Grid: Autosport

Grid: Autosport is Codemasters' course correction after Grid 2 took the series too far into arcade territory. The pitch is simple: you are a driver for hire, signing with different teams each season across five distinct disciplines - Touring, Open Wheel, Endurance, Tuner, and Street. Each discipline plays noticeably differently. Open wheel cars punish the slightest kerb-hop, while the reversed-grid format in touring events means you spend the second race scrapping up from the back, which is genuinely the most exciting way to spend six minutes in a virtual car. Over 100 routes across 22 locations keep the scenery fresh, and the cockpit view (absent from Grid 2, loudly mourned, now returned) makes racing wheels and gamepad triggers feel properly connected to what's happening on screen. The handling sits in a satisfying middle ground. It is not a sim - braking is more forgiving than real life and assists are available for newcomers - but push the difficulty up and the AI starts throwing unexpected moves, damage affects your steering and engine response, and a single clumsy shunt into the barrier can end your race. The flashback rewind feature is there as a safety net at lower settings, which is genuinely thoughtful for people who are still learning lines. Wheel and pedal setups are well supported, the game even sends telemetry via UDP to apps like SimHub, and controller mapping is flexible enough that you can sort it out in five minutes. For a couch session there is split-screen available on PC, though you will need at least one controller to make it work. Do not go in expecting a full campaign co-op mode - it does not exist, and communities have loudly noticed that gap. Online multiplayer through RaceNet allowed for Racing Clubs and weekly discipline challenges, though the online population has always been modest and server-side features have wound down over the years, so treat it as a single-player and local experience first. The career itself is long, possibly too long - you must grind all five disciplines to a required XP level before the headline Grid Championship events unlock, which means even if you hate drift events, you are doing them. Reviewers consistently called out this forced breadth as a chore, and they were not wrong. Assets are visibly recycled from Grid 2 and earlier Codemasters titles in places, and the career mode offers no sense of team ownership - no garage, no handpicked car collection, no team-building fantasy. You race, you level up, you sign a new contract. That cold, functional loop works fine if you just want clean racing with sharp AI, but if you want the warmth of building something, look elsewhere. There is also a known save file conflict with Steam Cloud that can corrupt progress - disable it before you start. One practical note for wheel users: check the supported device list before assuming your hardware works out of the box, since unofficial support requires XML edits. Bottom line: if you want a solid, accessible-but-not-soft simcade that covers more disciplines than most racers attempt, Grid: Autosport delivers. Just go in knowing the career is a long grind with some compulsory event types you will not love, and that online is a ghost town outside of peak European hours.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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