GRID 2 impressions

[goh]

The first car was really drifty but it was fun to drive. Also commited the cardinal sin of PC gaming starting you directly in a race without giving you an options menu first. The first screen lets you choose from the single player mode,online or exit. No options. You have to enter the game,pause and then go to options. Which was a shame because the opening shot of Chicago was beautiful and it wasn't quite maxed out.

Should've checked if I could turn off the radio guy. The music was more suited to an action game/movie score in the first race. Only did that and the practice lap at Indy so don't know if there's lisenced stuff or not.

It's actually still not maxed out because there's specific options for specific intel related hardware I wasn't able to access. (Maybe need i9?) But that's ok because it still looks fantastic even without those 2 things (this is with everything maxed but those,runs really great too)...

[shon]

Re: GRID 2 impressions

I played the original Grid earlier today and they have made some major improvements. I'm playing on a triple screen setup and it's worked flawlessly, I had trouble getting the original Grid to accept even widescreen resolutions. I have a Fanatec CSR Elite wheel and they have full support for that so now I can map the flashback button and not have to use my keyboard to hit F12 to accept it like in Grid and even the Dirt series.

Goh, you are correct about the opening sequence, it got me all pumped and ready to go and I put my foot on the gas pedal and ......, nothing. After I hit escape and selected my wheel it worked, but they need to somehow recognize that I'm not playing with the keyboard initially and let me select a controller.

The game looks great and even though it's missing the cockpit view it's still fun as ever. Codemasters still know how to make some awesome menu's, the interface is slick and easy to use. I haven't played enough to tell if the physics are great or not, it may have felt a little arcadey, there are no driving options to adjust except for difficulty. I'm playing on medium and coming in 3rd in most races, there are 3 other levels above that so it should get challenging.

I played a couple of multiplayer races and it worked fine. My first online race I came in first so that felt pretty good, there were 7 other racers, and the other 2 races I came in 2nd and 3rd so hopefully the player base will grow. I did link my Youtube account and uploaded a video. It uploaded it in my widescreen resolution though, 5960 x 1080, and 480P so I'm not sure about the quality. I wish you could save your replays to disk and then go back and watch them or make other clips, none of the PC racing games I have allow this. I didn't see an option to listen to your own music.

[shon]

Re: GRID 2 impressions

It's actually still not maxed out because there's specific options for specific intel related hardware I wasn't able to access. (Maybe need i9?) But that's ok because it still looks fantastic even without those 2 things (this is with everything maxed but those,runs really great too)...

I think the Intel settings are for Intel HD graphics and not an Intel processor, I could be wrong, but I have an Intel CPU as well and it didn't let me select it. One of the loading screens mentioned something about Intel graphics.

[TCrouch]

Re: GRID 2 impressions

Did you get to the Advanced Wheel settings with your CSR Elite? It didn't give me an options for saturation/dead zone etc. on mine. No advanced wheel options menu item at all--just using whatever is on the wheel face (maybe that's their intention).

I plugged the T500RS in and it played LOADS better than monkeying with my CSR for an hour before it, which is disconcerting.

I had a good deal of fun with it, though. Finished the first WSR season in my first sitting, and kind of liked the Sportscenter stuff.

[LingeringRegime]

Re: GRID 2 impressions

Looking forward to picking this up later today.

[ps3veron]

Re: GRID 2 impressions

Awesome impression you guys, keep it up!

Can you tell us about the damage model? And how varied are the tracks/plaecs?

[scoman]

Re: GRID 2 impressions

Not a real flattering review here......

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-05-28-grid-2-review

[shon]

Re: GRID 2 impressions

Did you get to the Advanced Wheel settings with your CSR Elite? It didn't give me an options for saturation/dead zone etc. on mine. No advanced wheel options menu item at all--just using whatever is on the wheel face (maybe that's their intention).

I plugged the T500RS in and it played LOADS better than monkeying with my CSR for an hour before it, which is disconcerting.

I had a good deal of fun with it, though. Finished the first WSR season in my first sitting, and kind of liked the Sportscenter stuff.

I went to the controller preset screen and it had the Fanatec CSR Elite as one of the options and I chose that. I was able to go into the advance settings and it looked like it was already setup as most of the values were set to 0. The only thing I changed was the wheel linearity as it was set to 2 and I made that 0.

They did a good job of integrating the controller into the game. In the other Codemaster racing games the flashback feature had to be accepted by pressing the F12 key and now all the buttons are mapped correctly so that I don't need the keyboard at all. I was able to edit the replays and send to youtube pretty easily.

I've been reading a lot of forums and they are mostly negative about this game. I'm not sure what people were expecting but they had their hopes pretty high. I didn't expect it to be Forza or GT, should I? From the little I played I had a great time and not sure what all the hate is about.

[TCrouch]

Re: GRID 2 impressions

That's the thing--I had no Advanced Settings at all available when I chose the CSR Elite preset. When I plugged in the T500RS, it had that advanced settings for saturation/dead zone, etc. So thanks for that. I may be because I had my button box plugged in at the time, hoping in some weird way that they had other functions I could map to it. Maybe menus or brake bias, etc. Should have known better, so hopefully it was just an issue of multiple controllers being plugged in.

Thanks for the info on that!

I agree on the negativity. It's part of the reason why I quit reviewing games here. The day I realized I lost touch with the majority of gamers in this age of "I'm going to be as negative as possible to prove I know more than other people".

I turn on a game, fire it up, and can enjoy parts of it. What I WILL say that I can somewhat agree with is the driving model being the "center pole" variety. The car breaks loose in some cases and gets very erratic. I dialed that out with some linearity/saturation changes on my wheel, but for a lot of people, it's going to feel like one of those games where you're driving a carousel horse with a post down the center and not a vehicle where 4 contact patches control the car.

I had a bunch of fun with it, and I gotta say that on my triple screen it's ridiculous. Three 40" monitors with the Ultra setting on 5760x1080 and all of the global illumination and HD lightning--ridiculously good-looking.

[LingeringRegime]

Re: GRID 2 impressions

Anyone else running into issues with the VIP code? Mine isn't working.

[TCrouch]

Re: GRID 2 impressions

And just for the record, I took a screenshot at lunch so you can see what it looks like on a triple screen setup on Ultra. I figured I'd link to the image as well as a little shot of it:



Full Size Screenshot on Steam

[goh]

Re: GRID 2 impressions

I was using a 360 controller and it reconized that. Suppose it's just the wheel. But still options menu first! Speaking of which the AA settings are under video options and not with the rest of the graphics. Only goes to 8 instead of 16 but I normally set it at 8 anyway since my comp is older now and not very good with 16. Just kind of odd. Tried the next career race and was messing around in a custom race on a Tokyo track and it seems there's no music at all. Not having an option to listen to your own is fine,just alt + tab.

I find most of the complaining is from people upset about the no dashboard cam.

Here's a few more screens since I figured out the replay option:

[Tribe1]

Anyone else running into issues with the VIP code? Mine isn't working.

Mine isn't either...what system are you on? I'm on PS3 and I'm guessing we need to wait until the PSN is updated later

[LingeringRegime]

Re: GRID 2 impressions

Mine isn't either...what system are you on? I'm on PS3 and I'm guessing we need to wait until the PSN is updated later

PS3 for me too. I just did the 48 hour thing.

[YungThugga08]

I did the 48 hour trial also.

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