Codemasters Racing have made great racing games in it's day, even the first GRID brought us new features like the rewind feature, and having great detailed cockpit views. It seems for whatever reason, Codemasters Racing decided to make the control and feel of the automobiles more Arcady, and removed the highly detailed cockpit views. Codemasters Racing says only 5% of players used the GRID 1 Cockpit view, thus it's not cost effective to include them. This in my opinion makes the game feel like it's targeting the casual audience and to hell with the hardcore racing game audience, Codemasters Racing even attempted to not include Race Wheel support for GRID 2, but due to the large outcry on Codemasters Message Boards they decided to include limited racewheel support. GRID 2 works with my XBOX 360 Race Wheel on my PC so that's a PLUS in my books. I'm a bit DISAPPOINTED with the graphics, NEED FOR SPEED Most Wanted (2012) looks a lot better than GRID 2, the textures are very flat and low resolution especially on the Sponsor Decals, they are very pixilated, this is unacceptable for a PC game in 2013. It's very odd because Codemasters Racing makes amazing looking games but it seems they decided to cut corners instead of trying to produce a Racing game that has competitive graphics compared to other Racing games, for example the characters in the crowd are very low Polygon count and very low resolution textures it looks like the crowds from an Original Xbox Sports game crowd from 2004, they use tons of blur effects and depth of field to hide the bad low resolution crowd. I know this is nitpicking but other racing games do it better even DIRT 3 looks better in many ways, which odd. I also feel the buildings look odd in the game, the textures look flat with no depth or detail, again its nitpicking, but it just looks odd when the cars look so good and everything else just doesn't.
If you are interested in a hardcore racing game then this isn't it, if you want a fast paced Arcady Racing then this might be for you but, I just don't feel its worth full price but on sale this is a good buy if you enjoy arcade racing games, but keep in mind Need for Speed Most Wanted (2012) is a GREAT arcade racing game, looks stunning on the PC and is Dirt cheap, no Pun intended LOL. GRID 2 also has a decent story for a racing game, being a star in the fictional World Series Racing (WSR) and having ESPN in the cutscenes makes this league feel real and I'm sure some of you didn't know the WSR is a fictional league. :)
Here is some gameplay I took at 1080p with all the graphics maxed out.
http://youtu.be/HSjq1AJCEMI
Specs
Alienware X51 - LOL I won it :)
Intel i7 3770
16 GB DDR3
EVGA GTX 670 2GB - I paid for this lol replace my GTX 660 OEM 1.5GB