First Impressions, mixed feelings
At first I thought this game was all it was made up to be, however after a few hours gaming my views changed slightly. Firstly the pros.
The cutscenes and seeing your character on screen makes the game feel more "real" with a set story line and an area based on somewhere real all adds to the film hype which made me feel like I was in - a Fast and the Furious type of thing. I also liked the boosts of NOS after drafting an opponent for so long aswell as the size of the map.
Customisation is also a big plus to the game, completely outclassing Need for Speed. However, I missed the autosculpt feature other than that was a great experience. The interior and branded exterior parts add more "real" feel to it.
Now on to the negative which at this early point in them game currently outway the positives unfortunatley. The car selection in my opinion is absouletely awful and really hope that Rockstar plan on releasing packs in the Xbox 360 Marketplace in the near future. Also, I chose the Nissan 240 as my starter car, a stock car thats hardly a "beast" isn't going to spin out that much from the start line... I didn't really like this at all.
Also the cornering system it just seems way to effortful, yes use the handbrake at about 100mph is going to be hard to handle but when it comes to drifting for about 500m into the side of a mall isn't exactly realisitic is it? Also if you hold/tap the LT button brake round the corner as you would driving a real car, opponents speed past you leaving you last in the race even though you hardly dropped that much speed.
The traffic system is pretty cool but...Oh my god...having to keep your eye on the opponent, traffic, the map and planning your route all become mind boggling to the point where you'd rather just smash your head into the wall.
I was mostly disappointed to turn the map over and out of the selection of vehicles to only see 3 motorbikes :O, fair enough they do make it pretty good including th Kawasaki Ninja but where is the Hayebusa and all the other hugely known bikes?
Overall, this game could be a lot better if Rockstar decide to release some DLC in the very near future, if the whole braking system was redesigned... too late I know but could always hope for updates and patches :D Lets hope so (Y) ayy.