I agree. I love the arcade-y feel they give me. But their names are starting to get lame. Better that way than vice versa, though.

Im going to correct you. Very politely. And by that i mean i wont kick you, scream at you or swear at you.

Codemasters, a long long time ago, in a galaxy far away, produced games that were nothing short of pure perfection. Titles such as Toca, Collin Mcrae rally, toca 2, collin mcrae rally 2.0, Toca 3, v8 race driver.

Then something happened. A disturbance if you will. Dirt, was born. While on the exterior a very nice game, it was kind of expected that it would do away with the floaty-car-pivots-on-a-center- axis feeling. That and the art director obviously had eye patches on when he configured how much bloom to add to the graphics.

And then it all fell apart. This next title was going to have better graphics than gt5p, was going to have the perfect blend of arcade/realism, was going to be the herald of the new series of Race Driver games.

Instead we got grid. With all its sweet bloom, with all its stupid-f**king-retarded handling. With poor-to-say-least track design (ok, take a step back. If you are playing a circut racing game, and can get lost, your level design is on the wrong side of the digestive process). I dont know if it had real world locations. I honestly couldnt play it for that long. It was really bad. Go and play the original toca, or collin mcrae, then play race driver grid.

You will not see this fall in quality any where else on this sweet blue planet outside of the grand theft auto series. On which note, the handling in gta4 was 30 times more manageable than grid.

And no its not because i cant play racing games. Ive won nearly all the races in gt5P, ive mastered dirt (then got sick of it), i finished the original toca, the original collin mcrae, pwned vrally - vrally 2, and probably the one i am most "proud" (if any human with a life can ever be proud of a computer game achievment) of, is the fact i completely mastered the tvr griffith in the original Gran Turismo.

Grid just sucks. Codemasters games used to be automatic must buys for me, but until they get back to making GOOD racing games, im staying away.

Well, talk about completely different receptions.
I remember playing one of the Colin McRae games ages ago on the PSX and I really didn't like it. Maybe it was because I never used the brake in a racing game, so I won't blame it on the game. I also never took the time to get into the handling. So I just say that my first impression wasn't good.
Then I downloaded the DIRT demo. It was fast, I slided a lot (played the trucks first) and found myself enjoing it. Maybe it was that little boy inside screaming in joy because I could pretty much just full throttle all the time without a real penalty and I made the first place.
Then, the GRID demo came along. The first time I played I almost smashed the gamepad into my TV because all I did was 360s all over the place after the first corner. Then I took some of that more adult patience, figured out the brakes, practiced the corners and eureka, I lost to that eBay ghost by just 0:00:03 difference. Since I pretty much suck at racing games of all kinds (you wouldn't want to see me play GTHD), I felt satisfied.
I agree with what you wrote about all the bloom and fancy light effects. GRID and DIRT are probably the most eyecandy-oriented racing games I ever saw in terms of flashyness. At times, it's over the top, IMHO, but it doesn't cross the line for me that makes me vomit rainbows.
I think what they did with their latest racing games is dumbing it down to make it more mainstream friendly. Every time I go to a store I see little kids playing the GRID at the demo booths and they don't do too bad. I'd also like to say that I neither own GRID no DIRT - I liked the demos, but I didn't 50-Euros-worth like them.
The series took a sharp turn from the original games that you loved back then to the games I like today. Maybe they can make a game that we both can enjoy in the future.

The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.

Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.

15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.

Let me be clear. This is sarcasm