Recent reviews by mikurubaeahina

tl;dr version: why haven't you bought this already, one of the best racing games of the past decade

did read version: I'm a bit of a racing game nut, both sim and arcade, console and PC, and I have to tell you, I've not played a racing game that is as much fun as this in a very, very long time. The gameplay itself is excellent; the career mode has a good blend of events and you never feel like you're grinding for cash or XP to move onto the next series (well, except for the season-end Le Mans race, which gets old FAST - it's the only unentertaining part of the game, but it can be skipped). There's a healthy selection of cars, and the ability to create your own team is quite a fun feeling, especially when you get to hire your own teammate. There's a medium size track roster, but there's enough between the original courses and the real-life replicas to allow enough variation to keep it from feeling repetitive. There's also a GREAT mixture of race modes from the super-intense LMP and open wheel races to the tuner-oriented street car challenges, and this is one of the only games I know of (except for NFS: Carbon) that has a touge mode, which is wicked fun.

The physics are a pleasant blend of arcade and sim, with the knob a bit more to the arcade side, but it's still very challenging to play if you drive with the assists off and the AI turned up - and that brings me to the crowning jewel of this game, which is the AI. They drive more realistically than I've ever seen in any racing game, putting Gran Turismo and NFS AI to shame. Different drivers will all behave differently, and they can be bloody impossible to pass and catch up to, but not because of rubberbanding or their car's performance specs - they drive the same cars you drive, just sometimes much more skillfully. This culminates in the epic Ravenwest boss races where you 1v1 battle the top drivers in the game, making for some of the most memorable races a game has ever given me.

For the price, you really can't beat this in the racing game genre, and it'll play well with a controller or a wheel. Cannot recommend this enough.