I've no comment on the Damage- visual or mechanical - just yet.
But what I DO have for you guys are my impressions on the game after 7 hours of play (and I know how much most of you hate the physics).
-Can it be completed in one sitting? Yes it can.
-Have I done that yet? Absolutely not. So what have I been doing? Going back redoing events over and over trying to beat my score....How far am I? Game says my progress is 24 minutes in, yet I've been playing for over 6 hours.. so I wouldn't worry about beating the game so soon (granted that you'd actually try to improve your last drive from time to time).
-There are a TON of cars in this game in a HUGE variety too, and it ranges from like Tier 1 to 6 or 7.. Got JDMs, Muscles, Exotics, Supercars....
-For you guys who are constantly butthurt about the lack of customization... well, each car has 1-4 different pre-made body kits (including a set of wheels).
-The physics are awkward at first, but if you just pick a car with "normal" to "easy" handling, you won't experience this all too much... once you go to "challenging" to "very hard", then you'll need much better throttle and steering control to avoid fishtailing (much like what you may have experienced with the Gallardo in the demo). I found myself enjoying this quite a bit and it's quite refreshing from track-racing and even more arcadey racers...The scenery and music do keep you thrilled and I found myself ever so scared one time when I decided to take a beaten path shortcut, but little did I know I was going to be driving on the edge of a cliff for it!
-This game has incentives to play online; as some cars require you to play x amount multiplayer races to unlock them and some others can only be unlocked from the "spin the wheel jackpot". When you play online (I haven't actually tried it yet), you pick from "playlists" which is essentially a category or a genre such as racing only with muscle cars, or supercars.
-The Challenges provide some play time offline outside of career mode.
-As you keep leveling up, you get new stuff, some of which you should have from the start (which I'll talk about a little later). When you continue leveling up, you are given graphics to personalize your autolog account. There are a handful of avatars and pretty sweet looking banners you can choose from. You can even tag in a motto, some are pretty funny, some are pretty geeky.
-The police are much smarter in this....like the review said, it's got nothing from HP3, no spike strip droppings, no EMPs... in fact, it's very much alike the police in HP2 where they actually tackle you, and if they cut ahead, they'd brake in front and put you to a stop. No roadblocks have any spike strips strung along, so always aim for the opening.
-The variety of cars is excellent and according to the game tips themself, each type of car has their ups and downs.... muscle cars are excellent for highways and sections with big long sections, sports cars are good for urban environments (since you'll be running over the center-dividing island a lot), and exotics for technical sections. Choose your weapon wisely.
-To change cars in this game, you have to come by a gas station and drive through it. Not every event has one and when you are near one, you are notified on your HUD and through a sound alert. Changing cars does slow you down, and it's not because htey tack more time, it's because you were driving so fast before and now suddenly you're starting from a standstill position so obviously some time will be lost. So if you're competing for records, don't be using it.
-I also found out when you use the instant speed boost you get from drafting along with your nitrous, you get a much more effective use of your nitrous with the drafting helping out and all.
Stuff that sucks about the game (and this is not even my opinion):
-Graphics are crud, straight up. Their photo mode is more limited than HP3's, and moving the camera arm felt similar to moving the camera when looking at the cars in DiRT3 with the sensitive jerking motion.
-Bugs and glitches... at times, the game will stop loading during a loading screen causing you to quit and reboot. As a rule of thumb, if it's taking over a minute to load something, you're most likely stuck. Another time, the autolog bar at the bottom disappeared! I was redoing this one getaway moment and one of the police cars that drive up to you to swerve to create a self-roadblock disappeared. You could see the light on the ground from the headlights but the car was invisible and intangible!
-Spawning traffic and objects....What looks like a clear road ahead may be deceiving. Cars can appear out of thin air! Black box must be near-sighted
-Cutscenes... you can't skip them!
I've played through the first stage, but I decided I wanted to use the Porsche instead of the Datsun, so I started a new game and guess what? I can't skip them! If you had a cutscene prior to the beginning of a new event, you'd have to watch it entirely (and this gets extremely annoying when you're beating other peoples' records).
-Wallriding, the issue has still not been
entirely resolved. On some walls you get slowed down a LOT more than you did in the demo, and on some others, you'd still get back faster with it.
-This I thought was plain stupid... when you first start playing, you don't get any nitrous... then you get nitrous after you leveled up, except you can't "earn" any from dangerous driving such as oncoming, drifts an near misses. Instead you have to level up another time to unlock the ability to do that. Same goes for the ability to draft others; why wasn't it in in the first place?! And to make matters worse, since you get all these "upgrades" as you progress, you can actually replay the earlier levels where you didn't have any nitrous, and now play through it WITH nitrous. Now you can set even faster times while your friends who just started will go "wtf, how'd you set a time like that?!" Yeah to sum this point up, don't get caught up beating other peoples' times just yet, finish the entire game first.
My Verdict so far? The physics aren't as bad as it seemed in the demo... it was only bad then because all we had were RWDs driving off-road.... I've been using the Porsche 911 (that comes with the limited edition), it's got a "normal" handling characteristic and cornering isn't that tough... For the most part, do your braking, let off the gas, and either ease on it upon exit, feather the throttle if the bend is long, then punch it on exit. Therefore, worth one playthrough at least.
I will get this however, as it does seem to be quite good. 
Thank you AOS.
