It has the racing, it has the music, it has the great looks as well, but it just gets boring and repetetive.
Gameplay: At the start, the game is great, everything is fun and fresh. You've got all these things to customize your ride, there's all these races you can take part in a bunch of races. The story sucks though, straight up dumb. But that really didn't make any dramatic changes in the game. Eventually the game gets boring, after about 30 or 40 races, sometimes not even. It gets way too repetetive and gets boring, eventually you just get rid of the game.
Graphics: Although it's not the best out there, it had some great graphics. The game was really able to depict speed, as you were going through the City streets. The edges of the screen will show blurs of passing cars, and streetlamps. Lighting was also nice, the graphics were very nice.
Sound: You can tell that EA worked really hard on the sounds, and they've acheived that. They had plenty of music, of different types, that some people can enjoy. The cars also make great noise, and there is plenty of realism in it. The sounds helped get the game at least up to it's knees.
Value: The value was really bad. Few people would actually sit through the whole game the first time, let alone beating it the second time! The Multi-player isn't very fun either, it's worse than the single player mode, so the replay value is horrible, which really brough the game down.
Tilt: All in all, we know EA tried, but they obviously left some important things in the game. They worked too hard on the graphics and sounds, and left out the important parts of the game, which is the replay value, and the gameplay especially, since that determines the replay value really. So this was an alright game, a game with a lot of potential, that just didn't make it where it could've been.