Has it really been whole years since Codemasters’ Race Driver: Grid? Well, I’ve just checked Wikipedia and I can confirm that yes, it very much has – and, oh my, so very, very much has happened since then.
First there’s the pivot at Codemasters away from that type of all-ages action towards more sim-minded games like Dirt Rally and the latter F1 games, and then the small matter of the dissolution of the arcade racer. It’s not that they don’t really make them like they used to – this generation, at least, they don’t really make them at all.
Indeed, you have to look elsewhere in the midlands for that kind of accessible racing. A few miles down the road from the Southam campus where the new Grid is being made, a number of Codemasters staff set up Playground Games and went on to mark that territory as their own with the brilliant Forza Horizon series. It’s interesting, then, that the Grid reboot is being headed up by Forza Horizon 4’s chief designer Chris Smith.
It gives this reboot some neat symmetry, with Smith having worked under Codemasters alumnus Ralph Fulton at Playground – and with Fulton having been instrumental in many of the innovations that made the original Grid so beloved. Back then it was all about the rewind system, as well as providing a more characterful brand of racing. This time out, it’s about the of motorsport – the unpredictable, out there moments that give motorsport so much of its appeal.