Definitely an improvement from the first game in everything except for the fact that this game do be too got damn long for its own good. The main new addition to this is the free roaming map that ya drive around in to get to the various events scattered within, both visible on a big in-game map as well as secret stuff that can only be found through exploration. While it def makes everything slower than just pushing a button on a menu to get to the races, I actually did find the free-roaming quite fun as not only is the city reasonably sized and vibin' with its neon-coated glowing buildings and setpieces, but also it functions as a decent way to practice driving in a safe environment without having to constantly redo races n such. Considering the fact that a lot of the races take place in the giant city, having the familiarity of both the controls and the map through the free roaming do make it so that it's easier for me to get in the flow of things.
The game just kinda drags on a bit too much imo, has that same problem that a handful of racers I've played have where the mid-game is a bit more stagnant and difficult than the rest due to not having a properly upgraded/maintained car that the game might be expecting me to have. I feel like if they reduced the games length to like 2/3rds of its total runtime that this would be a lot more digestible. The open world explorable city already gives the game plenty of reason to go back to it and keep playing, they didn't need to have such high event complete quotas n whatnot. That being said though, it's really not like there's any gripping narrative going on here, it's just car gangs doing car gang things with very sparse cutscenes (that feel way lower budget than the CGI cutscenes the first game had but whatever). If I had this game back in the day I prob wouldn't have even cared about the story progression and just spent all my time just driving around the city taking in the wonderful 2000s ass visual and audio aesthetics that this game is rich with. I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of people that bought this game played it exactly that way.
(if i have to do ONE MORE drag race event i will go insane and drive into the highway, those events are ASS and I hope this is the last game in the series that they are featured in)
The game just kinda drags on a bit too much imo, has that same problem that a handful of racers I've played have where the mid-game is a bit more stagnant and difficult than the rest due to not having a properly upgraded/maintained car that the game might be expecting me to have. I feel like if they reduced the games length to like 2/3rds of its total runtime that this would be a lot more digestible. The open world explorable city already gives the game plenty of reason to go back to it and keep playing, they didn't need to have such high event complete quotas n whatnot. That being said though, it's really not like there's any gripping narrative going on here, it's just car gangs doing car gang things with very sparse cutscenes (that feel way lower budget than the CGI cutscenes the first game had but whatever). If I had this game back in the day I prob wouldn't have even cared about the story progression and just spent all my time just driving around the city taking in the wonderful 2000s ass visual and audio aesthetics that this game is rich with. I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of people that bought this game played it exactly that way.
(if i have to do ONE MORE drag race event i will go insane and drive into the highway, those events are ASS and I hope this is the last game in the series that they are featured in)
2 Comments
🤝
WouShmou
3 months ago