this game needed another good six months to a year of development, and possibly even a complete re-engineering. it's not short of content, mind you; it's fucked to the core. there are so many mechanical bugs and bizarre design decisions, and half of the game's structure seems to be designed solely to compensate (and badly) for them. stay away :'(
i loved the first game tons -- it was fun to drive around and explore. this game ostensibly attempts to do that, but the net code is terrible and coupled to the rendering pipeline, and somewhere along the way the driving physics were tortured to the point of madness and breakdown. i could forgive simple fuggo-ness; i could forgive the shitty mandatory licenses and the terrible progression/unlock structure; i could even forgive the hateful shrieky douchebag npcs that interrupt any "chill appeal" this game might have had; but i cannot forgive them collectively when they're are all strung together with the barbed wire of a FUNDAMENTALLY BUSTED DRIVING MODEL.
i cannot reliably powerslide. terrain effects are horribly inconsistent. braking doesn't brake, it send you into some wacky inertia world where things like friction are irrelevant. the steering randomly bugs out. you can gas the car lightly and the wheels will STILL spin in place on ASPHALT. what. the. fuck!