Wow. Just wow. I haven't played the previous games in the series so I can't compare them but I can tell you that this is by far the best arcade-style racer I've ever played (ever). This game beats the pants off the whole NFS series and then spanks it with a big wooden paddle (ooooh, kinky). The controls are perfect, the graphics are fantastic, and the sense of speed is even better than F-Zero GX (not a typo); actually, a few of the cars are too fast (such as the formula 1 racer and a lambourghini-like car), you'll find yourself rubbing against the wall half the time with those ones. I'm sure most of you know that a large part of this series is the crashes, well, they've taken that to a new level witht he Aftertouch feature. You can now hold down a button to slow time when you crash and alter the course of your wreck. You can use this to make the crash more spectacular or, more importantly, to get in the way of other racers, causing them to smack into you. Apart from the regular races there's also the crash mode where the goal is to drive into an intersection and try to cause as much damage as possible -- it doesn't sound terribly deep but it's a lot like a puzzle game and will keep you coming back to it.
There are some annoyances such as the rubberband AI and...uhhh, actually, that's all I can think of. I don't know when the PAL version's gonna be released (or if it's already out over there) but everyone MUST own this game.
Oh, a little disclaimer: I am by no means a hardcore racing game fan, the only games I've really loved (excluding kart games) are NFS3 and F-Zero GX so I'm certainly not an expert on racing games (however, every review I've read seems to agree with me).
One last thing, I forgot about it because I really don't care but there are probably people out there who won't like the fact that there are no licensed vehicles in the entire game.
There are some annoyances such as the rubberband AI and...uhhh, actually, that's all I can think of. I don't know when the PAL version's gonna be released (or if it's already out over there) but everyone MUST own this game.
Oh, a little disclaimer: I am by no means a hardcore racing game fan, the only games I've really loved (excluding kart games) are NFS3 and F-Zero GX so I'm certainly not an expert on racing games (however, every review I've read seems to agree with me).
One last thing, I forgot about it because I really don't care but there are probably people out there who won't like the fact that there are no licensed vehicles in the entire game.