There are 4 car tiers in the game, each with a sizable collection of vehicles to choose from. Each car has an overall numerical rating, as well as detailed properties sliders. Unfortunately, there is no menu to compare the detailed properties of two vehicles, other than memorizing their overall values. The career events are also based on vehicle tier, so you can only race in tier 3 events if you have unlocked and purchased a tier 3 car. The events include Mixed Race, Car/Manufacturer battle, National events, drift, endurance, Invitational World Tour events, and variations. Interestingly, a lot of events such as Car battle and Invitational, provide you a vehicle to drive. This is great in the early going, as you get a chance to drive top-tier cars while you save up to actually buy one later in your career. However, it takes some time to adjust from driving your tier 1 Honda to racing at 200km/h+ with your Ferrrari on an Invitational event. As mentioned earlier, the ultimate goal of your career is to race in the World Tour event – which is basically a really long Endurance event. To get there, you must unlock all car/event tiers and have a certain driver profile level. To unlock tiers, you must earn stars – 20 stars for tier 1 80 stars for tier 2, etc. You earn stars by participating in races and getting a podium finish, as well as special objectives, such as earning a certain amount of driver points or performing a clean lap. These stars are displayed on every race icon, so you can see how many stars you have already earned, and how many you can still earn by trying the race again. The stars add up quick – it only took me a few hours to unlock tier 4. This ultimately makes for a bit of a short career if you aren’t interested in building up your car collection and simply want to finish the game. You certainly don’t have to complete all available races at each tier – and you are free to go back to previous tiers and complete your star collection at any time.
One of the ways to earn extra stars, as mentioned, is to get a certain amount of profile points – this brings me to the Profile feature. There are 50 “driver” levels to unlock by earning points during every race. Points contribute to either Precision or Aggression, self-explanatory items and they depend on your driving style. The system doesn’t really work though – I am not exactly a very clean driver, and I always grind and bump opponents out of the way, cut them off, try to make them spin out – yet my profile was always leaning towards Precision because the most points in any race are gained by following the Race line (a line that shows where on the road you should drive for best results). The Race line precision points always outweigh any harsh driving you perform, so I find the feature isn’t very well balanced. These points then are added to your profile, and contribute to raising your driver level. With each driver level unlock, you are given various bonuses such as garage slots, cash, and visual accessories. Depending on what level you are at, the biggest reason to progress your driver level is the cash rewards – you are given as much as $100,000 at a measly level 14, which makes the game’s progression a bit uneven. You should really have no trouble getting enough cash to buy one car for each tier and fully upgrade it by the time you’ve earned enough stars to finish Tier 4. And even for race wins, in my opinion you are given quite a lot of cash so I’ve never had money problems in the game. Your driver profile also features Badges – these are just little achievements that help keep track of your in-game accomplishments. You earn badges for things like mastering every corner on a track, overtaking your opponents cleanly a certain number of times, getting a podium finish 5 races in a row, and so on. They don’t affect the gameplay in any way, and do not help your driver level progress. Badges also come in 3 levels: bronze, silver and gold, but again they simply depend on how well or how many times you accomplished the task.
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Oct 3, 2009 13:28:19 (335 days ago)
