When it comes to RVs, perhaps the first thing that many people think of is a "behemoth" that integrates houses and cars. But in "Super RV", what players need to drive is another type of "RV" - they are modified cars called Touring Car, which corresponds to Formula Racing, and "RV" is just an embarrassing mistranslation, which has been used to this day.

It is worth mentioning that Codemasters, the developer of "Super Rally", has been engaged in developing racing games since the 1990s. Its qualifications are among the oldest in the entire British gaming industry, and its "Dust" and "F1" series are even more praised.

Compared with the above series, "Super Rally" has retained more characteristics of traditional arcade racing in addition to its unique theme. Since the birth of the early generation in 2008, "Super Rally" has released five works, including this "Super Rally: Legends" (English name "GRID: Legends". Compared with the previous work, this work has added official Chinese support for the first time, and has added story mode and many brand new events, making it look even better in quality.

Legendary Road

Telling stories in sports games is no longer a new thing, but the newly added story mode "Chasing Glory" in this work is still the first time for the "Super RV" series. Let players write their own heroic epic while experiencing the story, which may also be the theme of this subtitle "Legend".

Players will play the role of a new driver, joining the team "Seneca" with a missing major general, undergoing a complete GRID season, constantly working hard to improve during the competition, and eventually winning the championship with the team. In story mode, players cannot have a highly customized career like "One Goal Fame", but can only go through more than 30 fixed games, and only after reaching the goal in each game can the next game be unlocked. This is somewhat similar to the plot mode "brake point" of "F1 2021".

What is more special is that all cutscenes in the story mode use the form of live-action appearance, which can be said to be complementary to the documentary shooting mode of this work. A large number of interview shots with fixed camera positions capture every small facial movement of the actors in close-up ways, creating a sense of reality that cannot be compared to CG. However, as the protagonist of the story, the player has never appeared in these cutscenes, but is mentioned in the descriptions of the team manager, teammates, and staff, making the entire mode seem a bit lacking indulgence.

The punishment mechanism in the event has also been used in the story mode. When players deviate from the track at certain venues, they will be punished at the final settlement, resulting in a decline in ranking and even disqualification. But if the plot factor of the story mode is taken into account, this punishment mechanism can sometimes seem strange.For example, in a practice match that helps teammates rehabilitate, if a player accidentally leaves the track three or four times, the result of the competition will be invalidated and the game needs to be completed again before the plot can continue. This kind of punishment not only makes sense in the logic of the story, but also seems too strict.

In addition, every game in story mode is accompanied by a high-quality soundtrack when the player is driving. The mixing of orchestral music, electronic music and drum beats can well mobilize players' emotions and make the event more intense and exciting. However, outside the story mode, there will be no music in all modes including career and customization, and the experience of the competition has become much more dull, which makes people feel a little regretful.

Tracks and Modes

Story mode will also lead players to taste the tracks and different gameplay modes around the world, and these are the core fun of "Super RV".

All tracks in this work are traditional "running lap" tracks, covering hundreds of tracks in more than 20 regions around the world, including San Francisco and Shanghai, which inherited from "Super RV Race 2019", as well as newly joined tracks such as London and Moscow.

These tracks have obvious style differences. The Shanghai track allows players to whistle through the narrow tunnel and look at the Oriental Pearl Tower in the distance from the Nanpu Bridge; the logistics warehouse in Yokohama is full of containers, showing a rough scenery; and the Paris track allows people to look up at the Eiffel Tower up close. In addition, different weather at different times will also make the same track show different expressions. The track at dusk looks very magnificent, the track in the rain has excellent reflection effect, and the "sun rain" combined with the two looks even more magnificent.

In addition, bad weather such as rain and snow will leave raindrops and watermarks on the front windshield at the cab perspective, hindering the player's field of view. However, the vehicle's handling hand feels weather factors, and even on rainy days, the vehicle rarely slips, which is not much different from the driving feel in general. This may be to reduce the troubles encountered by players, but it also makes the realism during driving seem not very sufficient.

For the venue competition, this game also has some derivative modes with additional rules added. The knockout round will eliminate the players at the end of the team every once in a while until the last one is left. This makes it more compact than ordinary field tournaments, and you don’t need to run many laps to end the game, but accordingly, as long as the player makes a mistake, it may cause irreversible failures.

Multi-level competition is a "asymmetric confrontation" competition in which sports cars chase large trucks. While players compete with their surrounding opponents, they also need to chase the trucks in front as fast as possible. After successfully chasing, they can engage in a refreshing overtaking battle. This competition format is very novel to me and also creates a unique pleasure different from the general lap race.

