Watching the Giant Bomb quicklook, seems a majority of the well-informed games media didn't even realize this is an arcade racer. And even despite realizing that it is an arcade racer, they can't reconcile that with the fact that it has a realistic visual style. Their brains are apparently incapable of understanding how that is possible.
I mean, Jeff Gerstmann even mentions how the game came with a pamphlet explaining to game journos that you can e-brake drift corners like an arcade racer, and still he doesn't understand why it was designed that way, and name-drops Gran Turismo in the video several times.