Race Driver: Grid - On this day

Before grabbing a license for Formula 1 games, British studio Codemasters had two "loves": Colin McRae Rally and Toca / Race Driver. The first eventually became DiRT, and the second was renamed GRID just on this day 13 years ago.

Admittedly, the first Grid was still called Race Driver and appeared for PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 consoles as the second game to use Codemasters ’EGO engine. Just like DiRT, Grid broadened his horizons and brought more diverse disciplines to the Race Driver series. In addition to the classic racing, there were drifting competitions, demolition derbies, and the like.

The central part of the game was a career mode in which the player was a team driver. He received offers from sponsors for which he met the conditions so that he could use the money he earned to expand his garage and upgrade his vehicles. There were 43 different vehicles available, mostly licensed. It was driven in three regions: America, Europe, and Japan. The tracks were a mixture of real racetracks (Le Mans, Spa Francorchamps, etc.) and fictional ones.

Although Race Driver: Grid did not have the classic story like some previous and later Codemasters games, there was a motive for rivalry with the opposing team. The Grid players well remembered the "antagonists" of the game in a team called Ravenwest, which was considered the best team in the game. If the Ravenwest team were to take part in the race, your team initially suggested that you aim for third place the most. 

Race Driver: The grid was halfway between arcade racing and driving simulation. He was gentle with the players in the sense that he made it possible to "rewind" the time when they would make a mistake - something the Codemasters had developed for DiRT. The majority of the racing took place in single-player, although there were also modes of online multiplayer. However, they did not last long and the official servers were shut down three years after the game came out.

Grid was considered one of the best driving games of 2008. The ratings for the game were mostly very good and excellent. However, the wait for the sequel was as long as five years, and when he arrived, the players resented him for many things, including omitting the camera from the cab. Grid Autosport from 2014 improved the impression a bit, but then in 2019 came a kind of reboot called GRID, which took the title of the lowest-rated part in its series.