After watching another tour de force performance from one of my favorite Hollywood actors, I was presented with a disarming epiphany: GRID is the Nicole Kidman of racing games.

I didn’t believe it at first either. But with GRID’s fine-lined features, willingness to take on difficult and not always likeable roles, and its overall variety of selective yet class-act performances, this seemingly ethereal analogy began to cement itself. Not to say that Nicole Kidman hasn’t run into the odd roadblock or two during her tenure as one of Tinseltown’s leading ladies. Which is to admit that developer Codemasters didn’t race away without erecting the occasional roadblock for its GRID actors either.

The first roadblock I encountered wasn’t those initial gravel-choked elbows in France’s Circuit de la Sarthe during my maiden 24 Hours of Le Mans. It wasn’t those anime angles drifting around Japan’s Yokohama Docks. It was, in fact, the seemingly innocuous test-run time trial. These trials, to the novice driver, are not your friend. And in racing games--a genre seemingly absent end bosses--those acutely-sharpened minutes and seconds are GRID’s equivalent of a low-level bad guy. The clock face reading 01:37.00 for one particular event was my minutes/seconds/hundredths Shadow of the Colossus. Every hard-braking corner and subsequent stretch of gray asphalt was my God of War quick time event. And that checkered flag at the end of those short hauls was my Assassin’s Creed target marked for death.

GRID’s skill-level demands are exactly that: Demanding. From the get-go, stress and embarrassment elevated, and every event--be it a pro tuned tour, formula 1000, or freestyle drift--might as well have been labeled the Michigan demolition derby. “Button mashing” through a race is all well and good in, say, Burnout Revenge or MotorStorm; that’s the fun-loving, full-on arcade-style racing audience they aim to please. But GRID aims to train you with “timed attacks” as you parry and riposte your car’s heading when nudged by another driver; or waiting for your opponent to drop their guard as you slalom the inside lane on a rigid chicane-lined set of turns. This isn’t a street brawl: It’s martial artistry.



But sensei GRID isn’t completely unforgiving to his white-belt students. A “flashback” feature gives you multiple chances to rewind the sands of time, a la Prince of Persia, should the race run afoul. It’s brilliant, it’s beautiful, and it secretly shames you if you’re still using it during the higher echelons. Racing simulator enthusiasts have every reason to baulk at the inclusion of this temporally-manipulative convention. But for those of us not able to breakout our HotSeat Racer GT racing seat with its wireless True Force-Feedback wheel and pedals … breathe easy. The flashback feature is for you. And for those of you that eventually grow out of its usage, the difficulty levels scale from “Basic” to “Extreme” with increasingly-skilled opponents, and decreasingly-available flashbacks for you to call upon during the race. Once you’re ready for some really sweaty palms, making that leap of faith to Pro Mode robs you of all of your flashbacks, and even says, “Huh-uh,” to restarts. You’re committed. And it takes a focused, dialed-in player to attempt GRID on such a “Legendary” level.

But GRID in and of itself is not your most visible opponent. While the ego-puffery surrounding the game’s drivers has been seatbelted in the back (compared to previous editions of the Race Driver series), a rival team known as Ravenwes...