The next track will see you traversing huge tunnels dotted with ramps and boost pads that have participants clattering down its interior like a high-speed kaleidoscope. One track will see you racing on a dusty planet littered with mining equipment, where one set of racers might fly through a tunnel and take off from a ramp at the end while another couple of petrol heads take a half-pipe that seamlessly guides them onto the ceiling then back off again, straight back into the pack. Thankfully, a majority of the tracks boast a more open-plan design, and it’s here GRIP is at its most enjoyable. A number of tracks also have lanes suspended in the air, much like classic WipEout tracks, but with such high speeds, it’s really easy to just overshoot your timing and go flying off the edge. The physics are very sensitive, with each of the game's 14 vehicles offering a distinct weighting that makes those paint-trading moments even more intense one wrong move can easily send you spinning away in the wrong direction. There are both passive and aggressive power-ups to collect, ranging from your traditional boost to a shield that briefly protects your posterior from missiles, boost pads to give you a little extra 'oomph' in the speedometer department and weapons which allow you to engage in physical duels as you smash other drivers out of the way around a tight corner. From a slew of tracks that twist and turn to vehicles that can ride on the ceiling and the walls as gravity itself is constantly dismissed, it’s a love letter to a game that remains a classic in its own right.Īnd a few turns into your first race, it’s clear Cage Element has managed to capture the intensity and moment-to-moment tussles of its ancestor. While it’s been developed by a completely different team, GRIP is very much a spiritual successor to another seminal combat racer from that era - the brilliant (and almost 20-years-old) Rollcage - and it’s proud of that fact, too. Years removed from a successful crowdfunding campaign, can this plucky little racer take enough inspiration from the past while offering something genuinely new on Switch? It’s a genre that’s struggled to maintain a proper revival outside of Mario Kart series - see the commercial failure of the superb Blur and Split-Second for proof of that - but that hasn’t stopped Canadian developer Caged Element from making its own bid to reunite face-melting speeds and explosive battles for a new era with GRIP. For every Gran Turismo and Ridge Racer there was a Mario Kart 64, a WipEout and a Speed Freaks ready to throw blue shells and fire missiles with wanton abandon. While the ‘golden age’ of the Nintendo 64 and the original PlayStation gave us the template for intense racing sims and arcade speedsters, it also blessed us with a slew of high-speed titles with a penchant for combat.
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