14 DAY TRIAL // Definitely one of the best looking racing games released for consoles, Race Driver: GRID has already flamed the world with its GRID vs. Burnout and PS3 version vs. Xbox 360 version wars. However, it seems that, just like any other game, Codemasters' work of art is not a faultless product: many users have begun complaining about "Massive slowdowns in GRID", including game freezes and pauses during the races.
The first user reporting the problem also attached a video of the problem (check it at the bottom of the page!) and it really proves that the game is pretty unstable and quite unplayable. He is not the only person affected, though, many other users reporting similar problems. The worst thing is that Codemasters apparently has no idea what is causing the problem.
Some suggest it could be a faulty HDD (bad sectors) and that a disk defrag could help as well as a cache cleanup, while others consider it could be the fault of a full HDD or even an interference with the GRID demo. There are also suggestions that removing the disc could solve the problem. One thing is clear, though: the developers don't know exactly what is causing the problem and what could fix it (even though, for a few lucky users, one of the solutions mentioned above apparently solved the problem).
Also, it seems that the freezing problem only appears in the career mode and not in the multiplayer or free races - which is another strange thing. Even more, there are reports of complete freezes of the system and the only thing that helped solving the problem was a reset.
"We're close to getting to the root of the problem and we will be including a fix and a backup workaround option (just in case) in our forthcoming patch due within the next few weeks or sooner. We think the issue is due to specific drive hardware, possibly with bad blocks /sectors," a GRID official posted on the forum. "The best temporary measure is to copy your gamertag to a mem card, remove the hard drive and run the game that way. Replays and caching will be disabled, though instant replay will still work as this caches to memory. I hope this helps in the short term."
And now, as promised, here is the Xbox 360 freezing video: