You are given the option of a few different camera modes, first and foremost is in car cockpit. This is excellent, you can see many animations as the driver responds to your requests such as gear change, plus you also have a free look ability to pan around the cabin. Even though this is great, you'll rarely get a chance to do so because playing on advanced vehicle handling mode and highest skill level with all driving aids disabled you'll be working hard just to keep your highly tuned exotic racer facing in the correct direction. Chase mode, front bumper and drive by camera positions are also available.

When traveling at high speeds you really do get a sense of just how fast you're going as the scenery starts to become a blur as you appear to get tunnel vision.

Frame rate is good throughout the game and the quality of special effects when you damage your vehicle or go off the track are superb. They have even incorporated the fact that debris remains on the track, so if your bonnet comes off then on the next lap expect it to be lying where it fell, unless another racer has ran into it.

The animations, information screens, pre-race screens and post-race screens are all well done and interesting without being over the top like Need For Speed Hot Pursuit.

In Career mode you are presented with different Tier levels of racing. In order to compete you will be required to own a suitable vehicle. The beauty about the game design is that if you don't want to complete in certain events, (such as dritf) you don't have to. You can still score enough points and money by competing in the other events so you can advance to the next Tier level. Each car you buy you can modify ( by adjusting the paint / rims / vinyls), you can upgrade by purchasing additional equipment to enhance your cars performance and you can configure / setup the vehicle to handle how you want it to. The level of setup is very good and quite technical, which I think is great.

You also have a Quick Race option where you can select a car from your garage and race it on any track of your choosing. This is about the only way you'll get to test or practice because there are no practice sessions in career mode. Down side to this is the cars handling is different in Quick race than it is in Career, however it's still a good way to learn the tracks if you're not already familiar with them. Many modern tracks are included here most of which any racing fan will be familiar with such as Spa and Road America.

Damage your car sustains is clearly visible and when driving from in car camera mode (like you would choose anything different ???) if you crash, more than likely you'll crack the windscreen. These cracks are visible and can certainly make seeing much more difficult. Same thing if you have a front impact and the bonet is pushed up/back. That too will limit your visibility. Overall Great damage modeling, however the damage sustained only effects your cars handling marginally.

There is no Qualifying. This is one of the main drawbacks and why this game can't be classified as a true racing simulator. Each race you start in career mode you're assigned a place on the grid that feels completely random. Majority of the time though you're placed mid field through to last. Now this is ok if you had 10+ laps in order to achieve all the race objectives and win the race, but most of the time you're only give two to four laps, depending on the race track length. This is especially annoying if one of the secondary objectives is to lead for a lap, or have 1 clean lap. That feels virtually impossible because at high skill level settings it'll probably take you the 2 or 3 laps just to get through the field and you can be assured not all of those passing moves will be clean. So to lead for a lap as well is just not achievable.

Car Damage is clearly visible but you need to sustain a large amount of damage before handling becomes compromised. It appears that no matter how much damage your car sustains it is still drivable.

To be a true simulator we need pitstops. I would like to see tyre wear and fuel consumption be incorporated into racing games because that can drastically influence the type of car you drive. For example a Ford GT40 is very fast in its class but it goes through fuel like no other.

Precision This is where you can show your professional driving skills, such as mastering all corners, following the racing line, running clean laps (clean means not hitting anything) and clean overtakes.

Aggression. This is where you can show just how determined you are to win, and covers driving styles such as rubbing paint, spinning out opponents, dirty overtake (this is where you hit or nudge them while passing), slipstreaming and blocking.

Even though this idea isn't new for Need for Speed, other previous versions have also incorporated something similar, however these feel much more realistic in what they represent because they cover all aspects seen in real racing.

The Tier Racing system is good and the range of cars you can choose is also good. Some racing events the cars are supplied, which gives you a good preview of how that car handles, but for the most part the races require you provide your own vehicle.

The inclusion of the Garage is a major benefit. Being able to buy and sell your cars, plus upgrade and modify them is a major PLUS because it allows you to fine tune the car to your specific tastes or driving style.

