Simple arcade racer; almost too fast action but expect no depth or realism. Quite addictive in spite of its shortcomings
Likewise, cornering, pushing opponents out of the way, accelerating using nitro, ... are definitely not a simulation of any reality.
The whole concept of balancing style / scoring points, strategically picking contracts and sponsors is a nice touch and leaves much more freedom than in the typical game in this genre. The addition of the female models for drivers is probably unavoidable for a game aiming at the younger race fans, so I can't blame Gaijin for including them. At least it doesn't feel as cheap as for example SRS implemented that idea.
In comparison with most competing arcade racers, Adrenalin features different difficulty levels of which the easier ones are actually easy to beat, a welcome change from some nearly impossible racers. Upping the difficulty allows to increase the challenge for the more demanding players as well.
So far, a rather fun game to play with some improvements over the more generic arcade racers.
However, some downsides of Adrenalin drag it down to the middle of the field:
1) Handling feels very sluggish, even if they indicate the cars weigh around 2 tons. On the other hand, as soon as you bump into opponents or pieces of the scenery, the car suddenly loses its weight and will spin a dozen times faster than you could ever steer it in the corners.
2) Nitro is hugely overpowered in the game: using it on a straight can easily bring you from the last to the first spot in the race. In addition you almost can't run out of it either.
3) Opponents' speed is very different from what your own car can achieve, leading to a huge jo-jo effect. You'll speed past them on straights while they will pass you in corners where you possible couldn't go any faster.
An additional reason for some criticism is that a lot of the in-game text is a clumsy translation from Russian to English, especially when looking at the contract sections.
Graphics: while they have done a reasonably good job in modeling their own unique cars, and the surroundings and effects (smoke, sand, sparks, ...) are quite ok, there is definitely room for improvement. Even for an arcade game, the "special effects" often feel exaggerated, especially the sparks shooting from your car whenever you hit objects, walls or other cars. From the promo videos you can see the developers were proud of these visuals, but it gets tiring quite quickly.
In addition in some sections of the tracks, the frame rate falls like a brick whenever there are 2 or more cars ahead of you, probably due to the sand and smoke they generate. At those specific points the frame rate makes the game nearly unplayable for pc's that are little above the minimum requirements.
Sound: nothing special about the "noise" in the game, it's got engines, squeaking tires, sounds of different kinds of crashes, all the usual.
Glad to see at least 1 racing game staying away from the clichéd ridiculous use of slang; in the rare spoken parts in the game we get reasonably decent voice acting and that's a big plus for a street racing game nowadays!
Music: some of the rock / hard rock songs are a nice change from all the rap, hard core and nu-metal typically featured in racing games. Unfortunately these are only a few of the songs; the others range from bad techno to some sort of Russian pop which is equally bland and annoying to listen to.
To summarize: a mix of good and bad, all in all quite ok as long as you know what to expect before you consider buying it. Definitely take a look at the promo videos to get a good idea beforehand.