Codemasters re-dedicates itself to racing games

We didn't review Overlord: Fellowship of Evil, but you can get an idea of how it went over on Metacritic, where it sports a brow-furrowing aggregate review score of 24/100. That's "generally unfavorable" in Meta-parlance, which I think is a remarkably generous way of putting it. In the wake of that ugliness, and the recent closure of the studio that made the mobile card game Battle Decks, Codemasters told Eurogamer that it's giving up on other genres in order to focus exclusively on racing games.

"While it's been great to explore projects outside of racing, we know that our hearts belong to racing in all its many glorious forms," a Codemasters rep said. "The success of Dirt Rally's Early Access program has been incredible, F1 2015 was very successful reaching number one in many territories, we've recently announced that Micro Machines will come to mobile, and we have a strong road map ahead of us that keeps racing as its razor focus."

If that sounds familiar, it's likely because the company said essentially (and, regarding its "razor focus," exactly) the same thing in early 2012, when it announced that it was giving up on the action genre. "We have kept our reputation for delivering best-in-class racing games," Codemasters told MCV at the time. "And best-in-class racing games is now our razor focus going forward."

Unfortunately for Codemasters, the racing genre hasn't been a pot of gold for it recently either. Dirt Rally is doing well for itself in Early Access, but the 2014 release of Colin McRae Rally on Steam was a PR disaster, and the last two F1 releases weren't exactly barn-burners either. On the other hand, Grid Autosport was quite good, and it's on sale now in the Steam Autumn Sale for 75 percent off—that's $18/£11 for the Complete package, which includes the main game and nine DLC packs. More of that, and Codies might just be alright.