The Grand Tour Game Review

"Watching the Show"

Campaign

March 12, 2019 at 3:11am

This is a very interesting experience, you're essentially watching the streamed show and then interacting with it. For context, The Grand Tour follows Clarkson, Hammond, and May as they adventure around. They're always competing with wild cars and just having a great time while doing so. The team has a long time history in the automotive space, and Amazon has collected them for this fresh series. Within the game you're essentially watching the show, and then playing out competitions.

The racing segments are rather simplistic, so it feels more like just watching the show. It's weird, but not necessarily something I didn't enjoy. I felt that the game elements were rather basic, but they're varied to a degree and do directly lean into the series. It's also a growing game in that they keep up with new episodes, adding them as they release. You're able to get something extra out of it if you're fan, and if you lean on the gaming side it's a relaxing break. Sort of like what they didn't with Quantum Break, but with the gameplay being super minimal and brief this time around.

Gameplay

The actual gameplay elements are somewhat weak. You're on short, largely guided tracks. There are medal tiers you're trying to achieve, but you don't have to work towards them. You get some rather repetitive commentary over what's going on, and that's about it. They mix up what you're doing competition wise, but largely you play the same tracks multiple times.

They do capture the cars well, but the environments leave something to be desired. There's lot of pop-in, and the cars don't handle particularly well. If you like playing with other, four player local splitscreen is present. The show aspect has many options for skipping through it, rewatching, or generally if you'd like to replay certain parts. The viewing area certainly did feel intuitive.

The Conclusion

The Grand Tour Game delivers the streamed series, fitted with some small elements of gameplay. It doesn't really deliver anything too compelling in terms of actual game content, but the show was fun to watch. I hadn't viewed it previously, so I was enjoying that in mixture with the gameplay. I just wish they would have taken the idea further, it felt almost like a gimmick at times. I'd say the most value here is the continuously added to selection of episodes from the actual Grand Tour show that you can enjoy.

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The Grand Tour Game Review on Xbox One X
Review Code Provided by 47

Rating Overall: 5.8