I hate to admit it because it looks so good, and drives so good, but I don't think I can take it.
It's not the arcade nature. I don't care about having a campaign if there's a proper arcade score attack progression system in place. But... I think they blew it here. Progressing is just too boring. It is a missed opportunity to not auto-fill a race with seven ghosts selected to match your level. That car performance is tied directly to the 16 experience levels stratifies the player base too much. You can't really select a ghost that's anything other than your exact level or the machine power will be too different. Skill makes no difference.
Grinding to get cash to buy stuff from the tech tree takes too long, and it is an insult that half (?) of the slots you buy on the tree to progress are empty or have a dumb hint about playing the game. That is authentic padding, to try and stretch out the lack of content here.
I feel tragic right now because it's SO close to being an incredible portable, quickfire Ridge Racer. It's not rocket science these days how you engineer an addictive drip-feed experience and unlock system. This could have been Call of Duty with cars.
So yeah, it's not the content, number of cars, or number of tracks. It's that the game they DID try to make isn't made correctly.
Shit. On paper, it does work. Execution is too screwed up.