I think this is a fantastic game, you have a whole island to drive around on, a beautiful one at that, Oahu, Hawaii, awesome cars and exotics, and they all sound and drive pretty nice too.
The island is rendered very well, almost exactly the same as the console and PC versions, If you look at the meteor crater on the PSP and then PC they are identical. The only thing thats missing is all the shrubbery, long grass and quite a few trees, but you won't care when your driving at speed or cruising with people.
On some parts of the roads, especially in the mountains and a few highway roads, you see some of the scenery come through the roads. It breaks the expierience somewhat especially when you hit it in a race, it can send your car flying off course and down a hillside or into a tree, maybe cross the interstate and end up going the other way.
The cars are rendered quite nicely too, some of them can appear a bit blocky and flat at times though. but they are all recognisable and quite nice to drive overall.
The one thing that bugs me and Im sure many other people ALOT about the cars is the wheels, why do they give you a wheel choice? but replace it with the most bland ugly generic wheel when in game?.A further sting to this is, when you reverse close to a wall and the car goes transparent, suddenly that generic wheel is replaced with the PROPER one, the one YOU chose. This can really destroy the look and feel of some of the cars. The civilian NPC cars have unique individual 3d wheels. Why cant they have the crap ones and we have are nice alloys?.God Knows
The thing that got me hooked on this game was finally the cars sounded and drove really nicely, you can tell the difference between FF, FR and 4WD cars. you get the torque steer of a ff car, you can put skylines and lambos at silly angles and recover nicely, you can jump-drift,dirt drop and power over round the mountains and tight roads. It's fantastic. The best way to describe it is all the cars have a good sense of inertia. Sometimes they act a little out of the ordinary, but you won't care because they are all fun to drive! which is fundamentally important, especially for a handheld game.
The music is pretty bad in the game but the car sounds more than make up for it. theres the distinctive V10 whale from the viper, the massive supercharged V8 GT40 sounds beefy. theres the nice, distinctive growling v12 from he murcielago, it's worth plugging into your sound system or a decent set of headphones to hear the lambo. The lotus has that nice 4-potter sound, much like a Mitsubishi Evo off-boost
Online it's fun, but theres no way to communicate with other people while cruising round, i think there might be in the club system but i've never tried that. you see 4 people tops, including yourself. It's just fun tho, you can still challenge or cruise with people-that said ALOT of people seem to cheat when you challenge them. on many instances I've set a race up to the house on the corner of the meteor crater, and people drive STRAIGHT OVER, thats right STRAIGHT OVER!!! it. this can be frustrating. or when your in the lead and about to win people quite alot. It really can be a pain sometimes.
Overall though, it's thouroughly enjoyable and it has that,"just take a drive" feel, whenever your mad, bored or angry and passionate about cars, few games fulfill this satisfaction of getting in, taking a drive, and seeing where you end up. On long car journeys I love to just tour round the island, its mindless fun. it feels similar to GTA minus the guns and carnage, plus licensed exotic supercars and a huge island.
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