Expect to hit enter 5 times just to reach the main menu when you load the game. Then get ready to hammer it again after a race to quickly skip all the post-race info screens.

The noise from the other cars is audible but not over bearing and the sounds when you crash are great. You can hear your breathing change and your heart rate pound. All fantastic.

You have the ability to adjust the volume for Sound Effects, Engine, Speech and Music individually. Excellent.

During the race however the music made me want to hurl my speakers out the window, go pick them up bring them back inside, replace the window and then hurl them out again ! Why is this in the good section, because you can turn this s**t off ..

Music is certainly a desired taste and in fact the tune which i'm currently hearing as the race is running on my other pc isn't even in english.

I could not find any way to incorporate my own music into the game. To resolve this what I do is have all my PC's connect to the one set of speakers via an audio mixer, so I can adjust the volume for each pc. Then simply play the music I WANT to listen to on one pc, while playing the game on the other. This also allows easy track changing aswell.

If you're unlucky enough to play with the keyboard then you'll find trying to drive is just utterly frustrating as there's no ability to make adjustments to even resemble the ability to drive quickly. It seems this game has focused primarily on controller users (ie wheel and pedals).

So for any keyboard users I have found a way to adjust the sensitivity and range of the keyboard by editing one of the configuration files goto "game-install-directory"\ControllerDefaults\PC\
I suggest you take a copy of the original file first, so if you stuff up then you can always restore it.
open the following file in notepad vehicleset_pc_mousekeyboard.xml

Then edit the following values. (there are more values in that file, but simply locate these and change them to the values listed here)
SpeedSensitiveSteering="1.350000"
DampeningTimeCentreToLock="0.000000"
DampeningTimeLockToCentre="0.000000"
DampeningTimeOppositeLockToCentre="0.000000"
DigitalRampRateSteering="0.500000"
TurnSensitivity="1.400000"
AlternateSpeedSensitiveSteering="1.350000" />

So quick recap of those. increase speed sensitivity by 35%, set speed to instant for reaching steering lock and returning to center. (this stops that strange 1/5 second delay) increased the digital ramp rate, increased the turn sensitivity and finally increased by 35% the speed sensitivity, so now the car won't constantly fish tail if you just blow on the turn keys while on fast straights. Feel free to adjust those values to your liking.

Save the file, load the game, go into config, select some other controller (it alerts you your config will be lost, that's annoying but ok for what we want.). now reselect mouse/keyboard, re-setup your keys and go test it with a race.. I use the time attack so i can see how much improvement I get per lap compared to the previous key config, and so far my lap times have improved by 4 seconds (playing on realistic settings (well as realistic as this game allows)) and can now easily get maximum stars in any time attack race.( eg beat the fastest times).

The Most enjoyment by far though is using a wheel and pedals. The force feedback is excellent and very rewarding to feel the car go loose then catch it before you spin out then hold the drift for as long as the corner allows. Loads of fun.

Configuration Setting are Lost If you have your controller configured, and then you goto configure the keyboard settings, so you can choose to use keyboard or controller, you're in for a rude shock. The moment you navigate away from your currently selected input method all settings are LOST. This is just down right dumb. So the game only allows one input method and can't remember the settings for a completely different input method if you switch.... Very poor and certainly hurts the score for this section.

You're forced to do everything with the keyboard and some sections of the game are very annoying to use. For example when in career mode to move between the Tiers you need to use 8 for backwards and then 9 for forwards. Once you select a Tier (with enter) if you wish to read more information about that race you need to press 8 again. The Garage is where the cars you own can be viewed and selected, however from the garage "My Cars" you can not upgrade or modify any vehicle? Instead you have to select your car from the "My cars", Exit to the Garage Menu, then select Upgrades in order to buy new items, return to the Garage Menu, click on Visuals to change the look of the car, then return to the Garage Menu and select Tuning to make any configuration changes. I'm really not sure why all of that can't be handled directly from the My Cars screen. Simply show the list of cars. Select the desired car and then from that screen where you're shown all the performance stats about the car have three new options. Upgrade, Tuning, Visuals. That would save a lot of unnecessary navigation.