Your attempt is in vain if you are trying to convince console warriors like Bruiserbear and Hindle.
I don't care about disingenuous people, only those who are of the ilk to be convinced by 70 type review 'consensus' over legitimate experience.
This is the clearest case of modern game reviewers simply being completely disconnected with all the things that made a genre great from yesteryear, and then profoundly failing to realize that all those things
remain great. Not only that, DriveClub improves on many of those classic features in ways that do make a difference - astounding visuals, decently integrated social mechanics - and combine to make any genre classic fan seriously fall in love.
This is a game which clearly understands compelling racing only comes at the end of solid mechanics and good track design, and DriveClub has some of the best racing mechanics I've encountered in years. They'd probably make a child's nursery rhyme about how perfectly DriveClub nailed the fundamentals. And then it's all put to service in some seriously great fashion - your skills vs. extremely aggressive and intelligent A.I., and you win or lose based squarely on how you apply your skill set on the track. The tracks don't have loops, but they are filled with interesting lines and curves and have never once made me 'bored.'
I guess today's racing games requires, I dunno, fucking purple mascots dancing on the side and fucking speed boosts that let you do backflips and fucking tricks and shit or open world in order to be considered appropriate "modern" affair. And there's totally a place for that, I love my racing games like Wipeout and F-Zero, and I'm super in love with Forza Horizon 2 (I love DriveClub
almost as much as FH2 so far, but different flavors of ice cream entirely. Not to be compared).
But DriveClub delivers a different type of racing game, one borne from a more classic foundation, one where bullshit is placed off to one side and what's in front of you is phenomenal simcade mechanics which you can master with some skill, and a litany of challenges for which you can apply your skills. There's nothing in between you and mastery but your skill, and in the meaningful sense: there is a real feeling of improvement that is extremely well maintained throughout ones playtime. It doesn't feel like so many games today where there is basically no skill motivation at all, or where it comes in fits and goes, or where it's extremely unbalanced. And there's so few racing games - or games at all - that are as straightforward anymore.
Reviews keep using that sort of thing as a euphemism to mean "not next-gen enough", but in my view it's completely embarrassing
bullshit. This is as next-gen as any game I played, and that means: fucking fantastic gameplay with the best racing visuals ever on a console.
There's no problem at all to dislike the game, and I always ignore media reviews as it is (i only read trusted GAFer reviews. A trusted GAFer gets on my list -only- after I reviewed a game I liked or hated, and that GAFer disagreed with me. But that disagreement is done in a way that shows a supreme command of critiques, where one can say 'I can respect your point of view even though we've come to different conclusions'), but this is the clearest case yet of game reviewers reviewing the game they
wish it was rather than what it actually is.
Try it out and see if it's for you. PS+ makes that possible. Subvert mass market review consensus and decide for yourself. DriveClub deserves it.