So it's out, I have been contemplating a pre-order, but i remembered when 1 came out it was filled with bugs, and the patch took forever to reach. So i downloaded the "extended demo" and started to play yesterday, and realized that my doubts were a blessing in disguise.
Sure, in this game you can buy and customize cars, houses, furniture, clothes, hear cuts and more. You can even get plastic surgery, after which the avatar wears bandages for quite a while (lol). There's the usual cop chases, quick duels, and a million races and challenges. I believe it boasts around 90 exotics (maybe less) and over 3000 KM OF ROADS across 2 islands, to which you have to take and airplane to travel in between. There are cool day to night transitions, and depending when you enter the race, that determines the time of day the race is held! Also you can walk around your house, garage and dealerships, instead of just selecting the items from the menu.
The game also follows a story mode, so you interact with other characters in some short cut scenes which guides you through the progress of the game. All in all EVERYTHING that was missing in the original TDU appears here! Thus the game should get a full 10/10 in the racing genre as best racing game I ever played right ... WRONG!!!
This game LACKS the most IMPORTANT thing which was in the original TDU. That is the feel of driving an exotic car. In TDU, when u got behind the wheel of a fararri, i felt like you were in a fararri. THe sound, the handling, the interior modelling, everything about it gave you that feel. But in this game, they traded in the simulated feel for a more arcade style racer, which quite frankly ruins the entire game. After all it is a racing game right. What good is it if you can do all of the new fangled stuff and the driving is no fun. The cars feel like the drifting in nfs carbon, except instead of sticking to road, it goes off!
It really is disappointing considering all they needed to do was to put the new additions to the old game and in that you would have had the best racing game ever made. All in all, the game is still playable, and though the racing might not engulf you into a virtual world, the rest of the game can. It's not worth a buy for me, but definitely worth a play.
Solid 7/10
