The tutorial as it had been mentioned in previous posts is a terrible introduction. It is unhelpful, talky, starts and stops needlessly interrupting play, and is very condescending. At least it is short though.

When the game starts out it puts you in a public game by default. It is designed to be multiplayer, but this leaves a really bad first impression. There is no matchmaking that pairs you with people who have the same cars unlocked. This means that you will get out classed by the cars other people have unlocked. People seem to actively just try to grief other people the entire time. Since you have almost nothing unlocked, there is very little you can do about it. This is the internet, and that's what people do on the internet but it should restrict other player matching to those with the same progression. The only way to get out of this is to change the setting, and quit the game entirely. There is no leaving a multiplayer match at will. Even so you can only access the options menu when you are at your garage. So if you are out in the road and need to check on something, then you are fucked.

I like the idea of the open world environment, but navigation is poorly implemented. There is no quick way to change your gps marker while you are racing. You have to dig through menus with the dpad. Why can't I just push a button or swipe the touch pad to quick select a location? If you are getting chased, you better hope that you accidentally make it to where you need to go.

The controls and crashing don't seem to be implemented well. This may just be from a lack of experience with the game though. The optional boost add on seems to be an instant crash button. There is a slight delay on start up and stopping. You can crash on anything, and since you can't see much of the map while racing it makes boosting guess work. If the road looks straight, push it and hope it works out. It feels like the game doesn't know if it wants to be a fast reckless racing game, or a careful precision game.

This is an arcade racer. Everything should be designed around fun. Boost should be fast, precise, and responsive. Objects should be able to be hit to a certain degree because being able to hit things more is more fun.

Are my impressions off? Does the game get better?

I didn't think the beginning was too terrible. Didn't take too long, but as soon as I did both tutorials my reaction was "now what?" I kept getting hit by cops constantly and it was bumming me out.

But after an hour (after setting it to single player) I started getting a feel for the rhythm and now I've put around... I'd say 7 hours in over the course of two days. To put that in perspective, most 8 hour games take me a month or more to beat. Great game for having podcasts or videos going on my laptop.

Opening sequences for racing games have been bad for a while. Remember (The new) Need for Speed Hot Pursuit? That one talked to you AND would not let you play for a looong time.

Tutorials in a racing game- that´s what you get when your games are designed by/for morons.

The starter tutorial was heavy handed and obscured the fun of the game. It wasn't until about 2 hours in or so that I started to have any fun with the game which is far more than I'd prefer for a popcorn arcade racer.

I actually started out in a single player game without intending to because of some PSN or EA server error and that wasn't a bad way to start playing around with the game. It's pretty straight forward to change to a single player session in the options menu while you are at a hideout. That said, when it works, I think the multi-player is pretty cool. I played a little the other night and it was pretty cool with the random stuff that people would do. I was playing as a cop with next to nothing unlocked and still had a great time with the multi-player.

I agree that the controls feel pretty sloppy with the rocket sled physics and wonky drift mechanics, but after an hour or so it started to feel a lot better. The drifting actually feels a lot like the older Mario Kart games and was actually fun all on it's own. If you try to steer and brake around corners like you would with a sim or sim-cade racer the control is really terrible, but if you play it more like a Mario Kart where you force a drift for every corner, you can actually get into a flow that is a lot of fun.

I can't say it's exactly the sort of game for me and I've already sent it back to GameFly, but it was certainly fun enough that I may come back to it after I play through some of the next gen titles that I'm more interested in.

@dionysis: The handling feels really similar to what I remembered from Hot Pursuit (tap to drift, not hold), so I was able to pick it up pretty quickly.