Almost Legendary

Grid Legends sheds open-world racing and over the top customisations for a simple, yet effective, motor racing game that focuses on things that truly matter

Grid Legends
Rating: 4.5/5
Developer: Codemasters
Publisher: EA
Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, XBO, XBS
Price: PC – Rs 2,999; 
Consoles – Rs 3,999

Racing games need to have a few elements just right to become legendary. For starters they need a lot of cars; the cars need to have the right feel and finally, the game needs to be challenging. Grid Legends ticks all the boxes and more.

The last Grid game was a masterclass in arcade car handling, the new game continues that tradition. The cars in Legends hug the road like their life depended on it, but they can also drift through a corner in an oh-so satisfying way. The last Grid also lacked a story mode, which surprisingly wasn’t missed, but there was a missed opportunity that Legends has tapped into, especially with the introduction of Nemesis mode in play. 

What is Nemesis? In Grid, when you race and have wronged someone or are being especially aggressive, the AI opponent goes into Nemesis mode where they actively target your car and try to prevent you from enjoying a hassle-free race. They will block your path, ram into you and generally be annoying to distract you. It is a little harder to distinguish the Nemesis mode from regular racing in Easy mode, but crank the hardness a bit and you might regret ramming into another racer in your bid to get ahead. Grid Legends also introduces a Story mode to the game and it is a fun underdog story done in the style of a documentary complete with a bunch of interviews. I enjoyed the story a lot and the character actors were very convincing. That said if you manage to ace every race in the story mode, the game doesn’t adapt and it sticks to you being an underdog. It is a little bit jarring, but I didn’t mind it too much. The overall story is also a little short ending in less than eight hours.

What makes Legends excellent is the types of vehicles at your disposal. You can race everything from an Electric Supercar to Transport Trucks. None of it feels out of place. I would legitimately pay money to watch something like this in real life. I want to know why this style of Grid racing isn’t a valid motorsport yet. Let the best racers duke it out to be the best racer in the world regardless of the vehicle or the motorsport.

Grid Legends includes multiplayer. This too is a little different from the usual. Instead of waiting in the lobby for players to join a multiplayer game users now have the option to directly connect to a game that is already running. The game randomly replaces an AI bot in the ongoing race with the user while other players are driving around. This is as long as there is more than a minute of game play left. This results in a smoother online gaming experience where users don’t have to play. The randomness of the races and positions make it a lot of fun and interesting. You can sometimes be assigned to the back of the pack or even to the front. The challenge here is defeating the other players or AI in the remaining time to win the race.

Grid Legends is simple and effective. It does only what it needs to and does it well. Codemasters have done a good job keeping everything in check to make sure it is not another Forza or Need for Speed clone. The result is a beautiful game with few negligible flaws. Recommended for any motor racing fan regardless of what genre they might prefer.

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