As before, each vehicle is heavily customizable both under the hood and on the skin, with body mods, color-shifting paint, neon lights, blue flame exhaust ... you name it. And with hip-hop/import culture motor mag DUB choosing which parts to stock, you can be confident that your mods will look legit, even if you yourself have no style whatsoever. Just check out the screenshots - hot, right? (Be warned though, that these are dev kit shots, so the game won't be quite this pretty in real life). Granted, this built-in coolness can make it tough to come back into the real world and hop into your all-stock, 1990 Honda Civic, but it does give the in-game style a credibility lacking in other street racers.
Speaking of streets, there are a TON of them. The three entire, open cities from the original game: Detroit, Atlanta, and San Diego, are joined by a fourth: Tokyo. It was the final city in Midnight Club II, but few gamers saw it thanks to a steep difficulty curve. Here, it's available right from the start, with challenges that you can take a quick detour to at any time.
A 29-year-old PC racing game going cyberpunk anime with Troy Baker, Initial D drifting, and cutscenes from the Metroid: Other M studio sure wasn't on my Game Awards bingo card
A speedrunner just beat Need for Speed: Most Wanted's world record by 90 minutes - by using Half-Life's Gordon Freeman instead of a car
