So much to love and so much to hate about this game. I figure I'm about 2/3 thru the campaign and would like to post some impressions. A lot of this will be critical and keep in mind this is coming from a single player perspective.
Graphics 9/10 - Let's start with the good. The graphics in this game are some of the best I've seen in a racer this gen. There's some occasional slow down and pop up, but it doesn't affect gameplay so far. The set pieces are for the most part gorgeous. There are a few night races that are annoying, but they are few and far between. Lastly are the cars. They all look great. It's nice to have a NFS title again that let's you race in the open country. My biggest complaint is that they didn't use the Burnout engine. I thought Burnout Revenge and Paradise both looked fantastic and ran a 60fps. I'm curious why they didn't go with it again, but it's a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things. Overall, the graphics are one of the best selling points of the game.
Controls 8/10 - I'm playing the PS3 version, so I don't know if it's the controller or the game itself, but I still find myself battling the controls. Drifting around corners is a lot of fun and give you a forgiving sense of control. It's easy to correct a corner when drifting. My problem lies more in narrow turns. I often find myself oversteering and swerving back and forth across the track after barely nudging the left analog stick. The sensitivity feels like it needed a little bit more tweaking. The controls aren't terrible, but there are times when the walls feel like magnets. I could understand if this were the case starting out, but as you progress and get better cars, it should correct itself. The controls work, but I do find myself wishing they were a bit tighter.
Difficulty 6/10 - This has got to be one of the most frustrating parts of the game. The difficulty seems incredibly unbalanced. From the start of game, time trials has remained the hardest part. There has been more than one occasion where it will take me 2+ hours to get a gold medal on a time trial. Doing so requires a near flawless race. I agree that gold medals should be a challenge, but there are so many obstacles, particularly traffic that make these sections a bit frustrating. I have to wonder why they decided to include traffic in time trials because it slows you down in the race and kind of defeats the purpose. The other two modes - Hot Pursuit and Standard Races are a cake walk compared to the Time Trials. A lot of times I'll win a race on the first try. On average I would say I've got a gold on each of these types of races in less than three tries. The difficulty just seems incredible skewed toward an over difficult time trial.
Level Design 3/10 - This is one of the biggest disappointments for me in the entire game and will lead into my next section. I love each of the locations and the track itself but there are some glaring design choices that I just can't get past. The first is the lack of circuits. None of the tracks seem unbearably long and it just makes you wonder why they would choose to omit such a basic and desired feature of a game like this. This omission also diminishes memorizing the nuances of each track. My next problem are the short cuts. Some of them work well, but a lot of them are completely useless. It's frustrating that in some of the shortcuts, Criterion would choose to put something like a giant boulder in the middle of a turn. The shortcuts that do work are a lot of fun, so it's frustrating to me why they would put others in there that don't work. I understand some of them may take a while to master which I would understand a lot better if there were more replayability.
Replayability 2/10 - In a racing game, replayability is one of the most important features. The lack of replayability in this game completely baffles me. Part of it is because of a lack of circuits and part of it is Criterions choice to focus so much on the online parts of the game, but this is a huge disappointment. You go thru the game unlocking all these cars, but you never get a chance to use them. I'm dumb founded by this design decision. It would have been nice to be able to replay a track and master it with you favorite car (or any car in your repertoire) but instead you're stuck with the single player campaign only and the cars Criterion chooses for you. What else is mind boggling is the fact that you can freely drive thru the entire world, yet you can't create your own track or set up a race.
Overall 7/10 - Overall, the game is a lot fun. That's what makes it so disappointing. Had Criterion just stuck with some some of the gameplay mechanics that should be a basic part of every racing game, this would have more than likely been my racer of the generation. Drifting around corners and boosting was a nice inclusion in the series. Yes, it's a copy of Burnout, but I love the way they implemented it. The police chases are also intense. The cars and environments all look great, but Criterion has seemingly done quite a bit to ensure you don't come back to the game. This game along with Metroid Other M are probably my biggest disappointments of this gen. There were design choices that I can't get my head around. Hopefully Criterion will release a patch to at least include a track editor or release a sequel to fix all these problems. As it stands, the game feels incomplete imo.
