GRIP: Combat Racing

This arcade racer is filled to the brim with content. The singleplayer experience is extremely varied thanks to a large amount of available tracks and the multiplayer modes offers endless fun for all. To top it off, the game sells at a fair price means you really should give this title a shot. The only issue we encountered occasionally is a technical glitch which sometimes cause your vehicle to behave oddly from time to time. Luckily these occurrences are few and far between. Highly recommended.

Grip: Combat Racing offers an enormous amount of fun content for a reasonable price. Frankly, this game could go toe to toe with a lot of AAA racers and come out on top. Blistering speed, amazing track design, wild action; if you can get past some mild frustrations, Grip fully delivers and intense, jaw-clenching good time.

Grip: Combat Racing not only brings back the exciting racing gameplay of the highly underrated Rollcage series, it manages to make it even more enjoyable. Factor in online play and you're left with one of the best arcade-style racing games ever made.

When all of these elements come together the result is a pulse-pounding adrenaline-fueled frenzied fight to the finish that often borders on all-out vehicular warfare.

Rollcage resurrection, friends. With its arcade feel and well crafted tracks, GRIP : Combat Racing is a cool little game every 90's arcade racers lovers should play.

Minor issues aside, Grip: Combat Racing is a great experience for both veterans of arcade combat racers as well as those who are willing to learn the genre. The initial learning pains and massive difficulty spikes toward the end of the game may turn away newcomers, and the catch-up mechanics and sometimes questionable physics may dissuade veteran players. For all others, though, Grip is a wild ride that offers fantastic tracks that are exhilarating to race on at lightning-fast speeds.

Infernally fast vehicles racing and blowing each other up on numerous, well-designed tracks where distinction between floor and ceiling is often purely formal. If you still remember Rollcage fondly, you will probably turn a blind eye to average visuals, annoying music and some AI problems to simply enjoy the sensation of speed. [01/2019, p.79]

For all its simplicity and frustrations Grip is an intense arcade racer that’s inherited the flaws of its vintage along with Rollcage’s strengths. [Issue#156, p.86]

GRIP is a fast game like you have never seen. The game lets you battle friends online and offline in diverse modes. Unfortunately the high speed has its cons, like the many times you'll crash and the total chaos this game embodies.

Time with Grip follows a predictable slope. It’s amazing that a team dedicated years of their lives to recreating Rollcage in 2018. It’s surprising how good it looks and how effectively it replicates Rollcage’s take on arcade racing. It’s exciting that it contains a massive campaign with a bunch of different race styles. At the end, it’s distressing that Grip can’t maintain an engaging tone across its time with the player. Without addressing twenty year-old problems, it’s difficult to make a modern commitment.

In the end, Grip has all the prerequisite gameplay and technical elements. Yet the randomness of the environments and the clunky air handling left little to be desired. It almost feels like a game of chance instead one involving skill. I’ll give it solid marks for the technical aspects but the randomness of the gameplay left me cold. It’s worth a try as you may feel differently.

GRIP: Combat Racing may never really dazzle you, but it does enough to keep your attention. It has the content, the customisation, the intensity, and the replayability.

GRIP comes together nicely. There's a bounty of content on hand which, providing you can deal with the frustrations of competition, prove fruitful and rewarding. The core racing keeps me going through a campaign that can border on exhausting. There's a lot of trial and error involved but it's compelling enough with a solid presentation to keep my foot in the door.

GRIP is a technically sound game and can genuinely offer some exciting racing, as you try to dodge enemy weapons, track hazards and more, all at insane speeds. However, it can also be a confusing game to navigate and also has very unfair rubber-banding which can screw you over more than half the time as you'll find a well-placed rocket right up your rear-pipe just before you hit the finish line.

Though GRIP offers up some exciting racing and vehicular combat on a really wild and creative set of tracks, a frustrating singleplayer campaign and serious technical issues with the online multiplayer make it difficult to recommend in its current state.

GRIP has great racing mechanics, but they’re marred by inconsistent implementation. As a spiritual successor to a turn of the century combat racing IP that only a select few would recognise – Rollcage – it’s best enjoyed in short bursts. Its familiar simplicity is inherently appealing, and its well-polished mechanics make racing fun for an hour or two. As you get your fill of the main mode and begin to delve deeper beneath the surface, however, it becomes apparent that there isn’t much to keep you coming back for more. GRIP has an incredibly solid framework, but it still feels like it’s missing something.

GRIP: Combat Racing is an unpolished gem that’s currently too flawed to fully recommend. When it comes together – particularly in multiplayer – GRIP is capable of providing some of the most engaging future racing this side of Wipeout 2097, but it’s all too easy for it to fall apart, especially when you’re placed in the hands of the game’s cheating AI.

All in all, I like GRIP more as a concept than I do in practice. Rough and tumble racing is fine, but the combat is shaky and it’s far too easy to accidentally clip a piece of scenery and get launched into race-losing situations. It’s also downright strange that a game which promotes driving like mad also requires navigating each track like I’m walking on eggshells. GRIP should [be] bursting free of traditional racing constraints, but instead adheres to them more often than the ceilings.