Race Driver: GRID 2 - "this already feels like a victory lap"

Like a toddler entrusted with a secret, the games industry is positively inflating under the strain of keeping its next-gen plans confidential. E3 was where the whole enterprise sprung a leak - Star Wars 1313, which we covered last month, is conspicuously better looking than anything on Xbox 360 - and now the floodgates are open. Officially, of course, when you ask members of the development team GRID 2 is only confirmed for Xbox 360. But that Summer 2013 release date, along with some astonishingly pretty visuals makes it all but certain that a version of Codies' long-awaited sequel will also appear on the next Xbox.

It's a sequel that's gone through a few iterations as well. Given its BAFTA award winning status, GRID 2 was expected to arrive hot on the heels of DiRT 2 and the rumour was that it would be a more modular affair - a cheaper boxed release supported by DLC. Clearly the less than scintillating reception of MX vs. ATV: Alive was an indicator of how that might perform, so the GRID 2 we're presented with is a laser-focussed boxed product.

That includes trimming some of the flab from the car list for a more coherent game. Rather than attempting to cover both racing and sports cars like the first game, GRID 2 is all about the more muscular and exotic end of the road-legal spectrum. That doesn't mean it's an entirely predictable mix of Paganis and Koenigseggs, though they are present and correct. Take the BAC Mono, as an example. You've probably never heard of this stripped down track day weapon, with its F1 inspired cockpit and pinched-in-the-middle chassis, but if you're looking for a car with a similar power-to-weight ratio to a racing car, and the resultant magnetic grip on the road, that should scratch the itch.

Of course the benefit of racing cars is the sheer top end speed of them and we were a little concerned GRID 2 would suffer from the absence of that top end speed. Having played it for ourselves, we needn't have worried. Codemasters would never be so gauche as to describe it as 'the Call of Duty of racing games' but we're happy to do it for them, particularly as the team admits to looking to first person shooters for inspiration. On-track drama is GRID's calling card and we didn't realise how much we'd missed this noisy, Hollywood take on racing.

Launching a Mercedes SL 65 AMG Black Edition around the downtown Chicago circuit, it all came flooding back. Cars in GRID handle how you imagine them to, rather than how they actually do, and they flatter your driving talent enormously to boot. Even if it's not the fastest way around a turn, the game's drift-happy handling model encourages the kind of corner exits that would require a set of new rear tyres every lap. The Merc in particular is a tyre-smoking V8 cruise missile, lunging through corners with palpable weight and plenty of horsepower to shift it.

It's perhaps the other car we drive, though, that gives the best clue to the sophisticated systems running behind the scenes, which performs just as many calculations as a hardcore sim. The modern Ford Mustang is hardly a triumph of balance, with the hefty block under the bonnet causing understeer on corner entry and then, as you wake up the pistons, power oversteer on the way out. It should be slow, and in most other racing games it would be, but GRID 2 is about capturing the character rather than slavish realism so while that juggling act is represented, it's all part of hustling a car that still feels spectacularly quick.

It helps that we were driving on one of GRID 2's new 'road races' (the other flavours are street and circuit events) which take place on long, sweeping point-to-point routes. Taking a leaf out of Need For Speed Hot Pursuit's Haynes Manual, this is all about clawing your way top speed of your chosen chariot and trying not to sail into the scenery. We stretched the Mustang's legs on a portion of classic Californian coastal highway, where the key to a quick time was gentle lifts on the accelerator to pitch the car into each sweeping turn and then delicate application of power to avoid spinning up the tires as you catapult out of the turn.