With Sony's ultimate driving simulator being test driven earlier this year, people are eagerly awaiting the full release of Gran Turismo 5. However, that wait might just be over sooner than we expected, because Codemasters are attempting to get people back into the Race Driver series - dropping the TOCA title to make it more universal - and Race Driver GRID is an all out driving simulator that could well be better than the aforementioned holy grail of racers.

GT purists might well baulk at that statement, but Race Driver GRID really is fantastic. As a racing game it will go unmatched this year in every aspect; from design to gameplay to graphical prowess, GRID has it all. On the surface it's a by-the-numbers racing game where you go through seasons of events to eventually take the racing world by storm. But look at GRID even a tiny bit closer and you'll find an addictive, compelling and visceral driving experience, one that no game from recent memory can hold a candle to. Yes, GRID is amazing, despite a major flaw that makes this the closest I have ever come to giving a perfect score to a game but having to hold back.

Race Driver GRID is split into seasons, each one consisting of around four events that you compete in, ending with the twenty-four hour/minute Le Mans race to round of what is hopefully a successful season. The events you compete in depend on which licenses you acquire in each of the game's three areas - America, Europe and Japan. You begin without any license but that changes after you first set off, freelancing for other teams as you try to fund your entry into the sport itself. After this point the route you take to greatness depends on you; although you can still race for other teams to further bolster your bank balance, your personal team is the priority as you find sponsors and extra teammates, gaining entry to the top racing competitions against the world's greatest. If you prefer one-on-one, non-contact racing down Japanese mountainsides or multi stage drift battles then you can go for the Japan licences, leaving the other two for a later season.

This open-ended nature makes the team you are trying to reach the top with all the more endearing. Teammates congratulate you on wins while your manager gives you credit for sticking it out until the end of a tough race. You can choose how you want to get to the top, all the while bearing in mind that you have a long way to go. The journey ahead is a very arduous one and if you plan on buying every car possible, selling the ones you don't need on eBay, and mastering all of the game's many courses, it will take an immense amount of hours. This is a perfect partner to the addictive one more race mentality that the game has in abundance; GRID has so much longevity that you probably won't need another racer for the next year or so.

There may not be a huge range of events on offer in GRID, but what is here is top notch, from all-out GT2 races to pro races where the scratches you sustain mean so much more thanks to the massive value of each car. Then you have the aforementioned Touge and Drift battles, unique to the Japanese circuit, while the touring cars events are what you'll mostly be enjoying in the European and American ones. The same is true of the cars in Race Driver; there aren't that many, but with most brands on the market showcasing cars in GRID, such as Nissan and Chevrolet, the collection will still be recognised by car nuts. Each car reacts in the way you would expect, with the Dodge Viper living up to its name, while lower echelon vehicles perform at their level too. The cars and events will satisfy anyone who enjoys racers, but when GRID is compared to other racers, the major differences become apparent quickly.

After saying that GRID was filling the gap of Gran Turismo 5 until its release, I must now stress how different it is to Polyphony's 'perfect' driving experience. The biggest difference is that Codemasters has realised how realistic damage models can make a great game fantastic - and the destruction is one of GRID's highlights. When you crash into a wall at top speed you may be sacrificing your progress in the race so far but the destruction is definitely up there with Burnout. However, the visuals of such carnage aren't the best thing that the developers have done when it comes to sustaining damage; as you race and bump into nearby objects and other racers, your car takes damage in real time. What this means is that while smaller collisions don't affect you, larger ones give you a disadvantage in the long run; you may find turning harder than usual, or find it impossible to reach top speeds. This dramatically changes the dynamic of races; pulling off a tight win with a dodgy left wheel feels much more like an achievement than a flawless run. This is the magic element that GRID has, making even the tough races - ones that you may not win - just as enjoyable due to making you work hard against the odds.

Of course, not crashing makes winning a lot easier and this philosophy must have been with the developer who decided to borrow a gameplay element from a certain Prince of Persia. The Sands of Time are in GRID and while at first glance this might seem like a terrible combination - track racing and time rewinding - it works tremendously well. After a major, race ending crash, you can choose to retire, restart the race, or take an instant replay. By rewinding with L2 you can get back to the few seconds before it all went downhill and change the outcome for the better. There will always be the odd time when you can't escape inevitability, but this amazing feature prevents one small mistake from ruining an otherwise great run. By pressing Select at any point in the race you can take an instant replay of the ten seconds previous to that moment, which lets you retry a tricky turn or prevent the damage that you took from actually happening. It's an all-round great feature that is less intrusive than I thought it would have been; it adds to the game rather than taking away from it and if you really can't stand the idea of rewinding time then it's not like you have to use it.

In terms of multiplayer, GRID does nothing out of the ordinary when you play online. In fact, the AI is so good in the single player game that by adding real people the gameplay doesn't change as much as most racers do. You search for people to race and you're straight into the driving; it's nice and fast, ensuring that you don't become bored by a long wait. The online mode doesn't make the game any more essential, but the game mechanics make the online mode much more enjoyable. Online and off, GRID plays like a dream.

There is a distinctive lack of a soundtrack in GRID, a polar opposite to the radio style music of both Burnout and Need for Speed. While this is fine, as it gets rid of the repetition that this sort of soundtrack entails, some background music to accompany the constant grunts and screeches of the cars that GRID features would have been good. That's not to say that these sounds are lacklustre - on the contrary the vehicles sound brilliant, with the crashes being even better. But none of this will prepare you for the graphics, both a highlight and the reason why the overall score is only a 9.

The visuals in GRID are fantastic - some of the best yet seen in a racing game - and they always have a beautiful next gen sheen. But while the graphics themselves are amazing, the issue comes in the form of the framerate. There are times where all is well in the world of GRID but at others it looks more like a slideshow of images from race day than a game. The backgrounds stutter into position every second of the race and this can detract from the superb gameplay you are experiencing. The glitches don't end there, either; texture popping happens so often that you lose count of such instances, with pieces of the sky appearing from black at frequent intervals. It's such a shame that these problems are so evident in the PS3 version, as without them GRID would be one of the best-looking games on the market today. It is the only problem in what is otherwise a perfect driving game, and without it GRID would have been 'the' definitive racing game without question.

If you can deal with the glitches then you have an amazing game on your hands with Race Driver GRID. There may not be a huge number of cars, or a soundtrack of chart tunes, but this is the most realistic and compulsive racing experience you can currently get on any platform. Codemasters has proved that you don’t have to be Gran Turismo to beat it, you just have to be different - and every difference that GRID features, from the wholly original Instant Replay function to the brilliant effect that damage has on your performance, adds up to make it a must have. It’s such an expansive game - despite the lack of many tracks or vehicles - that it will last you for months. GRID is the game of the summer and if you can look past its Achilles heel then you can change the overall score to the 10 that it really deserves.

Reviewed by Sam Atkins for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).