Great fun, if you have ever been to a derby.
The Racing physics are good. You can somewhat easily slide around the track and it is still easy to control. The cars are rated by 3 catagories: Speed, handling, and Durability. Speed is, of course, how fast you go and how fast you can get up to speed. Handling is how good your car turns and grips the road. Durability is how many times you can get hit before your vehicle is dead in the water.
The Damage physics are not the best, but they aren't bad. The cars crumple the same where ever they are hit, the car bends and a texture change adds shaded dents (looks like just silver spots to the regular guy). The cars smoke and the tires wobble. The chassis view shows your tire wobble best and what part is broken.
The action is somewhat fast-paced, but slow parts are also common. The views are realistic, the chassis view shows the suspension working (Xbox shows the springs all the time, while the PS2 version shows them only when you are in the air long enough). The driver view shows the pedals working correctly (gas, brake, AND clutch). The game is split into 2 main areas, action and career. Career starts off with you in a Chevette (called the "top"). You got the car from your grandma. You don't want to be a chicken farmer for the rest of your life so you decide to trade the car for a better one to go to the track with. Trading is recommended for absolute n00bs, but average drivers can win the first events easily with the top.
Action mode is the mode you will spend the most time. It is the quick race mode and allows you to select the car, track, opponent skill, event number, and which events you compete in. A list of some events is as follows:
Jump Race-road course race with some jumps
No-Rules Race-Oval track race
Trailer Race-race around the oval with a trailer attached, realistic trailer physics
Bus Race-Oval track with buses
Car Soccer-Cars try to push a big soccer ball across a line to score
Demo Derby-ram everyone else and be the last car to win
Push-Off-demo derby with no wall, push opponents out to win
Knock-Out-Push-Off with some sort of barrier or hill to help keep people in
Suicide Race- 1/2 of cars go one way, the other half goes the other
Flagpole Race-drive around a track and when you raech a flagpole, you ahve to drive a circle around it, 2 each lap.
That is just the tip of the iceberg. There are MANY more events.
There is also Dare mode. Dare mode has challenges you have to complete in order to get the turbo boost cheat. They range from demo derbies with a big car against little ones, to racing a bus in a flagpole race against midsize cars.
There are built in unlockables that include cheats, video, cars, tracks, and more. The cheats are simple mods to the game that give you a new experince. One example is a FUN cheat that allows you to shoot exploding chickens out of the front of your car. The videos are short clips from real events that show that people actually do this stuff. You also unlock extra cars (like the Ranchero) and tracks.
Overall, TDEOD is a geat game for people who know what demolition derbies are. If you have no idea what one is. Check this game out, it will give you an idea of what people do with all the extra cars they got.