Well, I am kinda curious to that as well Racenut.
I drive with a G25, and installed the game yesterday. A little impression.
After staying away from all the teasers, screenshots, and rumours about the game, I managed to download the open beta without any pre-judgement, of expectations. THE way to see how you like a game without being influenced.
I started ut up, and did what I always do with a new game, start using it
No settings adjustments, just out of the box, and on track. I think Simbins default setups for cars are not bad, so I trusted in this again. Selected my G25 as controler, and tried to get on track.
Man, that was hard. Really had to get used to the UI, and the buttons. After browsing through some menus, I found a quickrace, and started to drive with the default car, on the default track.
First impression, it feels like an arcade game. Probably to do with the fact that you can hit the wall full, and still continue as nothing happend. Also not sure if fuel usage and tirewear are turned on yet, as I did not get any difference during the drive in handling.
After getting to know the track a bit, I dropped out, and searched for a different car. Somewhat hidden, but I found the options, and noticed the most are indeed cars you need to buy. All in all, buying the whole content that is present now, already costs a lot of money compared to another (not claimed to be free to race) game. But there is a some kind of positive thing as well.
With the online leaderboard competitions, you can drive the cars for free indeed. At least the ones that where active now could. Now, when the competiton is over, you cant drive it anymore, so its temp, but its free. Cant deny that.
Then there is the handling. Now I am not the most experienced sim racing here, but to me it feels again like arcade driving. Now I am willing to give that one more chance if I get some decent settings, which should improve the feelings, but I really struggle to feel what my wheels are doing at what time. Could be me, but with the default settings, it's not ok for me in a simracing way.
All in all, in its current form, it's a nice arcade game for me, which I will probably not fire up anymore. I am not the kind of guy that likes hotlapping. I like racing. I try to drive fair, and do not cut and stuff, and that costs me so much time compared to those who do, that I never have a chance to get into high rankings anyway. Multiplayer game is essential to me, but with the prices for the cars, I fear multiplayer will be a tough one to get full grids on. Not sure how many people will buy the cars, as I also think the price is far to high for 1 car or track.
Final judgement so far, disapointed. It doesn;t cut it for me yet. I have it installed, and might start it once more, but I fear that in it's current form, it will not be reinstalled if I upgrade my computer, or do a reinstall of windows.