Brilliant game with many new features and most of which i loved, a definate buy for any pure racing game fans out there.
There were some things I really disagree with on gamespot’s review and the main one was when they said that cruising around town took too long and got a bit annoying, this feature is one of the best bits in my honest opinion because you didn’t just do solid races, you could drive around for a bit get a feel for the engine. Racing around on the streets with other cars was great especially when I accidentally bumped into my first unique, this gave me something to do instead of pure racing to win on tracks. On the other hand I did get some frustration out of the game when it came to racing other drivers on the street with the glitches. There was more than a few times where I would be racing a guy/girl and they would spin out facing towards me, as I raced past them it would say they still had the lead and by the time I turned around they had won. The race types were nicely set out and drag was definitely my favourite because it was the most skilled. You can choose from either street x, drag, circuit, sprint, drift and U.R.L. Street x was a more tight bended fast paced race without the trusty N2O tank, this kind of race was very easy to win mainly because it just repeats the same 2-3 tracks over and over through-out the game. Drag is basically where it sets your view to 1st person and makes your car manual ‘worst case scenario’, Can be quite difficult at times if your car is not upgraded properly but most of the time it depends on your timing especially with the start line take-off. Circuit was the normal racing defaults where you go around a track a certain amount of times, most of the time it meant gaining the lead at the beginning with a quick boost off N2O then trying to avoid crashing before the finish. Sprint was exactly the same as circuit except you had one lap and a much longer coarse. Drift was complicated and sometimes very frustrating, you have to go around the track at normal speed but make sure to skid around the corners a stylishly as possible, bashing into the walls destroys your entire accumulated score ’grrrr’. U.R.L. is just 2 or more circuits usually.
Available upgrades by the end of the game were unbelievable, I could choose so much for my car, carbon fibre hoods, neon’s everywhere and even my brake pads could be coloured! This really gives you something to aim for in the gameplay and was the only reason I completed the game to be honest. If they had put as much effort into the car selection as they had into customizations there would have been a lot more to play for in the game. By the end of the game, as in most games, which I hate is when the last car is the best car and every person on the internet has that car. With a wider selection of cars it would have made showing off your car more exciting because you know that if someone’s completed the game they will have the impreza upgraded to the max. This was especially annoying when racing against people online if you hadn’t completed the game.
Overall I think that this game deserved more than it got because it was just a lot more advanced and the explore mode added even more to the experience unlike what gamespot thought, if explore mode was so bad why are all the other car games doing it?