I wish there was a neutral option. So I'll get all the good out of the way first.
Sound design is absolutely goated. Totally nailed. 10/10 no questions will be given nor taken. They've found the boundary between 'realism' and the hollywood fantasy that people crave. V8's roar, backfire pops sharply. Tires squeal tortured screams. It's absolutely wonderful.
It looks great - at times. I'll get to that later.
There's quite a bit of things to do. Yes, it is a grind. But it's not much different than any similar game.
The physics are serviceable. The game is not nearly as bad as people have made it out to be.
Now. The bad.
Optimization is awful and design choices leave heads scratched. Ultra reflections are pixelated. Everything up to that is screen space blurry messes. No ENV maps or other trickery other games have used for decades at this point. The sad thing is, when you max out reflections to get barely serviceable ones, it's at a huge performance detriment and looks like LOW reflections in any other game. It's unexcuseable. They should at least have a blur filter or something on the ultra setting to mask how hutterly pants the resolution is.
I need to run 4k with FSR on, while on max settings. This is also, inexcuseable. Forza at max runs well north of 70fps. 50-60 WITH RT at 4k (with FSR). This game struggles to reach 50-60 at ultra with no path or ray tracing and with FSR. There are moments, it looks absolutely stunning. But there are far more moments, that it does not.
Finally - the pay scheme for the battle passes is something I can't abide. The freemium content is serviceable, though, so there's that. But a company that relies on FOMO tactics and forces you to pay for a pass you can't complete *at your leisure* is actually scammy.
I gave this game a chance after seeing todays news from the pits, giving me hope in the future of the company. But I hope that hope isn't misplaced. And absolutely, inarguably, they should implement the offline mode -before- EOL. Because when they have a history of promises they don't deliver on, waiting until the last day of service to get burned will be a black mark. KT....Nacon, please listen. The only excuse not to, is if you intend to include all former pass content in it - and if that's the case, you CAN withold that part until EOL.
The ship is *slowly* getting righted. I hope it continues. Either way, proceed with caution. It's worth ten dollars for the sounds *alone* but don't get too invested into the game - it's just serviceable. It's not spectacular.
