Yeah, I agree... The handling is pretty terrible but I guess it's made up by the fact that you get money for participating :) I also think that they need to have 4 laps on easy, 5 on medium, 6 on hard and extreme (original was 3 easy 4 medium 5 hard and then 6 with the Adversary I think)

Also yeah... having to use a crappy weapon just to be able to upgrade is lame, I'd rather have kept on using the gatling gun while I was waiting for the money to upgrade the missile launcher instead of being unable to kill :P

There's a lot about the original that I liked that isn't in this game, but there's a lot about this game I like that isn't in the original.

Things I prefer about the original:
The handling/feel of the cars
The linear points table that you had to work your way up
The manually firing gun
Not having to spend all your money
Spending your money to unlock stuff, rather than just picking it up

Things I prefer about the new game:
The graphics =D
The new weapons
Probably other stuff that I haven't realised yet.

All in all, it's a solid effort but it's brand new so hopefully they'll keep on adding features.

Hey man, in response to your question re. Death Rally, I like it! It's close enough to the original in gameplay to be as awesome, but different enough that it doesn't feel like a copy. My only criticism is that it's too easy to make money, but then I guess the game does have a lot more to spend the money on. In the original, if you get off to a bad start you have to start from scratch since you're too broke to fix your car ;).