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Race grid games12/28/2023 ![]() It’s quite an excellent way to experience the main styles and experiences the game has to offer in what is a campaign that can be beaten in about 6-8 hours, even less if players less enthusiastic about the story were to skip the FMV scenes in-between. Each chapter is a bite-sized look into things GRID Legends has to offer, as they showcase the many types of cars such as open wheels, GT, trucks and so on, all the way to the large variety of modes like race, time attack and Eliminator, of which we’ll talk about more later. This is the basis GRID Legends works with to deliver a pretty exciting story, one that even takes some surprisingly dramatic notes in the second half, as Ravenwest’s unfair politics and McKane’s erratic racing style cause the tension to rise continuously. And the game does its best to make sure the players hate everything about them. ![]() They have all the money and power and therefore dominate. ![]() They even swooped up the promising Lara Carvalho, who was supposed to join Seneca and then was offered twice as much by Ravenwest at the last second. They are arrogant, impossible to like, with almost cartoonish levels of being annoying on purpose. Here, players get to meet a James Bond-level of villainy in GRID’s strongest team, the rich and legendary Ravenwest, owned by millionaire Ryan McKane and led as a driver by Nathan McKane, who happened to absolutely annihilate the competition for 5 years in a row now, winning as many championships in the process. Since the game’s marketing clearly emphasizes this, I can definitely spoil that the top series is eventually reached by Seneca, which is when the story becomes a lot more intense as well. This all changes with #22’s arrival, as a string of strong results and excellent teamwork with Tanaka slowly but surely take the fight with rival team Voltz, as the qualification for the 2021 season of the GRID Series is looming. Ado’s a talented team principal, his main mechanic Ajeet is precise and passionate, and teammate Yume Tanaka is also one hell of a talent, but with less budget and political power than their main rivals, results just don’t seem to arrive on a regular basis. It’s all about the money, however, as the talent in the team isn’t the issue. The player hops into the shoes of their not better-specified avatar with the #22 number, who joins the relatively small Team Seneca, a team led by much-respected team boss Marcus Ado, but whose limited budget never allowed them to make a big break. A variety of drivers, team managers and such sit down in front of a camera and narrate a heavily dramatized take on what happens on the track, underlining the rivalries and the sporting drama that ensues from the on-track battles. And, indeed, the FMV cutscenes are recorded with real actors that, for the most part, take their roles credibly enough to sell the idea of a mockumentary. This rich campaign is presented in a format that takes a lot of inspiration from Netflix’s hit Formula 1 documentary, Drive to Survive. But the journey is a lot more complicated than that, and after introducing a scripted story in F1 2021, Codemasters brings something similar to this year’s GRID as well. It’s a story of 36 bite-sized chapters about the path of the fictional Team Seneca, going through the lower leagues of the GRID Series that we learned to know from prior games, trying to qualify for the final events and become champions. The player is immediately given a choice of going straight into the classic career mode, where players can hop from one 4-wheel discipline to another with a customized team, or a prequel of sorts that takes players through 2 years of racing between 20. With the name of the game, the cover art and practically all the marketing focusing on the brand new story mode, it’s only fair that’s where we begin our journey as well. Will GRID Legends be the shot in the arm the series needs? And so the story goes But the developers aren’t giving up on the IP, and they decided to give it a new coat of paint with a completely revolutionized story mode among other things. The series had its ups and downs, and with Codemasters’ other series like DIRT and the Formula 1 titles receiving more praise, the hype for this franchise got more and more muted. Back in the 7th generation of consoles, GRID was arguably one of racing’s behemoths, with its unique blend of serious, gritty racing across famous tracks and a very cinematic yet arcade-like behaviour, making it the most accessible way to dive into legendary races such as the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
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