Network Legends – Review – Critical Hits

Racing games have always been one of the coolest experiences a video game can offer, after all, they run at speeds that are hard to reach in life without the high probability of hitting a curve, and Grid Legends brings just that. Continuing with the 2019 reboot, can the game succeed as its predecessor did and improve upon its formula?

In Grid Legends, the game is mainly divided into two modes, single player or multiplayer mode, and as usual, we are going to split our review between the two.

In the single-player mode, where I’ve spent most of my time, we have a campaign where you’re Driver 22, who has joined Team Seneca and must help your team, as well as complete the Veteran’s Day, Tanaka.

The campaign is really fun, and you get to learn about the different types of racing classes and vehicles that the game has to offer. On top of that, you also have competitors inside, Team Voltz sprinter Valentin Manzi and Ravenwest sprinter Nathan McCain.

This rivalry is told in several races, each with a series of conditions, such as finishing in front of one of your competitors, not destroying the car, or even reaching the X position to advance.

One point of the campaign that I didn’t think was great, because it’s completely unrelated to what the game is trying to convey, is the fact that you start out as an inexperienced runner and go up the competition ladder, from semi-pro to pro and everything else, but the races themselves are very easy in the normal challenge mode. In this way, oddly enough, the game still treats you like a beginner who has to prove himself with you and destroy each race after race.

An interesting point of the campaign is that it is possible to play it with more than one person, through the multiplayer mode, although the campaign itself does not advance to that person who will help you.

Another interesting point in the campaign is the interviews with the runners you compete against during the races and also the comments your team manager makes as the race unfolds, although some are very exaggerated or even weird at certain points.

As you progress in the game’s career mode, more and more activities will be released that you can do in the game itself, so you are forced to play in races and destroy the competition to get to everything Grid Legends has to do to progress.

But how does the Grid Legends race work? Well, that’s the most important thing of all, after all, there’s no point in being a racing game with a rich and action-packed campaign and being bad, right?

If I had to rank Grid Legends, I’d say it’s more like Forza Horizon than Gran Turismo, i.e. it’s more like an arcade style, with a much easier run of high speed skate courses, compared to the simulation. Thus the game becomes more lenient with errors, but the car can still be rotated along the road, for example.

Other points from Forza and racing games in general that pulled the game down were the line indicating which path you should take on the track and also the possibility to “roll back” your path across the track if you made a mistake (limited to three recovery races).

In general, the races in Grid Legends are very interesting, and fans of high-speed racing without much interest in this mania will enjoy recreating any and all noises and characteristics of realistic cars in the game.

Graphically, Grid Legends is a beautiful game, both on the Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X, which is where I tested the game. The challenge happens with high fluidity and the tracks and car models are very beautiful, both during the day and at night.

The game’s soundtrack is good and it also has subtitles and menus in Portuguese for those who don’t speak English to stay up to date with what’s going on.

But is Grid Legends worth it?

Grid Legends is a good racing game that will delight fans of arcade style speed, combining a good campaign and beautiful graphics. There are points where the game could improve, like feeling challenging in the campaign, but overall, the game does what you want it to do.

The review was made with a copy of the game for Xbox Series X and Series S provided by the publisher.