GRIP: Combat Racing

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.

A very adrenalinic and intense arcade racer, with a great visual/artistic design, lots of contents and very creative tracks. It's a bit too easy getting lost in its complex tracks tho, with too few visual indicators. It's however a suggested buy for every lover of the genre and nostalgic players of Rollcage.

GRIP is a fine racing game. It has some fantastic moments in its fast speeds and impressive maneuvers. While there are some issues here and there with the devastation of crashing, and the online being laggy at times, I find that at its heart, it’s a great racer that tries something that hasn’t been thought of in a long while. It’s a buy for racing fans, but I would hold off until a slight price drop, at least. Maybe by then a few patches and sort out a few things.

GRIP isn’t a bad racer by any means, but it could have been a lot more than what it is had the developer spent more time refining track consistency. Furthermore, the campaign itself feels nonsensical by design, and there’s certainly some population needed for its online component. Nevertheless, and despite those faults, GRIP is one of the most fun, intense and unique combat racers in recent memory.

A fun racing game despite its control problems and some minor graphical hiccups.

GRIP is an enjoyable racing game that is constantly hampered by bare-bones presentation. The core driving is a lot of fun, but when races and battles aren’t presented in a fun manner then it relies on the gameplay to be constantly engaging. The gravity mechanics are certainly cool to see, but they aren’t exactly innovative or game changing enough to overcome the shortcomings after the initial allure wears off.

If you're not looking for a spectacular AAA, but a honest and fun game, GRIP will suit you.

No doubt there are many others that will enjoy Grip just as much as I didn’t, and as a game, it's not so poor that I wouldn't recommend it. In fact, it's quite the opposite. If you get the chance, play a round of Grip or two to see what you think. There is fun to be had, but as far as comparing it to the fast-pace racers that got my blood pumping growing up, Grip is laps behind.

I love the idea of being able to race on practically any surface. It adds depth to an already crazy fast racer. With so many customizable parts, modes, and multiplayer options, you’ll find enough content for hours upon hours of gameplay. Unfortunately, the combat aspect is bland and could have used a lot more creativity. It averages out the game to being, well, average. It can get a bit repetitive but then again I’m not a huge fan of racing games, though I’ve played a lot. What I am a huge fan of, is combat racing like Blur which has a heavy focus on combat that actually changes the outcome of the race. GRIP was fast enough to be first in speed but comes last in vehicle combat.

While GRIP is very enjoyable and plays wonderfully in singleplayer, it falls apart the second you try to access the multiplayer. This effectively strips you of half of what the game has to offer, and it's hard to recommend buying while the game is in this state.

Ultimately, GRIP has fun gameplay at its foundation, I'm just not sure this first attempt takes the game everywhere it needs to go.

There are still several issues that need to be ironed out but GRIP: Combat Racing isn’t a terrible game. In fact, with a few necessary fixes, it could definitely become something rather special thanks to filling the gap left in the genre and providing something a bit different to most other racers. At present though, it’s going to take a bit more variety and polish for this to be a racer we’ll be remembering fondly.