It's now time for the instant review by Phil. I've now played through the first level of the challange mode, and I've seen enough. This game does have some good points, but for me no longevity what so ever.
Front End/Menus : damn they're slow... and that music is annoying. not very good first impression given.
Graphics : 3d graphics (i believe the car is 3d too) with fair texture quality. but this is pretty low quality 3d engine. the draw distance is very low, maybe 100 to 200 meters at max... this is even more noticable in the long tunnels for when the end of the tunnel light just suddenly appears. frame rate is horid... i'm guessing like 10 maybe 15 FPS... and that's being nice... gives no sense of speed at all. But i will say, atleast the low frame rate doesn't effect the controls as it did with Quad Desert Fury. And the track design is boring as can be... reminds me of driving around the Pole Position style track, but with hills to the side to make it look a bit better.
there are a few nice points... car shadows, it actualy rotates around the car when you change angles as it should... very nice. terrain shaddows... the car goes in to shadows when the car is in an area on the ground that is in shadows... but for some reason the shadow on the ground is always from the right side of the screen... but oh well. And car model is very basic, very low poly... but it does show body roll nicely.
control: one word... arcadeish. controls exactly as you'd expect an arcade racer to control... i'm going back to NFS:ug for my racing, way better controlsphysics there.
out of 10... i might give this a 6. It doesn't deserve any higher then that... and it isn't a terriable game... it's just that the standards bar has been set higher with releases of V-Rally, Top Gear Rally and NFS:Underground.