014, p. 62]

Some aspects (such as audio and visuals) of GRID Autosport are a bit sloppy, but for the most part this is a decent racing game.

More of a filler than an actual new game in the franchise. We’ll wait for the next-gen step of this great racing series.

Even with some customisation offered in the realms of online, the whole package still feels like a selection of disparate parts with no real core holding it all together.

GRID Autosport is certainly much more in line with what fans of the first game wanted to see in GRID 2, but it manages to arrive on the scene just a year later.

Codemasters is definitely moving in the right direction, but this franchise still has a few more mile markers to pass before it escapes from the shadow of the outstanding entry that got it off the starting line.

Grid: Autosport’s attempt to capture the spirit of five distinct racing disciplines pays off in terms of gameplay variety, but the experience feels stripped back in many of the ways that make the genre’s best titles feel like personal journeys.

GRID Autosport is a really good racing game, delivering terrific sensations, but it suffers poor AI, technical issues on PS3 and 360 (the PC version is MUCH better visually) and a lack of new content.

Still a mix between simulation and arcade racing, but GRID Autosport has enough options to adapt the experience to any kind of gamer, at the expense of polarising many of them.

Grid Autosport is undeniably a great racing game at its very base and that will appeal to fans of Codemaster’s best efforts, but sadly there just isn’t enough depth of content to draw in those that would consider themselves on the fringe of the racing game genre.

GRID Autosport is a quality production, as you would expect from Codemasters when developing a racing game. It's just difficult to see the relevance of this game on console, when there are so many next gen racing games on the way.

Unfortunately for franchise fans, it is going to leave the podium without spraying any champagne. [Issue#246, p.74]

Overall, GRID : Autosport ain't a bad game, but it sticks to recycling the gameplay of Racedriver GRID and the graphics of GRID 2. The content is scarce at start and the AI is an example of what not to do. All this was expected as the game spent less than a year in development, but still, selling a stand alone DLC for the price of a full game is a but daring. The loss of customisation for cars is a major down from previous episodes. Overall the game still proves worthy but it surely wont seduce much besides the ip's fanboys. The best way is still to get GRID 1 & 2 during some sale.

Grid Autosport is magnificent in racing and pretty terrible everywhere else.

Causal racing fans looking to simply mess around with their dream cars will find more tension here than it is really worth to get what you want out of the game. But, hardcore racing fans who have no concept of repetition being a bad thing, will find the game’s 22 different locations and five very diverse race types an interesting departure from the status quo.

And it’s a shame that the career mode is such a letdown here, because everything else about GRID Autosport feels fine. It’s still a series that attempts to straddle the line between sim and arcade racer, and does so better than most.