GRID Legends

My Saturday night group has a rule: if the lobby fills in under two minutes, the game earns a permanent spot on the rotation. GRID Legends earned that spot, and I want to be upfront about why before I get into where it stumbles. At its core, this is a simcade racer that sits comfortably between the twitchy arcade end of the spectrum and anything approaching a proper sim. Handling threads the needle well, feeling approachable on a gamepad but rewarding enough on a wheel to justify plugging one in. The car roster is genuinely wide, covering touring cars, open-wheelers, tractor trucks, stadium trucks, drift cars, and electric formula machinery across more than 130 routes, including real-world circuits like Brands Hatch, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and Mount Panorama alongside street layouts in cities like London, Paris, and San Francisco. The Race Creator mode lets you mash those vehicle classes together in ways that make no real-world sense and absolute chaotic sense for an online lobby. Slamming 22 stadium trucks into a road course is the kind of madness that justifies the whole package. The Nemesis system, where AI drivers remember when you've wronged them and come looking for payback, also keeps solo races feeling scrappy and alive, especially with difficulty turned up. The star headline feature is the "Driven to Glory" story mode. It borrows the aesthetic of motorsport documentaries, uses real actors shot against virtual sets, and follows the underdog Seneca team through a season against villain outfit Ravenwest. The FMV sequences are more fun than they have any right to be, and the production is genuinely ambitious. The problem is that the whole thing clocks in at around five hours, the story beats are obvious from the first cutscene, and the structure is completely linear so your race results rarely change the narrative in any meaningful way. It is a great appetizer, not a main course. The online side is where GRID Legends makes its real case. Cross-platform play across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox keeps lobbies populated. The Hop-In mechanic, which lets you drop directly into a friend's session mid-race by taking over an AI car, is one of the cleverest friction-removal ideas in recent racing game memory. You also get co-op Career runs, team races, Elimination events where back markers get dropped at timed intervals, Drift Battles where all cars are ghosted so nobody torpedo-runs your best line, and Boost races. For the crowd asking "is this fun for four online friends" the answer is an easy yes, provided everyone is okay with pure online play. There is no local split-screen here, which is the one answer I hate giving on a Friday night setup. The career mode sitting outside the story is the weakest pillar. It is functional and covers rookie leagues all the way up through pro-tier events with car unlocks and sponsor objectives driving progression, but the loop grows repetitive quickly and the depth in areas like livery customisation and car modification is noticeably thin compared to competitors. The Mixed Steam score (75 percent positive across several thousand reviews) reflects exactly this split personality: the racing itself and the online modes are genuinely good, but the single-player staying power is shaky. Wheel users, this is a comfortable fit. It is not Assetto Corsa levels of force-feedback nuance, but it is more satisfying than a lot of simcade titles with a proper setup. Gamepad players get a well-tuned default layout, and the adjustable difficulty means new players can ramp in gradually without being humiliated out of the gate.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

Be the first to comment on GRID Legends.