I like that drift this time isn't mandatory to progress through the campaign, but hate the big hitches. At least it's mostly limited to what appears to be stat assets loading, like when you cross the finish line, but a clear sign of a blatant lack of polish just the same.
Another frustration for me is cop takedowns and escapes after doing so. I have no trouble escaping during or after races, but by the time I so much as takedown one cop, one or two more are swarming me and doing serious damage to my car. I pause to the map to put a waypoint on a nearby gas station to repair, but then I'm often left with the task of losing them. I have found certain jumps work well for this, but I can never seem to find one on the map (if they even show at night) when I need one. It's like if there isn't one thing causing problems with takedowns followed by escapes, it's another, as if they're trying to annoy you vs letting you have fun with the game.
The daytime feels too easy by comparison, being easily able to win events well above my performance rating. So the game comes off feeling schizophrenic, a sort of Jekyll and Hyde. The shame is the graphics look pretty good, it's just that they feel wasted on poor execution elsewhere. Lastly, not something I normally nit pick about, but what is up with the decals? Such a crappy selection and the way to install them is even worse. It's hard as hell to know what they're going to look like and it probably isn't going to be very good anyway.
My opinions of certain things may very well change once I get to know the game better, but as we all know, first impressions count a lot toward a game's reception, and so far, for me, it's definitely failing at that. Not often do I repeat the words "God I hate this game", before I even know it well, but it's my inclination when I see such bad design.
