Recent reviews by Onadras

Pros.
- Racing is fun and gameplay is enjoyable.
- Nice aesthetics and world, with enough variety between city and outdoors.
- Can be played both solo or multiplayer, even with random players roaming in the map.
- In some aspects it reminds of the old NFS Underground 2
- Plenty of cars to choose from, some of which are timeless classics.
- Customization is ok. You have plenty of options to apply decals so you can create your personal design that can be shared to other players. Upgrading the cars is pretty straightforward without unnecessary intricacies.

Neutral:
- The soundtrack is limited to just a couple of genres - hip hop and mediocre latino/pop something - which is a big downgrade from the older titles. Personally I don't like it, but overall it doesn't even fit the aesthetic of the game. I'm playing it with the music muted and with random sinthwave/80s playlists, and it's so much better this way.
- Some car brands from the older games are missing, such as Toyota and Peugeot.
- Story is dull and uninteresting, but it's a racing game after all.

Cons:
- The cops are utter crap. There's no way you can escape a heat 3 chase unless you have a top tier fully upgraded car, or are lucky with a ramp. And there are 2 more heat levels past that. It's really a cheap way to artificially slow down progress.
- Full price is way too high.

Overall I'm having fun despite the cops, but I'd recommend it only if it's on a big sale.

It's rough around the edges, some of its aspects seem lackluster, npcs animations and dialogues are often weird, many side quests are just fetch and kill chores, storytelling could've been better, and overall it feels outdated or at least unpolished.
But still it hooks you up. There's something about this game that just "clicks" and keeps you playing for hours.

The combat is simple (but not dull) and quite fun, the pawn system is a really interesting feature, and even its dated visuals have their charm. I haven't encountered any significant bug, and it runs smoothly all the time. All in all it's a very enjoyable experience despite some shortcomings.

It's alright I guess. The main story is short and the missions are nothing to write home about. While I understand that the dialogues are cheesy on purpose, it's so much overdone that at some point it becomes just annoying.
The map is huge and good looking, as it was for JC 1, and the combat and gameplay have been improved significantly. Blowing up stuff is satisfying and the grappling hook is a nice mechanic.

However it also maintains one of the biggest shortcomings of the first game, that is too much of the same things over and over again. More than 360 locations and 3000 collectibles, many of which in places that aren't even marked on the map. It's a completionist nightmare. And even blowing up stuff becomes boring after a while.

I managed to finish the game, unlike JC 1, because the gameplay is decent and sometimes even fun, but I couldn't be bothered to find all the collectibles. If you ignore the percentage of completion and focus only on the missions, it makes for a very short game. Uncertain thumbs up.

Pretty visuals even for modern standards and huge map. Maybe too huge.
This game is mostly nice landscapes with a whole lot of nothing in them. Yes there is a main story line with side quests and few collectibles somewhere in there, very far from each other, but that's it.
The combat and gameplay didn't age as well as the landscape visuals. Not considering the awful handling, driving a vehicle from point A to point B gets tedious pretty soon and I'm sure one can easily fall asleep once or twice in the process.
Unless you're trying to bring the vehicle intact to the mission objective several km away, while enemies keep shooting at you and constantly try to push you off the road. Then it just becomes an endless pain.
Couldn't bring myself to complete the game, it just got really tiresome with no fun whatsoever.

Decent gameplay and some funny moments, but it doesn't match its predecessors and it's better if played with a friend. Too bad that the coop experience is a buggy mess.
Even if you manage to make it past the desyncing missions and crashes, there's a game breaking bug at the last mission that makes it impossible to complete the game together.
Totally upsetting.
Get it on sale only if you want to complete the series.

I'm violently fiddling with my balls in anticipation of a sequel.

Solid single player campaign and the geo mod feature grants one of the most entertaining and varied multiplayer experience out there. Online players are few, but some are active in trying to keep the community alive.

Nominated for "I Thought This Game Was Cool Before It Won An Award"