I have to admit that they are getting better with these, but its far from gran turismo.
Graphics - not bad, tons of detail especially in the interiors. the effects while driving are great, i.e. the faster you drive the more it focuses further down the track and blurs the interior and close surrounding cars (almost like tunnel vision). crashing efects are awesome, screen turns balck and white and get blury the harder you crash, and takes longer to clear up the harder the crash (still need to take one on at crazy speeds).

controls - struggling... no matter what car type you drive (FWD, RWD, AWD) they all want to understeer badly, and when using logitec wheel its worse unless its setup with a 8-10% dead zone and lowered sensitivity, but i think there is still some adjustments that can be made to the settings like traction and stability.

game play - it start off by giving you a trial run and measures how you drive to setup difficulty and driving aids. its not about only finishing in 1st, you also get points for aggressive driving (trade paint, ramming, blocking, causing them to wreck, drifting, and so on) or precision driving (following best line, drafting, clean lap or race, clean pass, and so on).

modding - so far its looks the same but with less body kits, but these actually look like real kits. lot less rims to choose from. preformance mods only look to have about 2 stages so far, but every thing is catagorized in simple format, i.e. engin, turbo/sc, brakes, drivetrain, weight reduction, roll cage, etc. car can also be tuned to drive better.

other - photo mode is still available, there is drifting, time attack, elimination, and some other modes on real world tracks, i think drag racing is out, there is damage but not as sensitive as prostreet, i havent tried online play yet, but hope its better than prostreet, and the best par is no game lock ups yet

overall i think is a good game better than grid because of modification, but it controls and the cars physics could use some retuning. I would say try before you buy because of the control issue

Cool! Nice review. I hadn't even heard of this game until after it was released and have heard good reviews. I'll definitely rent this when I can find it.