Recent reviews by monke brain

Original game was pretty good. The "update" that accompanied the steam release might be able to kill it. Quite dauntless of them to gut their game like this. At this point I am hoping they just roll it all back and pretend it never happend.

Loading Screen Simulator V.

I wanted to try the game again after I heard some good things from friends but after reinstalling it I was painfully reminded why I dropped it in the first place. I don't have a high end gaming pc, but I can still run average games on my m2 with 60+ fps on the highest settings, doesn't seem to matter with this 8 year old game. When it works it can be fun, but it also has it's boring and repetitive gameplay parts. Add some crashes in the mix and this game really isn't worth your time. The developers really didn't give a crap about this game on top of taking years longer to publish it than the console version. Absolute nightmare.

Grid 2 is one of my favorite racing games for a couple of reasons. I will try to not repeat what every other review is already saying but rather capture what makes this game special to me.

The Handling/Drifting:
Drifting in ofter racing games is either like skating on ice and too easy or the cars have too much grip and it is questionable if drifting is faster. In newer NFS games drifting becomes a chore and they give you the option for drift/nodrift-handling. All these things are, for a lot of the cars, perfectly nailed in Grid 2. Drifting is difficult, skillfull and faster, making it a really fun and rewarding mechanic to learn for multiplayer. In fact I would argue that this is one of the best games for drift-racing. The feeling on nailing the perfect drift around a corner is really like no other racing experience.

Multiplayer:
Multiplayer is the way to go to get some competetive racing. Singleplayer is cool but too repetitive for my taste. I wish they had a ladder or ranking system like they have in most other competetive games but unfortunatly racing games are kind of slow on the uptake about this one. Even with the starter car you can win in online lobbies as long as you are not driving in a race for the highest tier of cars.

Unfun car-to-car interactions:
If you try to spin out a car by touching it in the backleft/-right the car should spin out like in GTA Online. In Grid 2 unfortunately they decided to go against that concept and gave the car infront a major advantage making it possible to defend a leading position by active ramming cars trying to overtake you. This can lead to abuse and unfun races, especially if you start in the back of the grid because you have the highest level.

While drifting you have a lot less weight than other cars, making any contact with another car while you are in a drift a almost guaranteed crash.

All cars are not created equal:
As I have already mentioned drifting is the best part about this game. Some cars are more about drifting like the corvette (my favorite) and others are more about grip with short grippy drifts like the golf. Unfortunately they decided to add some cars who don't play in this mechanic at all and basically drive on railroads. This wouldn't be a big problem as long as these cars were not fast but they are. The cars I am talking about are specifically designed for racing so they are not being unrealistic on this one, it just doesn't make sense adding cars like this in a competetive setting. This only applys to the two middle tiers of cars(or was it only the 2nd highest one? Not sure anymore.) but it is enough to give me a sour taste whenever I have to go up against someone like that.

other pros:
- a lot of game modes
- a lot of tracks
- a lot of cars
- amazing graphics that still look decent today
- good damage model
- resetting for online and rewind for singleplayer
- free

other cons:
- low player base
- tracks are "only" a variation of a bunch of base tracks (the variations are significant but the scenery does get repetitive)
- multiplayer wait times
- interactions with walls are unpredictable, corners sticking out(probably on purpose to reward skillfull driving, however really inconsistent/almost at random)
- no longer on sale

When I talk about highest tier of a car I am talking about the fastest cars, not the ones with the highest tier number.

5/7