[section_title title=This is Autosport]This is Autosport
Now I’ve looked at some of the reviews for GRID Autosport, and it seems there is very split opinion on this game – the reviews I’ve read rate the game highly saying it’s an excellent title with a few niggles here and there, whilst many of the people in the comments seem to disagree claiming of issues with the handling and graphics in particular.
I fired up the game for the first time and the first thing I immediately noticed was the menu, where’s the option to use a mouse? Well there isn’t one, you have to use a controller or a keyboard to cycle through the menus, and there are a lot of menus. When combined with the fact that when you get to the end of a menu it doesn’t cycle back to the start again it makes the experience a less than brilliant one. Regardless I hit the ‘Career’ option and was transported to the start of a race where nothing is explained to me!
As someone who plays racing games a lot I had the controls worked out in no time so it was ok for me, and most of the cars appear to be from some form of German Touring Cars so I had a rough idea of what to expect performance wise, but if this is the first dive into the racing genre you’ve made, it very much throws you in at the deep end and leaves you to figure it out for yourself.
The first major problem I ran into was the “Realistic AI”, which actually isn’t very realistic at all – unless you’re racing in a Derby. The AI are brutal, suicidal even. They happily crash into you, barge past you when they try and overtake, and take the normal racing line straight into you when you try and overtake them in the corners. You have to overtake them in the corners because there is no slipstreaming in Autosport, and every car within a class seems to handle and drive almost identically too which means there is very little variation to the racing (with some being faster but some having better handling being present when there is variation to the racing).
When they’re not crashing into you they’re crashing into each other and causing big accidents which often ends up with a car doing a roll and more often than not getting in your way. Even better if you’re in a crash and you take damage, you can’t get that repaired because there is no pitting (something I didn’t like about the original GRID either), and at times you will randomly get punctures which are also irreparable, so you have no choice but to quit or restart the race.
Also when you annoy the AI by braking before them and trying to slow them down for example, they will just slow down also and not try to overtake you, it really makes me wonder what the AI is meant to do, they are reckless in the corners and they won’t race you on the straights unless you are coming up to a corner which I discovered as I attempted to go up the inside of someone and was off a few seconds later as he casually drifted across the track into me. The AI really does need some work to it because it’s just not fun when you’re racing and they can crash you off whilst being fine themselves and it really takes a lot away from the single player experience.
Secondly, and one of the reasons you will find yourself crashing a lot, is the handling model. Where did Codemasters go so wrong with this? You have to brake very very early for a corner because the brakes on most of the cars are slow and unresponsive, and I’m still yet to find the correct way to take a corner as any of the normal lines I’d use simply don’t seem to work. When you are turning there is very little feedback from the game and those who play a lot of racing sims out there will know what I mean when I say you sort of have this sixth sense for when the car has traction, you can just tell, except you can’t in Autosport because of that lack of feedback and that really shines through when you lose control.
The rear doesn’t break away and give you time to try and correct it, once the back of the car loses grip that’s it, the rear is gone and you’re off the circuit. The cars also behave very strangely under turning in that they sort of…well they don’t, they’re like driving a brick wall or a house, and downforce on a lot of the cars, especially the Open Wheelers doesn’t seem to have much of an effect either. What’s more strange still (and the bit I hate the most) is that at speed, when you steer one way, the car will steer the other way slightly when you stop steering, as if it has a pull in the opposite direction of travel and that alone makes it truly the worst handling I’ve ever felt in a game and it’s just so disappointing to see because it just makes the car feel broken and weird to drive. Why couldn’t they have used F1’s handling model for example, and adapted it to work with Autosports cars? Surely it would have been better than the system they have implemented now?
