Arcade racer under the guise of a racing sim
The visuals are very good. The cars are detailed enough, but it's not you want to play from a "3rd person" perspective - no, this game's major visual strength is in the cockpit view. From that start line, I actually feel like I'm racing the car. Everything looks superb inside.
I've also always been a fan of customizing cars, and there isn't any shortage there. From performance to cosmetics, to fine-tuning, you can customize nearly every aspect of your car. It would be nice if you could customize the body a bit more outside of 3 body kits, but it's better than nothing.
My issues, however, is the gameplay. It's not bad per-say, but the hype and cockpit visuals lead me to believe that this is a sim racer, and there in-lies the problem. If it is, it's a pretty sorry excuse for one. The handling is very poor, with every car feeling unusually light, but also carrying a lot of momentum. I loose control very often (on pro handling, but still happens on Experienced), which isn't like me since I've spent more time than I'm willing to admit play Gran Turismo 5 (with most of the assists either turned way down or off). Any time I cut a corner too fast, I start to slide a lot, and every correction seems to make it worse, where as in GT5, I can usually smooth myself out. And drift races have their own separate mechanics that make you slide sideways every time you gas it even remotely heavily. You really have to have a pressure sensitive finger to go anywhere but sideways in drift races.
One thing that really bugs me is the CPU seems to implement a difficulty curb (I played on normal difficulty). If I start winning a lot, races start getting very difficult. But once I loose a race, they get exceptionally easy, and I can win by a mile. These are very poor characteristics of a sim racer, or even a "hybrid sim" racer as critics are calling it. If I approach it as an arcade racer, all of these characteristics are easily forgivable, and even desired. But looking at from an arcade racer, there isn't that much special about it either - there is a lack of creative game modes, and some of the tracks are far more technical than fun. I've never been a fan of arcade racers either, and, in either event, it's not my cup of tea.
One other complaint I have is the poor porting. I've been playing this game with a Xbox Controller (well, a PS3 controller emulating an xbox controller), and there aren't any UI changes to indicate this. All the button legends are mapped for the keyboard, and don't change. You kinda have to guess which button does what if you don't want to go up to your keyboard after every race. A gross over-sight, especially considering the menus were made for controller navigation. Also, the UI is pretty sluggish.
Bottom line, this is a really nice looking arcade racer. The cock-pit view and details will have you believing otherwise, which is it's ultimate down-fall. If you can step back and approach it as an arcade racer, I don't doubt this is a pretty fun game, but I wanted a sim, and this is the closest I'm really getting in terms of the PC platform, and from this perspective, it's a total let-down with bits of frustration.