Open-wheel places you in what are essentially underpowered Formula One cars (think Formula Three and Formula Renault). Endurance sees you racing at night in longer races that force you to look after your tyres. The touring discipline is defined by wheel-to-wheel racing, with cars bumping into each other regularly as they attempt to race three abreast around a corner. These event types are split into five distinct categories that are progressed through independently of one another. Touring car events, street races, nighttime endurance slogs, time trial runs, and showboating drift sessions are all here and waiting to be conquered the frequency with which you partake in any given event comes down to how you're feeling at the time. As with previous Grid games' Career modes, Autosport's brings together a disparate mix of event types under a single umbrella, giving you plenty of options for reaching professional racing stardom. To that end, variety and choice are placed front and centre right from the off. Autosport is about the cars, the tracks, and the opponents. Here's a game that simply asks: what kind of racing driver do you want to be? There's no overarching narrative here, no attempt to coat Career mode in the kind of shallow, scrawny narrative that even the writers of Jack Reacher would be embarrassed to publish. Gone is the raucous, obtrusive, personality-sapping hullabaloo of the poorly conceived and painfully stereotypical "dude bro" aesthetic that characterised Grid 2, replaced by something altogether more subtle. Perhaps it would be one too many things to consider if it was implemented game-wide, but it works very well and really adds to the tactical element of the Endurance branch of the career.The tone has changed with Grid Autosport. It becomes so integral to the driving process, you’ll find yourself looking for the percentage indicators in other modes every time you hear the wheels slip. Wheelspin, running wide, and sliding all damage your tyres, forcing you to drive neatly and constantly weigh up whether you can afford to push a little harder. One particularly enjoyable new feature is tyre wear, which is only enabled during Endurance races. Similarly, the pit audio repeats itself far too quickly and doesn’t always make perfect sense. It mentions individual incidents on the track, which is fun to listen out for, but it’s usually the same few soundbites, which sadly breaks the spell. Another element that could be amazing-if just fleshed out a little more-is the in-environment commentary that can be heard when you pass a crowded spectator stand. The idea of telling your AI buddy to push forward or hold up others (via the shoulder buttons) is strong, but the reality is that they always seem to be struggling, and they’re not much use at the back of the pack. What doesn’t work quite so well is the team-mate mechanic. And it’s drifting everywhere, leaving thick black rubber and plumes of smoke in its wake. Some seasons can feel a little too long if you do enjoy variety, but if longer play sessions are your game, you can multiply the lap count in the options. You could just play single-seaters forever (and I wouldn’t blame you-they’re wonderful), but if you do level up your XP evenly over all five categories, you unlock special, multi-discipline race series, so it is worth exploring all the avenues. The game’s front end has been massively simplified and split into five disciplines, the branches of which can be dipped into at your leisure for a season at a time. That last one’s made a huge difference to how extended sessions feel. The track list is a best-of compilation of GRID 1, 2 and real-world locations (and point-to-point tracks are all gone, to make this a more traditional racing game), while the career’s structure is much more focused on what you want to do. The optional driving assists like traction control and anti-lock brakes are all back. The drift-centric, simplified handling of GRID 2 has been replaced with responsive, nuanced control. Demolition Derby is now playable right from the beginning of the game, instead of tacked-on DLC. Instead of having no cockpit cam, Autosport has two. Let’s tick off the key improvements that this feedback demanded.
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