Fantasic game. Definately worth the money.
Immediately when i first put in the game i was amazed. It was obvious that CodeMasters even put time in making the main menu great. Easily one of the coolest looking menus I have seen. Although it looks great, the background music sounds like a girl making sex noises. The loading screen is also superb. Unlike most games where you sit there and watch a little circle go around as it says load, all of your stats come up on the screen one by one so you can keep yourself busy.
Then I started in career mode. This mode is a giant 11-tier pyramid filled with races and championships. As you get to the top, the races start getting more difficult. Racing in this game is fantastic. Alot of the races are on dirt, so you get a feeling like you are really driving a buggy or a semi up mountains and around sharp turns. In rally races, you also have a co-driver to help tell you what turns are coming up and the angle of the turn. When you are racing on an actual road, you have more grip and it is much smoother, as in real life.
Another thing that I noticed is that the computer cars aren't stupid, they actually race you instead of just run into you the entire race and mess you up.
As you go on in career mode, you race the same tracks over and over again, so it gets irritating and boring once you get to the 8th or 9th tier.
The achievements for this game arent too bad, you can easily get them all if you put time into it.
The online racing in this game is alright. You cannot do head to head racing, just rally, where you try to beat everyone else's times. Another downside to the online is when you are waiting for the race to start. I haven't been able to figure out if you can use a headset to talk to the other drivers while you are waiting, so I'm guessing you can't. Instead, you put messages up in the messaging section that say things like, "Vote for option 3!", or "Great Racing!" Great racing? What racing? Racing is only "great" if you are actually racing with other people, not just going as fast as you can.
Ok, so here is the downsides vs upsides:
Good:
1. Great menu
2. Career mode is original
3. Loading menu keeps you busy
4. Graphics are superb
5. Realistic racing
6. Computer cars aren't dumb
7. Achievements don't take over your life
Bad:
1. Perverted main menu song
2. Poor online
3. Career is repetitive
I think that this game is definitely worth the money. As I said, I bought this game used at GameStop for $25, and you could probably find it cheaper on eBay.
This is another GREAT game!!!