CarX Street is probably the most frustrating racing game I've played in a long time due to one main problem, the AI is horrible, not skill wise, design wise. They have a set path that they will always follow (they take corners exactly the same every time no matter what). They will make no effort to brake before hitting you, they will not try to avoid you, and they don't seem to receive any speed loss from most collisions with other cars, as opposed to the players car which will lose power the second you tap another bumper. They are also consistently so much faster than you, that it is simply impossible to catch up past a certain distance which depending on the race was as short as ~10-20 yards. There is no "catch up" mechanic, making the reset car system entirely useless in the format of any event (if you lose your drift you might as well reset as well, the scores are near impossible and it took me, a veteran racing game player that's 100% completed most need for speeds as well as Forza 4/5, the crew etc. upwards of 20-30 plus tries to complete) This is all to say, that if you miss a timing or god for bid spin out or crash, the race is instantly over. I enjoy a challenge, and honestly, this wouldn't bother me if it weren't for the AI forcing my restart 75% of the time. There are more frustrating things, performance sucks, I got 60-80fps on medium in 1440p on an RTX 3070 & AMD 5800x3D, and the game simply does not look good enough to warrant that level of performance. Launching cars is a massive pain in the ass, it depends on the car whether it will bog or not on launch, and I tried so many different setups on cars to see if I could get them to launch any better, and it just felt like at the end of the day, even if I spent 400k on suspension, tires, transmission, AWD swap etc, it only came down to the car, and that just isn't satisfying when it takes a long time to save up money. This (like many of the problems) wouldn't really exist if the AI wasn't impossible to catch up to, but I felt that in some of the particularly short races, it was even more impossible to catch up when I couldn't get a good launch no matter what I did from both a throttle pressure/individual skill standpoint and car mods.

Now the good, car customization is great, it's super satisfying and the many options are great to see. I come to racing games for what I can do to the cars, and there is no shortage of modifications here. The gas station mechanic swapping out different types of tires and fuel is great, the entire system is fairly intuitive and while it is an annoyance to run out of gas or tire in the middle of a race, I found the ability to swap my tires on the fly cool and would welcome that change to any game like this. The drifting mechanics are great, as you would expect from a company whose previous game was only drifting. Some cars sound amazing while others don't, high redlining V6s like the R35 GTR sound incredible while V8s like the Mustangs and Mopar's leave more to be desired. The first-person camera felt really good, and that's not always the case, I felt I had a much better connection to the car and could feel where it was at all times that way, and combined with the interior customization it makes for a great experience for First person drivers like myself. There are good and bad tracks, but I would say the majority are enjoyable. I like the wealth of race series options, and it feels like there is a decent balance of race types and speed classes. The open world isn't bad, that is to say, it didn't blow my mind, as I mentioned the game doesn't look great by any measure, but it's very enjoyable to drive around in.

This is a long review, and a tough one, because I really want to like this game, but in its current state, it is a nightmare to play and will frustrate the living hell out of you. I will return to this game in a few months if they update much of the game (as they are planning to), and will update accordingly, but at this time, I cannot recommend it to anyone other than people like me who've played most if not all of the available racing games at my disposal.