The worst piece of crap I ever played
Ok, it's not all bad, but the bad part is SO F***ING bad that it overtakes it all.
It's a 2003 game,
Gameplay is good, but flawed not in a bad way, but acceptable but its standards.
Graphics are very good (by it's time) lots of effects, reflections and the bloom
effect is impressive.
Tracks: after the beginning of the game they are all the same, most of them are just the same track but reverse.
Unlockables: ohh there's a lot of stuff to unlock, too bad most of them are useless and boring
Physics: lousy piece of junk. They made the game to work on "jump camera" (a cinematic camera whenever you crash or jump) which is damn boring after the third time you crash or jump. Fortunately you can remove it and when you do it, than you'll see the dumb spin and stupid traffic AI that "mysteriously" hit you. for example, you hit a traffic car fast in front you lose all your speed and see a stupid crash; you hit the same car by its left/right side, your car will spin around in agony (it's so dumb!)
Cars: a lot of cars to select, you'll eventually find one that you'll like (except if you only like American muscle). They are well made, and you can add a lot of accessories and upgrades on them.
Sound: cars all sound the same, it ain't bad, specially if you think it's 2003. Music collection, well, something they should have learned with Tony Hawk series: not everyone likes rap, hip hop, electronic or whatever else you can relate to it (NO i don't want Death, Gothic Metal in the game, but deny if want, that there was no better feeling than racing around with Paranoid on the speakers, even if it was a midi version Hooray Rock n Roll racing!)
Story: I won't comment it, just that after the second race i wasn't giving a sh*t about it.
Well, considering all this it's seems a nice game right? WRONG, FU**ING WRONG. 'Cause I haven't mentioned about it's difficult.
And if you happened to have read this article, and if came at this end without thinking "holy crap, this guy is nuts NFSU was the best game ever boo hoo" don't forget about a movie of the same period that helped this game sell and be consider a masterpiece (of crap, I should add).
Than, you probably played this game, you'll remember that it wasn't a hard game, you keep on playin' it hours and hours repeating the same circuit again and again 'cause always something made you loose the race. And here is my point, no it's not a hard game, but the difficult is CHEAP, is TOO D*MN CHEAP, and there's nothing more frustrating than CHEAP difficult.
You're racing than a mysterious traffic car appears in front of you and there's nothing you can do, but AI opponents, ohhh they never it it they'll just pass you. you can race at the same speed, doping exactly the same moves and in the final lap, there'll be a out of nowhere invisible mini ramp in the race that'll made you jump and loose speed, drag races are something out of this world (despite being the best thing to do in this piece of crap) sometimes traffic will pop up and crash you, other times opponents gain a ludicrous speed out of nowhere and will beat you. Without mentioning that this game doesn't consider weather effects, like wind, or water. Also forgetting that it's impossible for a Peugeot 206 with the same mod as an Eclipse beats it, with the same mod Eclipse is still lighter (dumb game).
I could spend 3 days mentioning the CHEAP stuff I've came across to this nature disaster, but there's no need, there's nothing worst than cheap difficult, when you fail on a game and you can see it's your fault than it's ok (hello Dark Souls) but when you fail 'cause the game made you fail just for being CHEAP it's a louse piece of crap.
Finally, fun factor: it's very fun until you meet the cheap difficulty, it doesn't even make you feel good about beating it.