Following last week’s launch date announcement for GRID Legends, we’ve been giving the game a little bit of a playtest. Codemasters sent us over a code for a limited demo of a development build of the title on Steam, as a preview of some of the game’s new content, modes and features.
While the demo doesn’t contain all of the new things — for example the “Driven to Glory” story mode is not part of this build — and some bits are off-limits for now, we were able to get to grips with how the game itself plays with 12 specially selected races in some of the 130+ cars at some of the new and returning circuits.
In GRID Legends you’ll be playing the role of the un-named and un-voiced “Driver 22” racing in the GRID World Series. That forms the basis for the story mode, but you’ll also be Driver 22 in every other mode, reflecting the fact that Legends supports up to 22 cars on track at once.
The cars in the preview run from relatively slow Ginetta GT5 and Renault Clio Cup cars up to the Aston Martin Valkyrie and Lotus Evija — with electric cars making their series debut in Legends. There’s also a quasi-Formula E car in the mix.
In addition to London and Moscow circuits, the preview also introduces the new-to-series Strada Alpina track which is, just as the name suggests, quite literally a street circuit in the Alps. It will launch with the largest number of circuits for a GRID game, somewhat addressing our criticism of the 2019 title.
By and large, the tracks are really rather pretty from what we’ve seen so far. The night racing — and there is adjustable time and weather for all circuits — doesn’t quite show it off at its best, but otherwise they come across as pretty vibrant places. They’re certainly packed with detail, crowds, and dynamic elements, such as camera flashes, confetti, and fireworks.
You’ll probably spot a good dose of LOD management on the videos here — you can literally watch the windows appearing on the trackside buildings, for example — but this is still a preview build reflecting the game three months before it’s launched, and it’s not particularly apparent in gameplay on this PC version.
There’s several choices of camera, including an adjustable FOV cockpit view. It has to be said that the chase cams in particular are quite reminiscent of the Project CARS games, a series now owned by Codemasters…
GRID has always been on the lighter side of the simulation spectrum, and that looks to be the case still. There’s certainly some options more on the sim side, but they are limited in scope. You can tune your car, for example, but only by way of five sliders.
Nonetheless, it doesn’t feel entirely shallow; for the most part it’s arcade, but authentic. The Stadium Super Trucks above are a perfect example, squatting hard under acceleration while lifting an inside wheel under cornering. They’re actually a bit of a challenge to drive with any accuracy, made harder with the ramps.
On the opposite side of that, you’ll spot “boost zones” in the Evija race above. This kind of takes inspiration from Formula E’s “Attack Mode”, with drivers running off line through a specific area in order to activate a higher output mode temporarily, but in Legends it literally charges up a boost mode for you to activate.
Cars, including the AI cars, can also suffer random mechanical failures during races. In the events we tried it affected one car in every race, sometimes resulting in a giant plume of smoke that’s incredibly hard to see through. There’s also quite an extensive damage model, and you’ll have to pay for your repairs out of your winnings too…
While there is wheel support for the full title, this build was only tested by Codemasters for controllers. We played it exclusively with an Xbox controller, and it certainly seemed to suit the racing.
Other features in the build include the return of the Nemesis system. If you’re not familiar with the system which made its debut in GRID (2019), it’s digital bad blood. Come to blows too often, or too strong, with one of the AI drivers and you’ll make an enemy — and where that was on a race-by-race basis in GRID, Legends looks to carry grievances across several events at least.
The game’s AI is still a work in progress, so we can’t review it per se, but the aggression does seem to ramp up a notch from a particularly peeved ‘bot. We made one nemesis through them landing their stadium super truck on top of ours, which seemed a bit harsh.
One final item we were able to test out, but which we can’t entirely share at this point, was the Race Creator. This mode allows you to essentially pick any combination of track, weather, time, and car class — or classes — to create your own individual event. That looks like it’ll be a pretty powerful tool and provide some long-term replay value.
Of course we’re some way from seeing a full build of the game, but right now it looks like GRID Legends will build very nicely off GRID, and address its shortcomings, when it launches in February 2022.
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