GRIP

[HandsomeDead]

Time for impressions me thinks.

 

I've decided its great.  It's a futuristic racing game where the car's have big wheels and can drive upside-down.  It's high speed so you can ride up walls, ceilings and generally flip around.  It's very fun.

 

The game starts off very easy - you can come last and still progress - but now I've spent some time with it I see that early parts of the game are just about learning the tracks and how your car reacts to the environments.  So I will just say you may progress easily but it's important to pay attention.  You'll need to because later where positions are more important you can't just fling yourself around; your flinging has got to be considered.

 

Handling is a weird combination of twitchy and heavy.  Like steering between other cars on the straights is twitchy but when the tracks start throwing sharp turns at you you need to be heavy on the breaks and the car's suddenly feel like barges.  It's weird to get used to but it does make an odd sense after extended play.

 

It has a good variety of modes.  Races come in different guises:  You have your basic races, there are races based on points (you get points nailing others with Mario Kart style weapons and sick jumps), an arena mode like a death match taking place in an open area and others.

 

I think it's really cool.  It's hard, and like a lot of weapons based racing games it can definitely be frustrating but then there are lots of highs, too, so it's a game you have that kind of dysfunctional relationship with, especially with all the flipping.

 

Here, I have a clip of me racing that has a bit of GRIP drama in it (shout out to the self correction after being screwed *chefs kiss*.  Boo to me being an idiot and driving into the edge of a pipe)

 

 

[RoboticMonk3y]

Looks like a game I remember playing on the PlayStation 1 called rollcage. 

Looks like a lot of fun 

[HandsomeDead]

Yeah, it's a spiritual successor to Rollcage.  

[HandsomeDead]

There's something else as well that reminds me that's in that clip.  I hit that pipe because I launched a homing missile as I hit a small bank so it just hit that and blew up in my face.  I've had stuff like that happen a number of times because some of the weapons do have a prep time and it's another little micro mechanic you gotta think of. 

 

Same with self correcting.  There is a jump you can charge and if you release it as you're reversing your car flips to the other direction, but you can use the jump in other situations, such as getting more air off ramps or maybe even avoiding attacks. 

 

The game is pretty dense with this kind of stuff. 

[mfnick]

I was hyped for this, lived Rollcage back in the day and this is basically a spiritual successor. Got it on Game Pass a couple of months ago. Though it was shite! The handling feels certain off, the tracks aren’t very clear and it’s missing the fun of the Rollcage games - it seems to punish you for trying to take alternate routes and driving on the walls and ceilings and those options aren’t as frequent. Also can’t blow buildings up. Bad. The graphics are also terrible. 

 

@DifferentClass Did you like it straight away or did it take some time? Reckon it’s worth me re downloading it and giving it a bit more time? Think I only gave it a couple of those groups before giving up on it. 

[HandsomeDead]

I think the tracks get more interesting as the game goes on.  Early tracks are more off road and have the kind of hazards that make taking short cuts hard but they just don't make them easy.  Yeah, if you're not in the right racing line you gotta abort them.

But later tracks there is plenty of driving up walls.  The city tracks especially, and there are a number of F-Zero style tracks in tubes.  There's actually more tracks than I thought there would be and they are varied and require different styles of driving.