When EA destroyed racing games with the newer Need For Speed games, it was Codemasters who got me back into racing games. GRID 2 was a class above anything else with its gameplay and split-screen multiplayer. It also helped that GRID 2 made you dance with the controls while drifting, making you focus at every step

I reviewed GRID 2 in 2018. Hardly feels that long ago since I still play GRID 2 on a regular basis because it is a fun arcade racer who tore me away from calling Need For Speed a good racing franchise. While I didn’t like GRID: Autosport for its simulation stance, I wanted to see the new GRID. I wanted to see if it followed its simulation roots or wanted to go the arcade way of GRID 2. Either way it was cheap as one of 12 games I picked up on Fanatical (formerly BundleStars). So, let’s see how well Codemasters did this time.

Story:

There is none. The lack of story is disappointing since you need something to push you forward. GRID 2 had a story whose sole purpose was to make you play the next event; while it did fuckall to your emotions, it drove you forward. GRID 2019 offers no such reprieve. I can’t really find anything to make me play the next race except for my curiosity about what’s next. Having no story in a racing game doesn’t bloody work. This feels like an order from the cunts at Reliance who don’t understand anything rather than Codemasters who might have had a story planned but didn’t get to fulfil it..

Sound:

There is minor soundtrack playback in the menu, loading screens, and the pre-race camera pan but once the countdown to start is over, it drops to 0 so that the player can enjoy the howling engines, the tire squeals which are great. The flashback has an inception like sound effect when triggered which is great too. The only thing that annoyed me with the special effects was how muffled the cars hitting each other were.

The commentators have a few lines pre-race which vary by track but can get annoying. In race the commentators only speak when something for the driver shows up like trading paint, they hardly have anything to new to say though. This lack of words is shared by your team manager who only perks up to mention to stay away from a nemesis and to pass orders between you and your teammate. I miss the managers from GRID 2 who had some great lines between races and actually had worthwhile things to say like telling you not to push too hard when you had a lot of damage.

Graphics:

While a DirectX 12 game GRID 2019 doesn’t make massive improvements over GRID 2. I’ve been rewatching the videos I took while writing the GRID 2 review and I can safely say that while the graphics are more detailed, they are not 6 years better. GRID 2019 looks great when you are looking for the graphics but while playing the game itself you will be hard-pressed to notice any mind-blowing improvements.

The sun and its effects are beautiful, to say the least, the way it illuminates the world, gets cut by trees and mountains, it is great to look at. It’s sad that is the high point of the world’s graphics. The trees look like sprites along with the balloons next to the audience. The audience doesn’t look that much better than past games. The choppers that fly overhead are really low quality as well. The rain too is really poor quality being made out of falling white lines, it does have a few saving graces in the form of camera effects with water droplets blurring the vision and the effects on the roads like water being thrown by the cars. Lastly, there are the sparks from scraping against other cars or the track barriers, they look pulled straight from a mid-2000s game. Yeah… the world isn’t great to look at.

The car detail, on the other hand, is a sight to behold. The cars look astounding. Everything about them is so overly detailed, it’s fan-fucking-tastic. The droplets of water on the cars during the rains, the cracks in the glass from minor damage, little bits of traded paint on the car, all of them are impressive to see. Even serious damage is impressively detailed: The damage on the hood, spoiler, side skirts, bumpers and other aspects are really and I mean really well done.

Between the world and the car details, the graphics average out to about between good to great but not excellent. Nothing really wowed me about the graphics as a whole.

Gameplay:

GRID 2019 is similar to previous games. You choose your race discipline, be it muscle, import tuner, GT or some special event with a specific car. While each discipline feels different, it offers a variation in the gameplay. To take on these disciplines are tons and tons of cars that you can take out to the tracks. While the car list is great, there are a lot of cars locked behind a season-based paywall which infuriates me. I believe games should give you everything up front and not this: games as a service bull crap.

The cars, as always, are a highlight for the GRID games and it is no different here. Each car feels unique and special, especially between classes. They handle differently; they all have a unique style that you need to master control off to win. Each car needs you to figure out how much it will swing when you break, how much it will move when you drive all the while needing to keep it in control. This is especially true while trying to pull a drift, since the cars understeer or oversteer like Mad Hatters. GRID 2’s long-range drifts are dead, so don’t expect to feel like a boss when you pull off a mad drift next to the spectators since there aren’t any.

I mentioned how good the damage looks during the graphics sections. That doesn’t apply to the gameplay sections since damage does nearly nothing to the car handling. The amount of punishment that the cars can take before feeling different is massive. I played bumper cars with a Mitsubishi and it didn’t even change the way I had to handle the car for a full race. This is another downgrade from GRID 2 especially since it devalues flashbacks which are the games rewind functions, they are now nearly strictly off fixing going off the track.

As for something new: GRID 2019 offers two new angles to the standard racing formula, namely the nemesis and companion AI systems so let’s talk about them a bit:

The nemesis system makes enemies out of opponents that you mistreat. The nemesis in turn does their best to ram you off the track. The problem with the nemesis system is that it doesn’t try hard enough; if you get another opponent in your way then the nemesis doesn’t even try to catch up to you, resulting in no difference to your race. On the other hand, if you make a nemesis out of the leading opponent, they will race, draft and follow you to the edges of the Earth. A nemesis right behind you is an aggressive opponent who you need to outdrive which makes for a challenge but they are so rare it’s not worth thinking about. The worst part is that they are only around for one race making it fine to hit everyone in a race since they will be back to normal by the next.
The companion system is long overdue. I loved companions in Need For Speed Carbon and the sound of them in GRID was a dream come true. The thought of a companion to back you up, take out opponents and guarantee the win was something to look forward to. GRID 2019 unfortunately decides to make you a babysitter for the companion. You have to order your companion to either hold their position or gain a position, the problem is that most of the time they reject the order and you have no clue why they rejected it. It’s somehow worse if they accept the order since they only carry out their orders for some limited amount. This means that you have to keep on repeating the order. This is especially annoying since you earn revenue from your teammate’s performance as well as yours. This could have been so much better if the order to the teammate remained constant and only changed on the players command.

After each race, there is a progression bar that awards you levels for experience you got on the track but they are completely useless. At most you get stickers or something else boring, they could have completely skipped this levelling system and no one would care.

I would talk about the tracks at this point but I don’t care. The game has enough aspects dragging it down for me to consider the tracks. They are okay at best but if you go off them the slightest bit be it on purpose or because some other racer body slammed you, then expect an inquiry and lose a few positions which is stupid if it wasn’t your fault.

The driving is doing its best to hold the gameplay together but it isn’t enough.

Conclusion:

Codemasters wanted to get both: the arcade and simulation crowds to play their game so they went for the broadest scope. The problem with aiming for everything is that you hit nothing and that is GRID 2019 in a nutshell. As an arcade player, I won’t play this game for long-durations, simulation players will probably skip it too since it has such poor damage physics and the companion is a complete and utter dunce.

Buy it if you really want to see a game that could have been great with support from its heritage but just turns out average. It could have been more focused but isn’t. If you can get the complete pack for around $10 its okay but for more than that consider GRID 2.

Pros	Cons
No story	I really mean no story
Car audio is very well done	Poor support character comments
Amazing car graphics	Weak world graphics
Great driving feel	Not arcade enough
New systems: Nemesis and Partner	Both are completely useless