Licensed. Fairly small roster, though... but I guess that only matters if you need a boatload of cars. I think one review said there's like 48 or something? Not really a big deal to me as long as they've got some ones I like, though.
EDITBUMP - Okay, so I picked up a copy of this today, and I've got a nice little three word review for you, and it isn't PIECE OF SHIT. I'm thinking more along the lines of REALLY FREAKING AWESOME. I haven't gotten a chance to spend more than an hour and a half with it, but that's been more than enough to convince me.
You start by creating a profile, which is sort of funny. You actually get to put in your name (whatever you want), and then you can choose from a wide assortment of audio names which your team will use when communicating with you on the road. It's pretty weird to have them actually call you by your first name, but kind of entertaining. Anyway, there's also an assortment of random nicknames too in case they don't have your name or in case you find that cheesy.
To begin with, you start out just trying different stuff. There are some different races, and you basically just race for other teams until you earn enough cabbage to start your own team. Depending on how well you do, this can be a couple races or a fair number. It lets you do a bunch of stuff, from drift competitions to formula 3 races. I did a bunch, and sucked at all of them because I turned off all the driving assists and went manual. Bad idea just coming off of playing some
Burnout with a friend, heh.
The driving model is pretty excellent from what I can tell, and you can get a good idea of its accuracy by turning off all the driving assists. The big kicker here is with the PS3 controller it was nearly impossible to be gentle enough with the throttle to avoid spinning out in half the cars I tried, so I quickly turned the traction assistance back on just to avoid that, leaving the understeer and braking stuff off (and the transmission set to manual). That was just perfect. The cars behaved like you feel they should for the most part, and it was unforgiving of mistakes on the standard difficulty.
So I won enough cash to get my team started. Pretty cool process. You start out with a
Mustang Boss 302, which is classy, and while I felt like the car was slightly more responsive than it should have been (didn't try it without the traction assist on, which could be why), it felt nice and punchy and stable, like it should. Before doing anything with it I was able to name my team, select a color scheme, select from a whole slew of pre-done art for the general look of your team's cars, select a number, etc. Then you get to look at events. I took gold on the first thing I tried, an American muscle series of 2 races in SF. Pretty sweet. My team didn't take tops in the event because other teams had a couple drivers where I just had myself, but I guess you can hire other drivers later in the game and stuff, and have them go off and do some driving too. Neat.
After winning that event, I unlocked several sponsor options, and got to put those on my car. Makes it look a little busier and more like a race car, and different sponsors apparently pay different amounts of cash for completing different tasks. The first ones I got were all just "complete the race" bonuses, but I imagine other bonuses will show up later.
I'm thoroughly impressed so far. The game isn't the best looking racing game I've seen, mostly because I've seen cars done a bit better before, but the environments look *very* good, the graphics are very consistent across the board, and there are nice touches like actual 3D onlookers who'll actually react if you crash in front of them and stuff. So it's definitely one of the best looking racing games I've seen overall.
The cars I saw were all pretty nice, and my initial count of the available ones to unlock (all greyed out) was 41.
Gran Turismo may have a lot more, but who cares when half of those are shitty cars you don't want to drive anyway? The roster seemed solid enough to me. So yeah, anyone who was thinking about giving it a try after enjoying the demo, I say go for it.
EDIT x2 - Forgot to mention the damage model, which was also awesome. I think somebody mentioned it here already, but it was nice and detailed, you could even see various pieces of the car start flapping in the wind as you drove faster, or even the side corners with your headlights start popping out when you turned your wheel in a crunched-in wheel well. I haven't crashed enough to know if it's as good as the procedural model from
Burnout Paradise, and I don't know exactly how much of a gameplay effect it has, but I know your dude will radio you and tell you if you're about to get engine damage and that kind of thing, or when you're close to losing a wheel. So I guess it could potentially have some depth to it.
