Speed demons race into summer action

With petrol prices rising globally, a leisurely Friday afternoon drive is turning into a luxury. But there is an alternative: The automotive video game. And the only fuel you need is the electricity that powers your TV and your game console.

This year has already delivered a smorgasbord of racing games, including Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, Burnout Paradise and Mario Kart Wii.

For about a decade, Sony's Gran Turismo has been the standard by which other car games are judged. But a new contender is here to take the checkered flag away from GT.


—Grid (Codemasters, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Dh240): Britain's Codemasters studio gained a cult audience with its TOCA Race Driver, and it has applied the lessons learned from that series to this addictive new title.

Grid (pictured above) is a blend of arcade-style racing and hardcore simulation. The titular grid combines different racing disciplines in a variety of US, European and Japanese locations. Courses include winding mountain roads, famous tracks, and urban environments. You can drive stock cars, muscle cars, touring cars and open-wheel cars; you can compete in a demolition derby or a drifting competition.

The controls feel natural, although your computer-controlled opponents can be vicious, slamming you into walls. But Grid does cut you some slack: After a smash-up you can rewind the action and resume from a point before things went wrong.

—Nascar 09 (EA Sports, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Dh240; PlayStation 2, Dh160): I get that America loves Nascar. I understand the appeal of the feuds between its characters. But Nascar 09 looks like a tea party compared with the excitement of Grid.

The real-life sport has one big obstacle: It's driving in circles. And any time it threatens to get interesting – say with a crash – a caution flag gets raised, slowing the action to a crawl. Are Nascar drivers wimps?

Nascar 09 does have a nice selection of "Sprint Driver Challenges" that test drafting, avoiding wrecks or maintaining a certain speed. But the meat of the game are the predictable races, with graphics and audio that pale in comparison with Gran Turismo or Forza.

—Emergency Heroes (Ubisoft, Wii, Dh160): This mirror version of Grand Theft Auto sees the player stopping mayhem instead of creating it. Alas, the futuristic metropolis of San Alto is nowhere near as expansive as Liberty City, and the variety of things you can do is limited. Here, evil triumphs easily over good. You have three types of vehicles (fire trucks, ambulances and

police cars) and three types of missions (putting out fires, rescuing victims and chasing criminals). All the tasks feel the same, and the attempt to add a plot falls flat. The steering, acceleration and braking are imprecise. Overall, Emergency Heroes doesn't do justice to its inspirations.

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