Not my favorite game. Quite Repetitive.
The game includes various modes: It has arcade mode, career mode, and (I think) a multiplayer mode. However I have only played the career mode so this review will only focus on the career mode.
At the beginning of the career mode you have to select a region to start out in (though I think you eventually compete in all of them anyway). The regions are Asia, America and Europe (I chose Asia). The Career mode is divided into 9 different categories of races, with 10 events per category (different events have a different number of races, some have 5 races and some have 6). This is a pretty long game - I started in late July/Early August (2010) and I just finished it last week (i.e. March 2011), though I didn't play it that consistently. The races last different amounts of time - early ones are around 5 minutes, but once you get to the "Endurance" races category the races last about an hour (though their is only one race per event) and the last endurance race took me over 70 minutes to beat!
The difficulty of the game depends on what difficulty level you select. I started on Normal but later changed to Easy. Easy is fairly Easy and almost no challenge. However Normal meant that I found myself having to restart many races after any minor crash.
In addition to racing in career mode, you can also tune, upgrade and buy cars.
The game also has a soundtrack of music that only plays while loading and during the menus. These songs are not too great, in fact I've never heard any of them on the radio, though they do sometimes get stuck in your head. There is one that has the beat of "Let's Groove Tonight" by Earth Wind and Fire, yet it has different lyrics.
The game does have cool cars and is quite realistic. It is a professional - not an illegal street - racing game.
Overall I didn't care too much for the game. As I said before on easy mode it was quite easy, in fact it was boring I'de often crash because my mind was wandering and I wasn't concentrating on the game. And Normal was too difficult and nobody wants to play the same race over and over again. While the game has a variety of different race tracks there are 90 events, and many race tracks are recycled time and again or in slightly modified form (like one track starts at different points in different races, and one blocks off different sections of the race so that you can go on the track on two different races). They should have either done more variety in the tracks or less races. One track the Nurburgring is very long (it took me 18 minutes to beat one lap the first time I got to this track) and based on a real one in Germany - it is kinda cool and has good scenery. There is also a nice track with nice orange leaves on trees during autumn.
The game has its flaws and is way too repetitive. If you are not a fan of racing games, you probably won't like it. I beat the game, but I did so just to beat it, not really for the fun of playing it. It was a little fun at first, but then it drags after a while. If you are a fan of racing games, then you might like it.