Project Cars 2 is a major step forward from the previous game. I am really impressed by the physics and force feedback so far. Granted I haven't tested all the cars but the few I have tried were either good or great. Especially the Caterham was great fun to drive. The car selection is pretty big with a focus on racing spec cars. The track selection is also top notch with many well known race tracks and a few rally cross and oval tracks being notable novelties.

I have noticed that they really focused on the VR and triple screen support. Maybe this is to the detriment of single screen players as the standard in-cockpit view is a bit narrow. I have noticed a few minor graphical glitches while racing but nothing too bad. The weather effects are especially nice in VR.

The AI has been pretty competent as well. I played on 50% difficulty and they have been giving me a real challenge. They keep a good pace and so far I haven't noticed many weird things although others have reported that they can have problems with starts and certain corners. I have yet to play a racing sim that has truly great AI though.

The racing engineer also helps a lot to dial in a setup that fits your needs. He also provides in-race radio chatter that adds some flavor to the race. "As you may have noticed, your wheel has come off" was his best line yet.

I haven't tried the multiplayer yet but with the addition of the rating system I'm hoping that the racing will be a lot cleaner then in the first game.

Just an update after a few more hours of playing.

The new rating system has improved the quality of online races hugely. In the first game almost every online race would be a wreck-fest. But in PC2 I have had more clean races and overall way more fun as a result. Mind you the first few races you will do will be on servers with a low skill check so it's a bit of a crap shoot then. But once you can enter servers that have a slightly higher grade things improve massively. I just wish there was a little more variety in the kind of races as the vast majority of people flock to the GT3 servers. I have nothing against GT3 but some of the best races I have had were on lesser known tracks with other classes of cars. The best race yet was a Group 5 race at Hockenheim. Trying not to die in those turbo monsters is hard enough so trying to have a clean race on a technical track should be almost impossible on a public server. But somehow me and eight strangers had a bumper to bumper nail biter kind of race. Pure automotive bliss it was!

Another thing that has my nerd brain all excited is the sound. More precisely it's the way this game manages to produce a 3d sound on stereo headphones. I was driving a Porshe 911 when I first noticed this. The engine sounded like it was mounted behind me, wich it was!I am not sure what kind of binaural sorcery they use but the effect is wholy convincing. You might want to turn down the tire noise though as it was too loud for my liking. I understand that they intentionaly mixed those sounds louder because they do communicate when the car is loosing traction but even so they just were overbearing. But hey, there is are sliders for just about all sounds in the game so you can set it up just how you like it.

Now there are some things that are less awesome about PC2 for sure. Most cars have good or great FFB but some cars feel strangely off. Especialy the road cars are a bit hit or miss. The holy trinity of ultra-cars (La Ferari, 918 spider and the almighty P1) are great. But I drove an AMG mercedes that had way too much ABS rumble coming trough the steering wheel and the KTM Xbow lacked any sort of feedback at all. I also had a few instances were the FFB would suddenly feel way stronger but I updated my wheel's drivers and it seems to have solved that problem. Your mileage may vary depending on your setup.

The AI is also a bit all over the place. They seem to have pure Senna blood in the qualifying laps but in the race they tend to vary between competent and bloody awfull depending on the track, weather and cars. So you will find yourself tweaking those AI sliders a lot.

Still Project Cars 2 is a great sim even with all the small problems it has now. I hope Slighly Mad Studios continues to improve things over time and that they open up the game to the modding comunity and deliver some good expansions down the line.

Thanks for your impressions! I backed the first game and would like to pick this up, but with such a busy holiday period for games I'm still teetering on the edge of getting it and saving my pennies for other games coming up.