City Car Driving 2.0

I don't really recommend buying it yet, wait for the full release, because right now its pretty much the most unstable game i've played with recently. I had to restart the game multiple times, because it kept crashing when i went into the settings. The 2 maps you can choose from are really nice, but really small aswell, not to mention that the car would not move in manual mode even when in gear. My wheel has a preset in the game, so they should know that it doesn't have a clutch pedal, and still no option for an automatic clutch. I find this especially weird because even the original CCD had an option for this, and here the only solution is either automatic shifting or a button, so i just gave up. It just doesn't feel like the proper sequel to the original CCD, it feels completely different. I have high hopes for this game, because it looks promising and the graphics are beautiful, but it's really not worth the price, and i'm definitely waiting for the full release.

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I haven't been playing for very long, but unfortunately I think I've already hit the limit of what this game has to offer. I was originally interested because of the selling points: immersion, vehicle maintenance, realistic driving, and supposedly one of the most realistic traffic simulations around. On paper, that sounded exactly like what I wanted. In practice, it isn't even close. The AI is probably the biggest problem. I've driven around the city obeying the rules of the road, only to watch traffic completely collapse because one AI car has stopped awkwardly in the middle of the street. Suddenly you've got multiple lanes blocked, roads gridlocked, and absolutely nothing happens to resolve it. I've also seen pedestrians walk into a tiny gap between a lamppost and a wall, get stuck, and then have another ten pedestrians pile up behind them like some bizarre conga line. That kind of thing completely destroys the immersion. The driving itself has some nice touches, like the way an automatic car creeps forward in Drive, but other parts feel rough. Some of the vehicle sounds are genuinely awful. When you accelerate, you'd expect the engine note to rise, hear a gear change, then hear the revs drop and build again. Instead, some cars just produce one long, loud revving noise while the speed increases and the gear indicator quietly moves up. There's barely any audible change between gears, and after a while it becomes incredibly irritating. There are also smaller bugs everywhere. The game repeatedly tells me to turn my headlights on in broad daylight for seemingly no reason, and little issues like that keep chipping away at the experience. The map is another disappointment. If you're going to release this as a proper sequel to City Car Driving and sell it heavily on immersion and free driving, the world needs to feel substantial. It doesn't. The map feels quite small, and the UI doesn't help matters either. I'm coming from Euro Truck Simulator, which admittedly sets a high bar, but the GPS in the bottom-left corner here is horrific. Parts of it are cut off, it fades into the background, and half the time I can barely see the roads I'm supposed to be following. As a navigation tool, it's practically useless. That's the frustrating part, because I really wanted to love this. The idea of just getting into a car, cruising around a believable city, dealing with traffic and enjoying the driving experience is exactly what appealed to me. But immersion only works if the world around you behaves believably. When you're driving down a road and the entire city has gridlocked because one AI car has stopped in the middle of an intersection, the illusion disappears immediately. Combine that with poor vehicle sounds, bugs, a small map and a frustrating UI, and it all adds up very quickly. If you're going to make a proper successor to City Car Driving, then go all in. Make the traffic AI genuinely impressive, make the cars sound convincing, and give us a world worth exploring. At the moment, this feels far too unfinished and limited for what it's trying to be. Refund requested.