Bish, Bash, Bosh. Sorry, Im not a fan of Total-Arcade PS3 is doomed if this scores 9; Im hoping for MUCH MORE
Tunes are great and nostalgic, so the mood is set and good. The EA Trax are the usual good mixture. The car sounds are cool, realistic maybe, and nice; the 5.1 does help.
Graphics are merely the better of old PS2 games and on par with recent NFS games on PS2 - oh dear. However the crash scenes are immense and breath taking at first - very realistic. The backdrops are merely what I would expect - very nice, but nothing more. The up-close graphics sometimes suffer and look basic.
The game engine; handling of the cars is unreal - its not a GT5 game. But NFS have ventured into more realsim. Game reviewers need to make this clear.
Continued; the cars unrealistically turn well on dirt and grass. They terribly understear in town, on tarmac. The difference between the cars is too great; simply to demonstrate handling abilities; thus unreal and making it less playable.
The game is far too easy to get through. The races become much of a muchness. There are some retro american cars, but nothing to appeal to European gamers.
Luckily if you do crash, there is a catchup feel to it and soon you're back in the action. Nudging and bumping people off road is fun and fairly accurate, or at least do-able. The crashes, as said, are real. You can only total a car so many times, which is fair. There is no money involved, making life simple. Unlocking cars is odd - you'll see.
Gameplay is not far off the arcade game Motorstorm. But with reall cool cars instead.
The map is hard to see. So its best to learn the streets - but once you do; it becomes boring and predictable.
Maybe this game is best played online. But I'd rent this one first before buying. Driving games had better improve a lot over the next year.