Grid 2

Racing game specialists Codemasters take a break from its fine-tuned Formula 1 games and the muddy rallies of the DiRT series to bring us the long-overdue sequel to 2008’s Race Driver: GRID. Like its predecessor GRID 2 is a ‘best of’ motorsport that mixes up famous tracks, pin-up cars and blistering street races in one handy package. It doesn’t expect players to know their cam belt from their carburettor, but can this no-nonsense approach truly satisfy?

Last year’s Dirt Showdown never really knew what it was. Grid 2 does. Its continued shift away from its sim pedigree will still disappoint those of us who fondly recall the Race Driver games of old, but it still a great, modern package. A well-curated car list, a great sense of speed, and a well-thought out career mode combine in a racer that is a lot of fun to play through.

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Grid 2 is a racing game that rewards skill without punishing you for the tiniest mistakes, letting you master a simple system with a forgiving attitude. It may stray too close towards the easy side of the scale at times, and it’ll be interesting to see how the game works online (which unfortunately wasn’t tested in this review), but its career mode is well worth playing and you won’t be satisfied until you’ve mastered every single corner.

Born from the ashes of Codemasters' old TOCA Race Driver series, the first GRID was a continuation of the story-driven racer in which you play the central role of a burgeoning raw driving talent, wheel-spinning your way from one event to the next. There was something inherently rough and ready about GRID, with its deliberately grimy style and its straightforward, no-nonsense approach to racing.

I wish that more tracks were included in the game. Whilst I liked the variety within these tracks, I wish that they had included more so that the game had more replayability. The online works as you would expect it to. You select a certain playlist which then consists of different types of events that are either randomly chosen or chosen by the player. I really appreciated the fact that multiplayer had its own progression system. This allowed for the game to last a lot longer than if they both shared the same progression system. You gain credits in these multiplayer events in order to upgrade ...