heck; it was $40 at Best Buy and they had like 50 of them there.
Played around with it for 45min so far; short version - Mikey likes it.
It reminds me a lot of RalliSport Challenge; jawdropping visuals, decent
handling but not sim'ishly frustrating and fast paced action with
atmosphere.
Long version
You start out with basic stock cars like Golf GTI (slowest), Mazda RX7
(fastest) and various others Civic, 206, Celica, Neon, etc. And these
beginner cars are a good thing. In the demo I wasn't too impressed with
the physics or handling of that ubber fast car. It was almost too fast
for street driving stuff. But these beginner cars are right at home
understeering through turns, wagging and bobbing there tail ends when
horsed around too much, and sliding all over the place. Mind you, this
is still no sim, but based on these early cars, this isn't total ***
digital arcade feeling/driving either.
The meat of the game is the 'Underground' campaign. I'm actually
laughing at the smack and trash talk the characters blather in this
game. Adds to the atmosphere the game tries to portray. From there its
the usual win races or challenges for points then use points to upgrade
your car and unlock stuff. Would have been better if they actually used
dollar figures to make the items have more meaning but points makes it
world friendly (and easier for the developers).
I'm unsure if the car handling and susp is adjustable beyond simply
'applying' an upgrade. Not far enough in game yet. Would be nice if one
can tweek their car to make it handle more towards how they like it???
Stuff which should be in the game that isn't (least I haven't seen any
yet) are weather efx and crash damage to cars.
Music is all about humpin, running from cops, pimpin, going fast, etc;
you know, the stuff you forcefully and unwantingly hear at most stop
light on warm summer evenings but while playing this game it kinda fits.
Well back to playing some more.