The game starts out with a queue of people standing at a gate in an airport terminal. From here you can choose one of them as your main character. After selection he/she hops on the plane and flies to Ohau. upon landing you are taken straight to a car rental shop. $800 for 10 mins, or $1600 for 20mins. Anyway, I chose the Pontiac GTO (Read: Holden Monaro. RIP Brocky) at which point I had to drive off to a real estate agents to choose a house (I might have gone to a car dealers before hand as well). At first Im like 'Come on already, I just want to play' but as soon as the house was purchased then I was on my way.
So what greeted me? Its like this massive world, ok, sure its about 1600kms of roads to be exact but in gaming terms its still a huge feat. Remember when you played NFS for the first time back in the early-mid 90's and that feeling of awesomeness as you drove along these beautiful coastal roads, elevation changes going up the Alpine etc etc? I got that same feeling. Discovering all these other roads just by randomly taking a left here, right there. At one point I ended up at a waterfall lookout car park up in the hills with scenic views of the island. Racing neck and neck along the southeast coast at 230+kmph with another car next to you as you dodge traffic and get air from the slight humps in the road.
Missions vary but not too much, afterall, its a driving game so you gotta drive. Hitchhikers, models (As in sexy women, not Airfix or Tamiya), Car delivery missions as well as a few diff types of races. Speed based with cameras (Think PGR2/3), Time based, one on ones and group races (I think up to 8 AI offline).
Ok, onto the important bit, well important for some of you. The graphics. Considering how massive the island is and how quick the loading it (This is streamed right?) the game looks pretty freaking good. Cars are amazing especially when you unlock the custom paintshop and start getting all these trippy colors on your ride. The island itself isnt without its problems though. Sometimes things jerk a tad, not much to actually derive from the gameplay, but enough to notice. Gets a little worse with the high performance cars. There is a little bit of pop-up as well, but nothing major. Ive never noticed pop-up of buildings, just mainly trees and a few textures. Oh, a couple of the views in the replay have textures missing on the roads and shit, change the camera and its fine, but if you like that angle then you will be annoyed.
Some really nice features in the game, such as some cars when in the in-car view you can see the gps in the dash working in syncro with the one in the hud. Having one on one races and setting the finish line where you like is great, although the game seems to automatically select the quickest route sometimes but yay for 16+km races.
I have only driven about half a doz cars. Audi, my first purchase, Nissan 350z Nismo, my second purchase and a couple of delivery hi-po cars. These are fast, real fast. Infact I was slowing down incase I got out of control even on the motorways. I cant really compare the handling except with the 1970 Pontiac which was like a boat on wheels, but thats expected. Perfomance was good though, and the sound of the v8, wicked. You guys with home cinema are going to love this (Me, I have pc speakers and mini sub, an ddont even ask about my television, please
).This game imo is comparable to GTA without any foot missions, or guns, or flying machines. You have clothes stores and real estate to buy as well as vehicles but the stats sheet is massive. I can only imagine how great the multiplayer is going to be. You and seven mates going for massive cruises around the island, playing follow the leader or playing custom races you have created.
I have a couple of gripes but nothing major. You cant ride or buy motorbikes till you have visited every dealer on the island (Use fold out map to find them all). Photomode and Custom races look like they arent available until you reach Pro level, unless I achieved something else without realising it.
If you love driving games as much as me, then I think you'll be happy with this. Very impressive game.
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