Grid Legends

 

I've been playing Grid Legends off and on since I got a Playstation Plus subscription in 2022. I enjoyed the game, but for whatever reason it was always the first game I dropped when I was crunched for gaming time or when a new game came along that I wanted to play. I finally dedicated time to play through the game on the Portal, and though I didn't finish the game per se, I played through all of the rounds that I was easily able to unlock. I've definitely dedicated enough time to this game for it to have its own post, and my thoughts are below.

The first thing to say about Grid Legends is that it looks fantastic. I don't typically spend a lot of time discussing graphics on modern games because in the era of 4K visuals with high refresh rates, and with the current generation of gaming hardware, most games look amazing. Grid Legends looks particularly good, however. It most definitely is an arcade racer, featuring 20+ cars on the track simultaneously with very close racing. Cars take damage, have mechanical failures with David Hobbs-style kablamos, and even flip and roll at times. All of this with over-the-top laser light shows and fireworks going on in the background. The frame rate remains smooth and the crashes are spectacular. Some of the best damage visuals I've seen. I remember a race I did recently at the Red Bull Ring in Austria, where it was lightly snowing. Seeing snow on a racetrack is rare, and seeing how it looked on this game was fantastic. 

Going back to the arcade racing style of the game, I think this is both a strength and weakness of the game. On the positive side, there are a lot of fun racing categories and secondarily fun cars to drive on this game. One of the more memorable races was a semi truck race on the IMS oval, in the dark, and in the rain. Are you kidding?!? The super trucks were a lot of fun to drive too. In addition to semis and trucks, there are GT cars, prototype cars, open wheel cars, etc. There's plenty of fun and oftentimes unique racing categories to keep the gameplay fresh. I generally enjoyed the arcade style of racing. At times I thought the controls were a bit less responsive than they should be, and the AI drivers can be particularly aggressive. Otherwise, the gameplay was fun.

The track selection is decent. The real track selection was great. I thought a lot of the fictional tracks were mediocre, but racing through the streets of downtown Chicago with the elevated train above was super cool. Overall, this game was a lot of fun and a nice break from the more serious racing games that I typically play. There was plenty of racing leagues and tracks to keep me entertained for a long time. The controls and aggressive AI drivers were a bit of a negative at times, but otherwise it was a fun game to play.