Preview: Hands On With Grid AutoSport

It’s all about the teams, the rivals and the race as you become driver for hire, specialising in your favourite disciplines or conquering them all in an intense world of professional motorsport.

Pros:

• Graphics are really well done, Full of detail, the lighting brings a really dirty edge to the overall appearance. Never detracting from its overall brilliance, The grime effect it has smeared over it does nothing but add to the graphical flair.
• Lighting, reflections in particular are superb, Building upon the previous games, reflections on the bonnet or mesmerizing whilst being realistic and poignant. The sun shining down on the track is a sight all by itself, bouncing off the tarmac like a young childs arse when first learning to ride a bike.
• Full 360/pad support and is ready to go straight out the virtual box.
• Graphic options cover every tweakers dream. Bringing the standard options like resolution,v-sync etc. The game delivers more with more control given to the player. Options like aspect ratio, msaa etc. For the less adventurous you do have preset graphic options labelled as good,high,ultra etc.
• Handling has been tightened right up, Power sliding takes a lot more skill, On the pad particularly it has less play on the sticks and is really responsive. Every car feels different and re acts differently.
• World locations from America to Europe, Drive past many famous world locations and tourist hot spots in all glorious detail.
• The UI and front end is clutter free and really easy to navigate. Whether you are looking to do a career or jump in with friends, The menu structure makes all choices an easy button press away.
• Full Steam integration.
• Create driver clubs is an option but was grayed out.
• Full damage model options. Go for visual damage only and see you car always being drivable no matter what, Or go hardcore and have realistic switched on. Here you can have brakes fail, wheels fall off and even get stuck in a gear. Doors falling off or the boot opening as you brake, all common sights after a few races so don’t worry! Or if you want to go all wussy, You can turn damage off and keep your insurance company happy.
• Handful of view options in game which can be changed with a simple button press. You can go for bumper cam,dashboard,helmet cam or go far out if your a 3rd person (car)view type of driver.
• Pick different disciplines for different driving styles, each have their own championships and each discipline has its own individual rank for each. Disciplines are: Tuner, Street, Open wheel, Endurance and Touring.
• For every race you can tweak the race options to increase the amount of expo you can earn. Turn off driving aids, HUDS for example to earn more exp and level up faster.
• Every discipline has its own rankings as said but each season is a set of races where at the end you can unlock new cars, contracts and get a load of bonus exp.
• Every championship or season will have you select a contract and have its own season goals that you must work towards.
• Aside from contract bonuses, You can also earn bonus exp from sponsorship missions. Can be treated more as side missions, These range from win a race with no collisions to beat your team mate 2 times in a season.
• You can give commands to your team mate in game and have him do things like push harder up the pack or stay behind and block or just leave him to do what he wants.
• Handful of game modes available in this version: multiplayer was select able but no one was actually online, arcade mode or quick race, career mode and a few others that were grayed out.
• Music is not bad, Menu music will grind if you spend a lot of time in the menus and in game, To be honest its all about the noise of the cars!
• Engine,collision noises all sound really good and a good whack will not only sound meaty, But will also mess up your HUD for a brief second.
• You can tune the cars in this version but it is limited, You could do usual things like ride height, brake bias etc and there was an option to have installed upgrades but it was all auto installed.

Cons:

• When you Alt Tab out the game will go to windowed mode, Can only be fixed with a visit to the video options.
• Cock pit view is all blurry and the dials dont really work.
• Cannot look out the windows when in the cock pit view. You can look side ways but its the generic full screen look and no detail of your car. So immersion si broken.
• Levelling up can be quite slow especially at the start.
• No dynamic weather was experienced.

In Summary, From this preview version I was able to get a lot of fun out of the game. I found it felt more like the TOCA games of years past and was a real blast to play. So many driving games go for shiny shiny graphics and showroom clean cars. Here it all feels dirty and rugged and uncaged. If Gran Turismo was the wife of driving games, Then this is your dirty mistress on the side of driving games. The AI s aggressive and for the most part fair, You can make the game as easy or as hard as you like and with so many graphic options, Getting it to run on older configs should be easier. Look forward to our full review in the future.