+ Your very own 360 version of Oahu with so much road you´ll never feel you´ve driven the same road to many times. Its GIGANTIC and its yours to explore however you want.
+ Racing Reinvented. Races that rewards you for driving carefully and obeying traffic rules (and also traffic AI that makes obeying the rules possible). Also pretty creaive things like Hitchhikers, modelescorts and instant challenges out on the roads.
+ M.O.O.R. Massivly Open Online Racing. Seamless Multiplayer and Singleplayer challenges on the same roads. Your choice.
+ The Graphics looks stunning as long as youre driving at relatively high speeds. Truly a paradise island to be driving cars on. You can feel the warm sun through the palmtrees. Cars looks sharp and are insanely detailed down to the knob on the shiftingstick !
+ A Pesonal racing experience. Your own houses that you buy, your own avatar that you create and buy your own clothes for and quite a few cutscenes here and there together with your character makes it "more than just a racing game".
+ With motionblur and screenshaking maxed out the sense of speed is excellent!
+ Cars control well at all speeds and every car is unique in its handling.
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- The Island is huge but it also has very little variation. I have no doubt Oahu looks like this but you can drive around for hours not really noticing anything worth noticing along the roads. Except if you accidently run into a small shrubbery and notice that it is as hard as the rock next to it.
- No pedestrians what so ever and very little AI traffic where it should be loads gives you a very post-apocalyptic feeling when driving in cities and towns that SHOULD be brewing with activity. This also contributes to a pretty "lonely" feel when cruising around what you thought would be a live and twitching Oahu.
- The system to handle players is very poor. You can never have more than 8 (or 9) players near you. It filters out the rest. And those 9 players are seldom REALLY "near" you but more like on a different mountainroad 1.5km away. So the player to player interaction is not as vivid as you may expect or want. This adds further to the postapocalyptic and lonely feel of the game in general.
- No ranked onlineplay. There IS Ranked onlineplay and i want to play it. But noone else wants to. Theres is next to NO players playing ranked games. Even tho the achievments are tied into them.
- When you finally FIND a ranked match the free nature of the game tends to make it very unfair. A Rank 3 tuned Enzo Ferrari vs a Nissan 350Z. Yea good luck with that to the Japanese Car lover. Same with the instant challenges out on the roads. If you dont have the BEST the island has to offer you will find that the race will be over FAST.
- NO weathereffects. Why? It dosent rain very often on The Hawaii islands but still. Give me a rainshower now and then for some slippery racing. Also no noticeable Day / Night cycle. Although there is a cycle you dont notice it.
- The Character creation system is seriously crippled. No matter how you tweak your characters eyebrows, nose, lips, jaw and ears it all dosent really make any difference. Everyone still looks about the same. Especially on the female side where there is no Beardoptions. Also only like 3 or 4 hairstyles. The characterdesign is also horribly bad and ugly looking.
- Really poor Radiostations with like 2 songs per station. You´ll find yourself turning it off and listening to the cars instead.
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Final Score: 7.9
A unique driving experience that challenges the standard boundries of racingames and lets you "live the automotive dream". It does NOT however, use its full potential. Recommended to fans of racing with a big interest in cars.
Tested on: HDTV 720p, 26"