In addition, this game also has modes such as drift races and time racing to create some new changes for the regular track. It is worth mentioning that electric racing has its own category for the first time in this game, allowing players who like supercars to enjoy it. However, the innovation of these modes is limited, and they are not much different from the basic venue mode in terms of experience. They fail to truly give players enough freshness, and they are still slightly insufficient in terms of playability. They will inevitably feel a little monotonous when playing repeatedly.

Compared with the previous work, the career mode of this work has also been changed. All events are divided into four levels of difficulty. Only when players complete a certain number of low-level events can they unlock entry qualifications for high-level events. The UI of the event is no longer as dense as the previous work, but has become more concise.

In addition, there are more than 120 authorized vehicles in this game. Although it is still a certain distance from the racing game masterpieces that often have four or five hundred cars, it has also achieved a certain improvement compared to the authorization database of less than 100 vehicles in the previous game. There are a wide variety of these authorized cars, from classic RVs, JDMs, to GT racing cars, F1 racing cars, etc.

The revenge battle you chase me

Compared to real-time simulations, "Super RV" obviously pays more attention to the players' pleasure while driving, which also makes its gaming experience closer to those traditional arcade racing games.

I used the Xbox controller and the Logitech G923 steering wheel for this review. The most intuitive feeling is that most vehicles have very good handling, which makes people feel like they won’t float when driving, and the experience is very refreshing. Whenever I turn, I can feel the vehicle’s strong grip, allowing me to pull through some outrageous big corners with the rocker or steering wheel very comfortably. In addition, players are allowed to perform 3 backtracking operations in each game, greatly improving the fault tolerance space in the game. This allows even newbies in racing games to feel a lot of driving fun from this game.

When I use the steering wheel to control it, I feel that the feel of steering is much more delicate than the handle, but the difficulty also increases. Once a mistake occurs, the vehicle loses control and wants to adjust it back to normal, it is not as simple as using the handle. Unfortunately, this game does not support the Trueforce function of the Logitech G923 steering wheel. When you turn on the steering wheel, you cannot feel the force feedback and there is no vibration effect. The feeling when driving is like playing with plastic toys, and the overall experience is a bit bad.

The feel of different types of vehicles also has huge differences. Large trucks are very difficult to turn and must slow down significantly before the curve so that they will not hit the edge railing. And Formula E racing seems much easier to control, allowing me to even step on the accelerator all the way when turning. However, once it is hit, its lightweight structure will cause the vehicle body to shake greatly, making it easy to not get out of control during collision.

When switching to the cab viewing angle, players can also feel more details. Although the details of the vehicle interior and instrument panel are difficult to say, they will restore the real condition of the vehicle as much as possible. When driving a manual transmission car, the driver's right hand will also change gears while accelerating and decelerating, making people feel more realistic.

The "revenge" system in the previous work was also inherited in this work.

Cracking and collision are not uncommon in RV racing, but big moves like "torpedo running" will still arouse the anger of the opponent. The "revenge" system is designed to punish this malicious collision behavior, and at the same time make the game look more gunpowder-like.

An opponents who are violently collided by players have a high probability of entering the "old enemy" state, being given a brand new AI mode, and waiting for an opportunity to retaliate against the player for the rest of the game. The opponents who become old enemies are very cunning. If they are in front, they will try every means to get stuck and do their best to disgust the player; if they are in the rear, they will suddenly shoot cold arrows when the player turns and drifts, causing the vehicle to lose control instantly.

However, there are still some problems in the judgment of becoming a "old enemy". Sometimes, even though the opponent is clearly the one who actively collides with the player, sometimes there is no scratch between the player and the opponent, it still makes the opponent an enemy. This makes me feel that many of the drivers in the game are like "road rage" and target the players with disagreement.

The multiplayer mode has also ushered in further improvement in this game. Fast matches allow players to take over AI from ongoing events, which makes the matching speed much faster, but also due to this mechanism, the proportion of real players in fast matches is not too high. In addition, multiplayer games cannot provide players with additional systems, modes or rewards, which makes its fun seem very limited.

General Review

The new story mode brings richer stand-alone content to "Super Rally: Legend". Players can not only feel the hard work from nothing to the championship, but also gradually improve and hone their skills as the difficulty of the event is. The authorized vehicles in this game are rich in types and have strong handling, which is also very friendly to novice players in racing games.

Unfortunately, the mode of the venue race still seems a bit too monotonous, and it may be easy for players to get tired of it after all. The lack of support for the steering wheel affects the player's control experience, and some unreasonable aspects of the "old enemy" and the punishment system also have a certain impact on the details of the game.