It might surprise you when you play it, it's not super-grippy and some of the races and cars feel like trying to keep the Stratos in place on Sega Rally while nailing a fast, clean lap - and I'm only on the early courses
I hope it does. I want it to be good - it's why I bought a PS4 at launch.
I cancelled my PS+ pre-order and wanted to wait to try the free version. I'm no fan of review scores, I often find scores not matching the words on the page - often reading text that I'd score a couple of points lower. Scores seem to stop people reading the words - often completely ignoring interesting critical points merely because they don't like a number.
I believe that art criticism is vital to any artform. In fact I'd go as far as to say something can't truly be art without a valid discourse. Cinema, literature, theatre, music etc. all seem to manage to exist within a world of discussion, reviews and opinion.
It makes me sad that people see a number and decide they wish to have the discussion ended. The way people talk about reviewers as though they are a different species. The head in the sand approach to any kind of criticism of something they have been looking forward to. Laughable comments about how the industry is corrupt because it didn't follow the expected narrative of unsophisticated consumer .
One review doesn't necessarily tell a whole story, but it exists within a larger discourse. I've read plenty of Driveclub reviews today and there are common things that do come out of it - places where you see agreement in both positive and negative reviews. And so one can read the reviews and form a narrative around the game - see which elements are likely to be problematic to you, which are not. And that discourse informs you as a consumer of products like this. I know that my issues with Driveclub will come down to the handling model, off track penalties and the AI - with other issues being less important. For another gamer the focus will be different. These are the things I will be looking out for when I play on Friday.
People say reviews don't matter. They do. Discussion of art is culturally significant. Yes you can argue that all the panning in the world doesn't stop Michael Bay shitting out another Transformer turd. But so what, it doesn't mean cinema criticism has to stoop to his base level of artistic drought. Some of the best writing you can ever read is movie criticism, some of the best writers have had a stab at it. The same with book and theatre reviews.
But who would want to be a games reviewer when the audience for those reviews can barely see beyond a number, or is like an audience of monkeys throwing shit at the screen.
