Still the best driving game Ive played
The graphics were really impressive back then, and honestly I am still a little amazed by how well the games moves while pulling off beatiful city-scapes and car models at the same time. Together with Soul Calibur I think this is the best looking game on the Dreamcast, which means that it still holds up fairly today.
The sound is really good, apart from the sound affects outdoing GT4 the music in the game is ace. In MSR you have a fictional radio with 3 different radio stations for each city (London, Tokyo and San Fran), complete with chatter and commercials. If it sounds annoying it isnt, rather it adds a ton of atmosphere, and the music pieces are better than many games which uses "real" music.
The game's Career mode has you performing a number of different sorts of races in all three citites, with better cars coming availible as you progress.
Whats remarkable is that even the early cars are fun to drive, unlike most other driving games which likes to call themselves realistic. Also the car list deserves praise, its huge and contains more "normal" performance cars than supercars which i personally have nothing against.
To progress you need to earn Kudos, which essentially means pulling off drifts and not hitting things. Good driving is also rewarded, though not as much as drifting. I guess this is where some people have problems with MSR, but there is a way to override this Kudos issue and thus being able to enjoy the game without paying much attention to it. Ill not explain it here but you can surely find it on the web.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, driving in MSR feels great. The Dreamcast controller works a dream with this game, and the car physics have a solid feel and require technique while at the same time being very entertaining. Bizarre creations made a terrific job here.
The biggest and perhaps only setback with this game is the lack of good multiplayer. It does not have online mode(which in all earnestly wasnt that common in console games back then) and the 2 player split-screen isnt that much fun, with no bots and some slowdown.
All in all though, I think MSR is a great driving game, and as a PS2-owner I can only regret not being able to enjoy the sequels.