With rising gas prices, there's no better time to become an armchair racing enthusiast. GRID, the latest racing game from Codemasters, puts players in the driver's seats of vehicles ranging from supped up compacts to exotic sports cars, racing through the streets of various cities across the United States, Europe and Japan.

So real looking, you can nearly smell the rubber on the tires. Click to see more images from the game...

The game sets up a great mood with the audio profile, where characters refer to the player by name when relaying information during a race and during the greeting when the game loads. It might sound like a simple feature barely worth mentioning, but it does draw players into the experience. The same cannot be said of the controls. Although the PC version includes decent keyboard controls, we recommend a game pad. Similar to other driving games, the keyboard does not offer the degree of control necessary for racing.

GRID offers a more serious approach than games like EA's Need for Speed series, meaning that a single high-speed bump or mistimed turn can send your car spinning out of control or crashing headlong into a barrier. Computer opponents display solid racing skills, even with the difficulty on "Basic," which makes it difficult to recover from a wipe out. Still, the controls and artificial intelligence can be overcome with a lot of practice and luck. In fact, increasing the difficulty raises the reputation point value of each challenge, which provides a fast way to climb the leaderboards if you've got the skills.

Driving gets even harder with GRID's damage system, divided into five critical areas (gears, suspension, steering, engine and wheels). Cars handle differently as they take damage, making cornering, accelerating and steering increasingly difficult. Unfortunately, there's no way to repair damage, and the race effectively ends once the steering control breaks. That's where the Flashback feature comes into play, which thankfully tones down some of the game's difficulty. Players have a limited number of tokens to cash in and rewind the race back a few seconds to replay critical moments, this time avoiding bad accidents. The only downside is that it sometimes takes a few seconds to realize how catastrophic an accident is. By then, it's far too late for the Flashback function to be useful. So instead of waiting to see how bad an accident might play out, it becomes almost a reflex to start rewinding as soon as things look bad. You can watch full replays from multiple viewpoints once a race is finished. Unfortunately, there's no way to permanently save the replays to share or review at a later time.

There's a strong variety of race modes including a Destruction Derby, where players drive stock cars and do whatever it takes to get ahead. GRID also has a race mode called Touge that pits two racers against each other down winding Japanese mountain roads. The trick is that cars aren't allowed to touch, and the rear car gets penalized for bumping the car in front. Then there's the Midnight Touge variation that throws touch rules out the window along with all road blocks. So players will have to race each other and avoid traffic at the same time. Lastly, there's the "24 Hours of Le Mans" race that concludes the racing season. In this grueling test of endurance, players race for 24 continuous minutes (which count as hours in game time) as the sun sets and rises again. It's a good thing the event only happens once during the season and can be skipped, because it's quite draining and difficult. A single mistake during the 24-minute marathon could mess up the entire race, a hassle made worse once you're 10 or more minutes into it and out of Flashback tokens. Both restarting or toughing out the remaining minutes can seriously wear down a person's patience.

Besides a graphically stunning presentation, GRID provides a very strong racing challenge by keeping the goal just within arm's reach. Computer opponents rarely make mistakes, even on easy mode, and the winding tracks often provide gorgeous views of various cities and locales. All taken together, this is one racer worth having in your collection.

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GRID Game Guide

Our Final ScoreGood

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