Just completed the demo and I have mixed thoughts on it. It's good, but not something you haven't already seen before. The concept of this game, however, is a bit different. Unlike the previous games, where you compete against a certain number of racers for first position, this isn't like that. I mean you are competing for the top spot, but this is one giant race from San Francisco to New York. So when you start the race, I'm assuming you'll be the last (say around 200th position) and then slowly work your way up to 1st, before you touch New York.
You're offered 2 levels in the demo; Desert Hills level which takes place in Death Valley National Park, California & the Summit level, which takes place in the snow clad mountains of Independence, Colorado. You have 2 vehicles to choose from; The Lamborghini Gallardo LP550-2 and the Porsche 911 Carrera S. Out of which, only the Gallardo is playable and the Carrera can be unlocked, if you invite a friend. 4 difficulty levels; Easy, Normal, Hard & Extreme.
So we start off with the Desert hills level, where you are instantly dropped into 160th position and have to race through the other 9-10 odd racers, who are ahead of you. The challenges here are mainly on-coming vehicles that you can crash into. Just like the previous games, you can take short-cut routes as an alternate path. There's a new addition to the gameplay called 'Rewind'. Like the name states, it's a time reversal feature, in a manner of speaking. If you wreck your car in a major crash, the screen fades out and a rewind icon appears and you're pulled back by 15 secs (approx). This is to rectify the error that you had made and approach it carefully the next time. The amount of times you can use this feature, depends on the level of difficulty you chose. Controls were a bit off in the beginning, as it didn't notice any button for hand-brake, which was odd. Cleared that area in 2 minutes and 39 secs.
Off to the Summit track and this is where the fun really began. You'll see a short cut-scene of the protagonist, Jack out standing near a road blocked path and a car just gushes past him tearing apart the roadblock. We then take control of our car and resume our race. Throughout the race, we have just one opponent to deal with. This is a snow-clad mountain area and you'll see rockets being launched from a distance, thus creating an avalanche in front of us. You'll have to wade through all the boulders and rocks that keep falling in front of you. At the same time, you have to avoid falling off the cliff, as they aren't barricaded. This level looks stunning coupled with awesome physics. It's sort of adrenaline pumping. Felt more like Split/Second events being adopted. Clocked time was 3:28.
I'll quickly comment on the performance and sound. The performance was horrible on the 360. The frame rates were extremely poor and V-Sync had been taken out. The graphics looked really blurred in some parts and rendering physics effects took a massive toll. I'm sure it would look way better on the PC, but I doubt the people with low configurations would be able to play it. Crash effects were average. It's a demanding engine all right. Soundtrack was pretty dull and nothing worth mentioning.
