It’s difficult to perform well in cockpit cam and, unsurprisingly, Codies’ own stats told them 95 per cent of players used bonnet or chase cam. Then there’s the cockpit camera, which makes all of the above feel even more immediate and spectacular. The amount of time it must take to contextualise every name on the list and program it all in must undoubtedly be a chore, but my goodness, it’s amazing when you hear it here. If you’re lucky enough to have your name on the list, you’re even greeted personally by the female voice in the menus. Then there’s the depth of the career mode, where you have sponsor objectives to fulfil and even an entire eBay Motors-branded second-hand market for the wealth of gorgeous, licensed cars. Do you see the recurring theme here? By comparison, 2019’s GRID tidies them neatly away behind conveyor belt walls. It’s gleefully larger-than-life and, yep you guessed it, makes the game more exciting. Race them hard and they will inevitably slide off the track into one of the many piles of physics objects, sending individually-rendered tyres flying into the air as their car heaves skywards, crashing down in a flurry of sparks, debris and smoke.
This is exacerbated by the AI drivers’ frequent mistakes and mishaps. Cars can roll and regularly do, resulting in – yet again – exciting races. And race-ending crashes truly look and feel terminal. Impacts bend and break parts of your car and its suspension, causing you to fight against bent steering or suffer a misfiring engine all because you banged into the wall after the second chicane. Speaking of the damage modelling, it’s still right up there as one of the finest examples in gaming. Sure, you can see the keyframes between damage animations, but it’s still amazing, as if Neo had gone racing in The Matrix. Squeeze the tiniest amount possible and the game moves in extreme slow-motion.
DRIVER SAN FRANCISCO PS3 DRIFT FULL
But while this system has been seen in countless later games, the genre has inexplicably moved away from the original’s sublime time control that mapped playback speed to the full range of the analogue triggers. It trailblazed replay technology, too, utilising the then-new Flashback system to let you rewind time and resume play from a moment before disaster struck. Add a slight sepia filter and sun rays in the dusty air and everything looks like the hottest of summer evenings. You can feel the warmth from the sun-baked tarmac and feel the ’80s-esque romance of bleached advertising hoardings emblazoned with real-world branding. No racing game has ever captured that visual awesomeness in real-time gameplay… with the exception of Race Driver: GRID.
DRIVER SAN FRANCISCO PS3 DRIFT DRIVER
All through the late 1990s, racing games had CG scenes with a slick, hazy look to them, such as Ridge Racer: Type 4’s intro or the story scenes in TOCA Race Driver 2. Even the replay angles look more exciting than most other games.Īll of this is dressed up in visuals that feel like playable concept art. As a result, events in Race Driver: GRID are exciting, cherry-picking the best bits of its TOCA Race Driver predecessors while turning up the volume to 11, Spinal Tap style. Most readers of this site likely know and love the thrill of go-karting, so imagine that feeling, only in a deluxe supercar that gets airborne too.
You hurtle around corners and careen over the San Francisco hills with such a teeth-loosening clatter, you really feel like you’re clinging on for dear life.
Most importantly, the game moves like its ass is on fire. Take cover, there’s a shed load of GRID-shaped ammunition here and I’m ready to start lobbing. And with GRID Legends doing practice starts in the pits, EA and Codemasters would do well to remember what made this original game one of the all-time greats. No, I’m saying that objectively the quality of its production is almost always higher than modern racers. And I’m aware of what nostalgia goggles can do. That includes its own sequels and even its 2019 reboot. And you know what? Nothing ever beats it. Every time I review a new racing game, I compare it to Race Driver: GRID in my head.
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