You want to know how good GRID is? It's so good that in coming up with 10 reasons you should play it, I don't even have to mention the drop-dead gorgeous graphics. There are much more compelling and substantive reasons you should play Codemaster's racing masterpiece. And, yeah, I just used that word.

Read 10 reasons you should be playing GRID after the jump.

10) You're special to GRID
Your business manager and crew chief will say your name. That's assuming you have one of the relatively common names that appears on the spoken list. If your name is, say, N'gai Croal, or if you're a girl, you're out of luck. In fact, "Tom" wasn't on the list. I have to go by "Thomas". I just imagine that my racing persona is refined and formal. He probably wears an ascot when he drives.

(UPDATE: Tim, aka Timothy, informs me that there's some good news for the ladies: their names are in there, but on a separate tab. So, ladies, you're back up to the same number of reasons you should be playing GRID as us boys!)

9) Product placement
As you win races, you unlock sponsors whose stickers you can put onto your car. These stickers pay cash based on how you do in a race. Bu there's only such much room on your car, so you have to choose carefully. Champion spark plugs give you $5000 if you finish in first or second place, but it's a safer bet to go with Bride racing seats, which gives you $3600 as long as you finish the race. And whichever sticker takes the most prominent position front and center on your hood returns double prize money. Eventually, with the right sponsorships, you'll make more money from product placement than prizes. Ain't that the way of the world?

8) 24-Hour Le Mans
At last an endurance race that isn't really an endurance race. Time is compressed, so you're only racing for about twenty minutes, if that. But the sun sets and rises over the course of those minutes. You drive those freaky midnight straightaways at full speed and then into the lovely dawn light coming up behind the trees. The idyllic passing of time with none of the tedium.

7) You don't drive alone
Recruit teammates who chat with you during the race. "I'm, like, in third place, bra," notes surfer dude Tom Whibley (USA, duh), your newest team member. And while he might be more annoying than your previous teammate, the coolly European Enzo (Italy), he's earning you considerably more money with his superior skill and aggression stats. Of course, he's also keeping more of the winnings, but you still come out ahead. Except for the times you hear, "Dude, I'm like totally in last place."

6) The view is coming from inside the car!
Interior driving views are great for that "You Are There!" immersion. Unfortunately, they're not so great for being able to drive well. But GRID rewards you by giving you more reputation points if you drive from the "helmet" cam.

5) The kind of difficulty you want
The last game from this development team, DiRT, only let you set a general difficulty level. So if you wanted to take full advantage of the physics or damage system, you also had to drive against a ruthlessly efficient AI. But GRID gives you the freedom to set the difficulty you want. Crank up the realism and dumb down the opponents. Or vice versa. GRID races are as hard as you want them to be, with rewards corresponding to the difficulty level you choose.

4) Lots of ways to advance
Race for reputation. Race to unlock licenses. Race to earn trophies. Race to earn money. Race your own cars to increase their value. Drive for teams to enjoy their cars. Race to finish first or just race to finish. The GRID World mode is like a mountain with many paths leading to the top.

4) The way things break
If you've played one of Codemaster's DiRT racing games, you shouldn't be surprised that GRID has an excellent damage model. And not just visually. A set of icons alongside your speedometer tracks the amount of damage to the car's crucial systems. A dinged front end is going to affect you differently than a busted radiator, which will affect you differently than a mangled transmission.

3) Touge
Togue? Yeah, I didn't know what this was either. It's a precise tactical race against a single driver, first down and then up a winding Japanese mountain road. The car in back is penalized for hitting the car in front, so pass clean or don't pass at all. That's togue. And if you think that's cool, how about doing it at night? With traffic on the road. That's midnight togue. Unfortunately, there's no multiplayer togue, which would have been a great way to play 1v1 GRID.

2) Demolition derby
The exact opposite of togue: drive hard and sloppy and bang into anything that has the audacity to get within three car lengths. This is the best car wrecking since Test Drive: Eve of Destruction. And you can do it multiplayer. See #4.

1) Flashbacks or, "No, no, that's not the way it happened…"
The flashback gimmick is the best thing to happen to racing games since Forza's colored gravity line. Depending on your difficulty level, you get a certain number of do-overs. If at first you don't succeed, just rewind time and try try again. It's great for missed turns, misjudged passes during a togue race, or just to see that awesome mid-air collision in a demolition derby from any angle you want. Once you try GRID's flashbacks, you're going to want them in every other racing game.

(Editor's note: Fidgit's "Top Ten" calculations have an error margin of +/-10%, which explains why there are 11 reasons you should be playing GRID.)