The Switch isn’t exactly known for its racing games, and yet, between Mario Kart and its copies, indie games like Horizon Chase Turbo or Inertial Drift, and now ports like Burnout and Need For Speed, there’s plenty to do; the days are long gone when the only alternatives to MK8 were the mediocre Gear. Club and the catastrophic V-Rally 4. But what’s still missing are simulations: there’s no Project Cars, no F1, no DiRT, and even less Forza or Gran Turismo. Fans of “accessible simulation” will therefore have to turn to GRID Autosport, the only representative of the genre on the console.
Let’s answer the question that’s been bothering you right away: is GRID Autosport worth a Forza or a Gran Turismo? This won’t surprise anyone: no, it wasn’t worth the Forza/GT of the time when it came out on Xbox 360 & PS3, and that hasn’t changed. But is it a good racing game in absolute terms?
The first thing to know is that GRID Autosport is not a “billionaire simulator who loves cars”, unlike Forza/GT, but a “driver simulator” who makes a career in the automobile industry, and to whom you lend a car for a season. You choose a category, a championship, a team, you do a few races, then you start again. You don’t buy the cars, you can’t modify them or ogle them, you don’t even earn money, just experience that allows you to unlock more difficult championships; the races are “realistic” with tests, qualifications, and sometimes two racing sessions; in short, it’s a purely driving-oriented game, like many other simulations. The big advantage is that you have immediate access to 300 horsepower racing beasts; the disadvantage is that it’s less fun than when you put a 500hp engine in your Mini to stand up to supercars.
The progression by championship gives the feeling of progressing in your career: you start at the bottom of the ladder (if you can call touring cars or GT3s “the bottom of the ladder”), and as you gain experience in each category, championships are unlocked, offering increasingly powerful cars, and teams with better rewards. The championships are regularly interrupted by class changes to switch to a “retro” cup or another category; all this makes it feel like you are in truly structured events, rather than doing races a bit at random as is often the case on Forza/GT. One strange aspect however: the level of the chosen teams determines the possible settings: the worst ones do not allow anything, and the best ones allow you to make finer adjustments, it is very special. On the other hand, each team has its criteria for success, and they do not require finishing in first position in the first season: a very good point.
GRID Autosport’s career is divided into five categories
Touring cars are normal-looking but completely transformed cars, including BTCC, DTM, and V8 Supercars; the cars are powerful but still very controllable, and the events are held in two rounds, the second of which has an upside-down grid, which encourages contact and overtaking. In endurance, which ranges from GT3 to Le Mans prototypes, you have to manage tire wear in night races, but without pit stops. The “open wheels” are single-seaters from Formula 3 to Indy Car, with a few sports cars like the Ariel Atom, always in single-model races; not as extreme as Formula 1, it’s the closest thing to it. The “tuner” category is the most eclectic, alternating muscle cars and Japanese cars on racing, time attack, and drift events: very complete, but also very disturbing, and drifting will not please everyone in addition to being very tedious. Finally, the “street” uses stock cars in urban races, from compact to stock hypercars. When you progress enough in each category, you unlock a “GRID” championship which alternates them and thus offers extremely varied events. Finally, in free play, there are drag races, BTCC with cars from the 80s/90s, sprint against the clock on rally-type roads, and a “demolition derby” mode: they are not included in the career because they are modes added by the game’s DLC, included in this Switch version, but it’s a shame that they didn’t take the opportunity to include them.
In terms of quantity, with a good hundred cars, we are very far from the 700 vehicles of Forza Motorsport 7, especially since the game dates from 2024, there are not the very latest models, and no Porsche or Ferrari; that said, we are in the same waters as, for example, Project Cars. The variety is indeed present in style, age, and power, but the division into categories and subcategories means that once on the track, there are often only two or three different models; it is not a big deal, especially since we constantly change categories even within a championship, but sometimes a little sad. It is still largely enough to spend time there and vary the pleasures, but do not expect to do half the career with your favorite model, it is simply impossible. With 15 official circuits, 2 fictional, 7 urban, and 4 “sprints”, including several variants each time for a total of 130 tracks, and a good variety in circuit type and environment, there is more than enough to do a good number of events before encountering redundancy.
