Addictive arcade racer, and alot of big dumb fun.
PROS:
* Loads fast, and I mean FAST. Load it from the desktop and you hit the menu screen.... switch between cars and they are THERE with a very quick flourish of a special effect. Fly through the attractive menu to get to whatever race or showroom or thing you want to select. Loading between tracks is also speedy. The last racer I played was Drift 2 with its maddening screen after screen before you got into an actual race... and the incessant "you've unlocked" bits.... even the unlocked bits in this game are speedy.
* Pretty? Yeah it's pretty. It's quite charming. It's not going to blow you away if you're looking for DX10 advancements... and if you are, then you are a fool. This game is pretty in a way that creates an ambience that really adds to the feel of big, dumb, arcade fun.
* Gameplay is fun. The racing, the checkpoint race against the clock.. that destruction countdown thing. Even the achievements system that you level up with is fun AND easy, which I think is worth pointing out. You don't have to churn through an RPG system to unlock more cars, or waste time earning fake money. This is brilliant news to those of us that aren't kids that can spend forever gaming each day. The whole weapon/damage mechanic is rather satisfying and reminded me of dropping caltrops and firing laz cannons in the original DOS version of DeathTrack... just without the satisfaction of knowing you can mod your car like DeathTrack once let you do.
CONS:
* Controls... I'm using the keyboard controls and like others will tell you, you can't customise. Not only that, but the choice of key layouts is quite simply odd. Q as accelerate? UP Arrow to cycle through your powerups? It feels awkward when everyone knows there are better keyboard layouts. I haven't even bothered trying my Logitech wheel on it... there is no gear changing function let alone a clutch system so who cares. It's an arcade racer designed for gamepads and I haven't bothered plugging my gamepad in because the keyboard responsiveness is very good. I'm treating the weird key choices as an excuse to adapt my skill rather than complain... but it still makes you think "huh?"
* Ccustomisations.... pretty much none. I don't mean sim style balancing either. All you can do it seems is change the car colour and adding a bonus mod. It does feel alittle too simplistic. It's not a BAD issue, and in some ways it's quite a good move, but it does make you think it would have been more enjoyable if you could customise at least some things, even if it were just mindless cosmetic features.
* Resets. It makes sense, but it can be alittle annoying if you drift too far out and spin yourself to a dead stop... instead of being given a chance to correct myself I found I was reset rather quickly, and forced to deal with the reset time penalty too.
* Difficulty... and kind of continuing the reset issue. That forced reset system would be really annoying if the game weren't so easy, even in the Hard setting. The first race that I raced after installation, set on Hard... I fumbled around trying to figure out which keys were accelerate (because I'm illiterate and like to jump into a new game head first)... didn't use any powerups properly, was hit a couple of times and was reset once... and I still won the race with a decent lead. It's EASY. Maybe it will become alittle more challenging near the end, but I seriously doubt it. I'm guessing the only real challenge in skill is to be found against other human players.
?????????? PORT ?????????
I'd have to say that the keyboard controls are so very responsive and useable, combined with the brilliant coding that lets this game handle system resources responsibly, and load really fast. This, to me, had a zero % feeling of being a port. So alot of credit should go to this studio for making a game PROPERLY by the release date... sad that such things deserve credit these days, but they did their jobs well !!!
Will I get around the multiplay? No... it looks like it'd be alot of fun if you really get into the game, but to me it didn't suck me in enough to commit to this in a multiplay capacity. Maybe changing gears and wheel support would have suckered me in, but that doesn't lower my opinion of the game. :-)