Sam Bye – Google

I will re-evaluate this once I have completed the game. I'm currently 7 in-game hours into Eastward and as others have stated.....its the dialogue that lets it down. I feel I could give this game a 4 or 4.5, but the unskippable dialogue/ cutscenes really start to get tedious. Yes, some times it can be funny or cute or entertaining, but it just gets to a point where you end up thinking 'Please just let me play the game.' I love the look of the game, bright colorful areas and a big pixel art world to get stuck into. A good soundtrack. The story itself I actually find pretty good so far, its just so drawn out by the constant talking. I swear I've spent more time reading dialogue than actually playing he game.

I will say straight away that the game is bugged, which massively ruined the experience for me. At any random given point, the game can bug out and completely delete all of your progress. This happened to me at the start and deleted around 60-90 minutes of playtime, but I took a chance and persisted on, re-doing the progress I'd lost. But then after 60 HOURS of gameplay it happened again and deleted all of my progress. Looking into this issue it would seem no one knows exactly what causes it and that Codemasters are doing precisely nothing to sort it. Onto the actual gameplay.... I have to say, besides the bug, the game is actually pretty good, which is what makes the bug such a let down. There's a good, wide selection of cars to pick from, with some not often being found in games. A good selection of race types to choose from, ranging from F1 and prototype racers, to truck racing and drifting. A wide selection of both real and fictional tracks, some coming back from older Grid games. The graphics I'd say were pretty decent, the cars look very good. There is also a fairly short story mode, which introduces you to the teams and some of the drivers, giving you backstory through race challenges and cinematics. Its a little corny and the story was cliché, but it was a different thing to include and for some reason I kind of liked it Let downs... AI cars are terrible. They either drive like they are on train tracks, not moving an inch off the racing line, or they are super aggressive to the point that they will ruin their own race just to push you off the road. This isn't even when triggering them as a nemesis. If you crash or bump into opponents, they can get triggered as a nemesis and become far more aggressive and also become quicker around the track. But for one, I had a lot of instances where I literally drove near a car and they would turn into a nemesis. For two, some of the AI cars act super aggressive without even being triggered! On numerous occasions as well the AI will just spontaneously go into huge crashes, I've seen this happen on long straights where there was nothing even near the AI car. Other little let downs, no soundtrack which is a shame. Some races (especially anything electric) just feel completely silent and baron of anything going on. Towards the end it starts to feel a little bit repetitive, especially having to redo races or sit doing laps on oval tracks, just so you can rack mileage up to then unlock the final race of that particular car class. This I do not think is a good idea. If the bug ever gets fixed, I would definitely recommend anyone into racing games to give it a go. Its easy to pick up and play, good graphics and a big election of cars. Just a few little niggles that could be sorted if they make another installment.

The handling is just bizarre, one of the worst games I've experienced. Takes a very long time to get a hang of and even then on rally and hillclimb modes it's a handful. Mistakes are punished hard. There is no rewind feature, which is fine, but the reset button not only takes 2-3 seconds to activate, but also gives you a time penalty. ONE song on the menu screens, so get used to hearing it. Dumb little things such as the sun being BLINDINGLY bright and off-putting. Just numerous badly thought out ideas, no idea how it didn't get picked up on during testing.