The first GRID, which was already the 7th episode of the TOCA series, was remarkable for its rather unique driving, a perfect halfway between the strong and exaggerated sensations of the arcade and the demands of the simulation, and GRID Autosport is in this lineage: very far from a Need For Speed but more permissive than a Forza/GT, it requires paying attention to the braking points and finding the right trajectories to improve your time, but the loss of grip is easily caught up, even in single-seater, and the possible settings are standard and quite simple. The main problem with the handling is not related to the game but to the console and its lack of analog triggers: the sensations are very good but you have to adapt to the acceleration with the right stick and the rather imprecise joycons; prefer the Pad Pro or Hori Split Pad Pro, or even a Gamecube controller if you have the right adapter. We’ll compensate by activating the driving aids, but it’s quite frustrating when you know how to master Forza/GT without assistance. A small detail that’s a bit annoying, however: to prevent you from cutting corners, the game slows you down arbitrarily when you overtake a little too much, but with very little consistency: sometimes you can put all four wheels in the grass without any problem, sometimes you just have to bite a little bit outside the curbs to be forced to drive at 50km/h for 10 seconds. This is particularly annoying in Touring, where the melee is so dense that it’s difficult to overtake without biting the side of the road a little, and you’re easily ejected by the AI.
The AI is pretty mediocre, mid-basket level of the PS3/Xbox 360 generation.
The opponents ride on rails, and crash into us as if we didn’t exist far too frequently; fortunately, it is possible to disable damage and set infinite rewinds because a nervous breakdown is guaranteed otherwise. The level of the opponents is also quite random: the difference between each difficulty level is huge, the competitors make cannon starts and take off like arrows while we overtake them after 2 turns, their pace changes enormously from one circuit to another or depending on the type of event (in endurance the opponents go at full speed while we ride on eggs to save tires), and the AI of Ravenwest (the best team in the game) is completely abused, systematically taking the lead in all races; it’s bearable, but the AI is not a great success.
The driving assistance is quite complete, going as far as automatic driving of the car (acceleration/braking and turns), and the game allows very advanced customization of the difficulty to gain more experience: the classics: opponents’ level, transmission, or damage, but also race duration, trajectory display, number of flashbacks (backtracking), locking the camera in the cockpit, HUD display, etc. Note that this Switch version offers an “XP boost” mode to correct the main flaw of the original game: the very slow progression that forced you to grind, a problem completely solved thanks to this. The options are also numerous: total customization of the controls with many possibilities, audio optimization, graphics quality, etc.
Technically, GRID Autosport is perfectly optimized for the Switch
it offers a “graphics” mode at 30fps, a “performance” mode at 60fps with reduced details, and an “energy saving” mode with the graphics of the 60fps mode but at 30fps, all of which can be changed even in the middle of a race. The game is very clear and very clean, the graphics mode is worthy of the end of the PS3/Xbox 360 generation with many effects and animations on the edge of the track, the performance mode is fluid in all circumstances, the damage is very well modeled, in short, it is a real success; however, you will have to forget the weather or the dynamic lighting. On the other hand, we can note a very recessed cockpit view: the mirrors, the meters and the lights of the single-seater circuit breaker are not functional, and the dashboard suffers from a “blurred texture” effect that is not very successful. It’s all the more unfortunate since the immersion of this view is very good, with the reduced visibility and the constant vibrations. Finally, I regret a certain lack of personality in the menus, which are functional but very cold and mechanical, while the first GRID was much better at this level, not to mention the menus of DiRT 3 from the same developer, are much funkier.
In terms of sound, we will quickly forget the generic music of the menu to concentrate on the very successful sound effects, especially with the headset which is very well spatialized: the engines crack and spit beautifully, the cockpit view does not have the same sound rendering as the exterior view, and we can hear each element of the circuit very well, right down to the music played in the stands when we pass nearby. Don’t hesitate to cut the voices of the useless commentator, it feels great.
