The game will arrive in shops at the beginning of September but we already had the chance to check out a preview-version. The first we looked at were of course the cars of which there are plenty available divided over different manufacturors including Aston Martin, Pagani, McLaren, Koenigsegg, Lamborghini and of course Ferrari. Nice is that you can buy them in a showroom where you can also choose the official colors, wheels, interior decoration and so on.

Equal amounts of detail were also given to the recreation of the rest of the world. You can adapt your avatar (from nose to ear lobs) and of course dress him/her up with sun glasses, pants, t-shirts and motor suits. After all, you can also get busy with bikes! Your looks are extremely important in the persistent world since you'll come in contact with other drivers which can become your friends. If you're rather anti-social and tend to get away from human interaction you can still use the online options for just racing against them (choose on-the-fly the start and finish position through a pretty cool system that zooms out of your car and shows the entire city) or selling them your cars (or the other way around).

A bit like in NFS: Most Wanted you'll get all kinds of options to start races, go in on challenges or help certain people (like bringing their groceries home). The idea is of course to earn money so you can buy more garages for your ever increasing amount of metal and rubber. We didn't see any surprising race types (time trials, ordinary races, etc) but the cop chases could already appeal to us. Thanks to the immensely long roads and many options you really get the feeling that one of those "American chases" is happening. Luckily you only get a fee to pay when you get caught and afterwards you can immediately start acting bad again :)

In the preview version, the driving model disappointed us a bit. Everything is swift to be played and very accessible, but also lacks challenge. The various cars feel different enough but too arcade to wake up the real driver inside us, let alone keep him awake. Only at high speed do you get the feeling the cars act realistic, but then you'll probably be crashed against some exotic palm tree and getting rid of coconuts from your backseat. A damage model for opponents or other traffic is present but your car remains invulnerable at all times. There's certainly a lot of room for improvement there.

Graphically, the game seems to be looking good. The camera angles allow for a lot of looking around and you'll most certainly do that from time to time. Hawaii is of course an appealing place to recreate and the green surroundings with its glowing hills and breathtaking views, varied with more urban and neon-lit streets will make you want to cruise around with the windows open and the wind going through your hair. It may sound a bit mellow bit it's like a bit of vacation on your screen!

For the achievement freaks I'd like to add that this game will deliver you no less than 43 new ones, nicely divided between online and offline game modes. Think of achievements for doing a certain total distance, winning, collectiing cars, finishing missions, helping other players, etc.