Do you have enough room to squeeze in another racer for your next-gen console? Well they guys and gals over at Codemasters think you do with their announcement of Race Driver: GRID – from the creators of Colin McRae: DIRT and the Race Driver series, for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC platforms.
Race Driver: GRID will burn rubber in your gaming domain in mid 2008 and is promised to capture every moment from the starting grid to the chequered flag and concentrate those moments into an intense and dramatic race experience.
“Race Driver: GRID is all about the race.” said Gavin Raeburn, Executive Producer at Codemasters Studios. “The next iteration of our DiRT engine combined with a decade of experience in developing driving games enables us to put the player at the centre of the action like never before. Damage, packed grids, intelligent opposition and unprecedented race day atmosphere will combine to deliver an experience like no other.
Says Ralph Fulton, Chief Game Designer. “GRID focuses on everything that happens between the start grid and the chequered flag: the drama, the rivalries, the aggression and the crashes. This is not a game about collecting cars or spending all of your time in the front-end tuning suspension settings or designing liveries. We want to make racing exciting again.”
Race Driver: GRID will take players to beautifully realised and dramatic race locations over three continents to compete in an unprecedented variety of racing events. Packed with the most powerful race cars – new and classic, circuit and drift – players will compete to conquer the most prestigious official race tracks and championships and then go beyond to compete in challenging city-based competitions, through to road events and urban street races.
In Europe, race gamers will compete on the greatest official tracks in prestige Marques including Aston Martin, Koenigsegg and Pagani. Iconic cities across the U.S. – including San Francisco, Washington DC and Detroit and each with their own atmosphere and events – play hosts to diverse street races. Here, high-performance V8 muscle cars set the pace in aggressive closely fought pack competitions.
In the Far East, Japanese racing culture sets the tone where night races, including Drift racing, take drivers through neon illuminated cities and to outlying mountain roads. There is also the opportunity to compete in races that operate on the fringes of legality in the back streets and industrial areas of Yokohama.
If the likes of Colin McRae: DIRT is anything to go by, then we are in for a treat with GRID come mid 2008. Check out the two current screenshots in our 360 Media Section for the game, with more to come in the near future. Let us know your impressions on this announcement – Would you like to keep things simple and stick to just racing events, or do you like customising, tweaking and collecting vehicles in your racing games? Let us know below.
Update: Four more screens added to our media section
