Recent reviews by -MT20

The game play isn't too bad, cars a decent and the driving is alright but one thing that's gets annoying fast is how the voice acting is absolute trash. Nothing said there is zero expression . It like they got 5 introverts who have never had a conversation in their lifetime.

Edit.
So completed 2 run through's and got bored with a third. the updates help with the games overall look and fixes some of the bugs but nothing has really change from my original view

Although I've rated as recommended i'd prefer it as a maybe as it's not outstanding, but it's far from terrible either. So far I've completed a single play through, and this is what I think.

Main Story
It's good and you can see this is where almost all the attention has been put into. Some can take up to half hour or so do it, and it's good that their are multiple ways of going about them. some routes might not be accessible due to character spec, so there is always an alternative.

Gigs
These are alright there is a good variety from courier missions, infiltration wiretaps/thievery to assassination.

NCPD side missions
(if you can even call them that) are simply "oh look someone is getting attacked, just kill them" 2 second jobs that require the least bit of effort.

Only some will actually have reward boxes for doing and others will open up new ones.

Cyberpsycho's
There is only 3 types and they have their set attack pattern. They are easy to learn so once you've fought one of each you'll know what to expect for the others.

Vehicles
There is a good selection of vehicles and they all look cool with varied speed and handling. The main problem is for most their handling is absolute trash.. For some I've spent more time spinning in circles than going in a straight line.. Nobody is look for a driving simulator but the turn rate needs to be toned down considerably.

Open World
The world it's self looks great and each district has it's own theme. For the most part it looks packed and busy but there sections where it's a ghost town, not a single npc in sight. No idea if it's a bug and they don't load in or whether or not they just out right forgot to populate it.
When driving in the like of the bad lands you'll notice a feature they added to look traffic is populated from a distance. Standing still it looks good but when driving towards it the transition is poor and can clearly tell there is nothing there.

Customisation
Not a lot to be said on this front, if you've put a little in to tech you can upgrade your clothing and weapons so you've got free rain to look how you like.

Police
The non-existent pain in the ass. Standard if you kill a civilian or a cop your rating increases. Cops appear out of no where, 1 star is fine and it's best to leave it at that and run away (they can be lost in come case just be going round a corner. Anything beyond that they'll annihilate you and you'll need to reload your last save, which isn't worth it.

Bugs
There are a number of bugs still in the game. I don't think I've come across anything game breaking, some a annoying others are just hilariously stupid.
* Character creation - Don't know if it's still there but there is Nomad bug where after selecting a preset your hair and tattoos stick so changing them they overlap and you can't tell what you've selected until loaded into the game.
*T poses - There isn't a great deal of them but they certainly exist. Simply bumping into them seems to fix them.
* Vehicle spawning - in places cars will spawn inside of others, mainly they just explode but other times they will get thrown about.
* Falling in from height - Or lack of in most cases. Sod the corpo rats and cyberpsyco's out to get you it's small rocks that will kill you, and it doesn't matter if your going up or down them, they'll still knock you on your ass flatlining you forcing to re-load a checkpoint.
* Changing clothes - sometimes changing clothes means wearing nothing at all.
* Mantis blades - sometimes using the blades and switching a weapon causes them to stick out still.
*Mission completions - A couple of missions it doesn't allow you to complete and it's all the mission log. If it don't do things in the order listed you'll need to reload even if you do everything else in the mission. For an Open world game where you are given freedom this can be the most annoying.

Ending
No spoilers but i'll just say i'm on the fence as to how I feel about how they've gone about it.

A lot of the negative reviews are from people who didn't read what SMS intended to do with this game. PC3 is an evolution of what SMS did with NFS Shift, Yes it probably should of been named differently but the fact is it was never intended to be like PC1 or 2.


There are currently a few bugs:
Drafting then overtake not registering
AI is super fast in the wet and snow yet in the dry once over taken the generally stay behind.
AI in lower spec cars can be very slow, they are only a bit more of a challenge from Road A+
Custom livery's are sometimes not used during races.
Traction controls seems to bug turning on some AWD cars at slow speeds.

Career progression isn't bad, it's worth looking ahead at the races and requirements as some cars can be used for multiple types before the need to switch. Some don't like that it's not pick any class like previous titles but your still free to do this in a custom race and still earn xp/credits for doing so.

Some of the standard cars are also the race spec cars so if your on early progression it might be worth upgrading to get it's worth than buying racing spec version outright.

Controller support actually works properly and for those with a wheel they have added PC2 wheel support to it. Cars look really nice although Super Sampling takes a massive hit in the rain when racing with a high number of cars.

All in all cars are fun to drive and if they can make the AI more competitive it would make it even better.