If you missed out on our previous coverage, Grid is Codemasters’ second racing entry for this generation behind last year’s Dirt. Built on an upgraded version of the same engine, Grid will feature 50 hand-picked cars, a ton of real-world roads and fresh licensed tracks across the U.S., Europe and Japan. The game will feature an RPG-esque single-player mode that starts players as a rookie driver and gives them a chance to earn money by driving for various teams. When the player makes enough, they’ll have the chance to start their own team and even hire an AI teammate from 600 unique AI types. Also featured in the game is the legendary 24 hours of Le Mans. Scaled down to 24 minutes in career, players will have a chance to compete at the end of every season.

Although the demo we played was short, we still got a good feel for how the game should play. Firing it up, the first thing players do is input their first and last names—and also choose an audio name from a huge list. This little touch is really cool and gives the game a lot of added depth. Now both the narrator and pit crew can address the driver on a more personal level. After that step, we were thrust into an intro race featuring a Dodge Viper, while the voice from the pit crew guided us through various obstacles on the track like crashes or steep hills and even gave advice about the car.

Right off the bat, one of the things that popped out to us was the awesome sense of speed. A lot of games can come off stiff or slow, but Grid sets the pace right away and screams. Also quite eye-catching is the overall graphic work. Dirt was and still is a gorgeous game, but Grid ups the ante with the engine improvements. The environments we played were extremely detailed, and the car models looked great. The improvements on the car damage are also very apparent although the crashes aren’t quite as spectacular as in Dirt. The debris is persistent on the track so a torn off bumper or even a flipped car would remain on the track for the remainder of the race. To give you a warning of impending crash possibilities, a yellow-flag icon will appear signaling caution.

The car handling is about what you would expect from a Codemasters racer. Anyone that is familiar with racing titles will be able to pick this up and play. The AI felt a little aggressive on the collision front but Codemasters assures us that they’re aware of that and will have addressed before the game ships. There was a bit of a learning curve for the new drift events, however. Because every game does drift differently, each one is like playing it for the first time. The advantage here is that Codemasters actually brought in the legendary Team Orange, a world leader in the new sport. The drift level we played was at the Yokohama Docks in Japan, and after a little bit of practice, we were whipping in and out of tight turns around the warehouses.

Unfortunately, our demo didn’t allow us to check out any of the non-race elements like sponsorships, building a team or hiring AI. We also couldn’t drive the Le Mans course but the prospect is very exciting. In the career mode, players will race the Le Mans 24 hour race in 24 minutes, but if you’re really hardcore, you can do the full 24 hours in real time. This is something we’ve only really seen one other time and that was in Test Drive Le Mans.

Codemasters is a name we trust in racing. Although Grid still feels a bit early, the company has a pretty good track record in the genre. With a much deeper career mode and online plan than Dirt, the company is already one-upping themselves in the content sector. They even stepped-up the gorgeous menu interface that was previously used in Dirt. Anyone who’s looking for a solid racing title but wants more than just the same hum-drum tracks and cars over and over again owes it to themselves to put Grid on their radar when it hits the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PC this June.