DO NOT buy this game!
Only the sports car has physics worth mentioning. It's fun to drive. The SUV is just acceptable. The coupe is ridiculous - slow acceleration, slow stopping, lots of inertia in corners, pathetic cornering, maximum understeer.
That means that 1/3 of the race car selection is any good!
The tracks for the Race campaigns are, I'm sorry to say, extremely silly. They require you to make millimetre-precise jumps, and turn arounds in the air, etc. This fiddley stuff takes the fun out what we're suppose to be doing, which is ... racing. It feels more like torture to accomplish these things and even restarting the race a 100 billion times doesn't guarantee you'll earn gold. The tracks are too taxing, disjointed, and not centred on making good times. Rather it's a case of... We designed this so you make a fool of yourself. The player isn't King, the developer is, and they've just ruled you out of playing more than half the game.
I've given this game 3 for value. The reason being is because of their gold medal requirements for qualifying, a hefty part of the game is locked and can't be opened by above average drivers. Relative to all my friends, and family my computer driving skills are top, but that doesn't seem enough for unlocking the campaigns in this game. Ok so I'm failing by 0.4 to 0.8 of a second, but I cannot find that extra bit to proceed. Above average drivers must be going mad. Who knows what average and poor drivers are doing. Anyway if you are not a super-elite driver, don't even consider buying this game as most of the game wil remain locked for... forever.
The gameplay I've given a 1. Building tracks - perfect 10/10. Playing your own tracks 10/10. Painting up your own car 10/10. So why the ultra-low score?
1. Lack of cars.
2. The very bad physics of the cars.
3. ...and the main game isn't fun, not at all.
4. The online feature isn't thought out too well either, so these pull down what's good about the game as a whole.
The sound I've given a 4. The sound loops are too short and repititve and quickly irritate. The ambient sounds should be randomly layered, ie. bird call, wind, waves should occur at different stages, and there should be a greater number of ambient noises. Instead there's one loop per setting and you notice this in the editor. The cars don't sound tough. The engine noises are very arcade-like and are below what NFS provides. I like the variety in the car clunks when they land, but think this can be expanded even further.
Track options - there should be an option to change the sides of tracks. Some of the railings aren't very friendly and one can become stuck in the scenery or between barriers. A lot more thought can be put into improving this.
Overall, I think this game is in its infancy, a work under development. There is a great deal of potential, but the developers must implement ways of opening up the game and not keeping it locked. I'm disappointed that there are no saved games available online and no cheats except for unlocking the tracks into challenge mode. I believe its the developers duty to have cheats in the game to help those who aren't gifted, otherwise they are only selling 15% of the game to players. The full 100% should be available through a variety of ways and not just by a display of super-human skill.
If the above was made available then I would consider a higher score, but this is bad planning on Nadeo's part and I'm hoping they will remedy this in the short term.
End comment - Very good packaging and presentation. I enjoyed the intro movie and think the millions of cars in the end was a nice touch. Look forward to seeing more zanyness in future releases.