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In it's current state I would give project cars a 6. (DriveClub and GT6 get solid 9's from me)

Project cars has a lot of issues, especially with a controller which I'm playing it with. The stats are telling enough. I just got the trophy for winning 22 championships, simple progression trophy, sits at 1.1% rarity.

Handling

Controller handling feels twitchy and unresponsive. First thing you have to do is set the dead zones to 0 and adjust the sensitivities. Then it becomes manageable, but never feels quite right. It's simply impossible to drive in a straight line on cold tires, luckily they warm up fast.
Sense of speed is lacking, and although there are many camera views, it's never as easy to judge distances as in GT and DC. I never use driving line aids and project cars has been the hardest so far for accurately judging braking distances.
Recovering from a skid is very tricky with a controller and usually ends up in fishtailing by over compensating due to input lag. Some cars don't respond to corections at all (maybe realistic) and simply slide out. Touching other cars seems to temporarily disable your input, as if both cars are magnetized.
Collisions with cars are hit and miss, carts and F1 cars come of worst. Scoop up another F1 car and spin them on your helmet for bonus points.
When you're driving on warm tires, got your braking points down, no other cars interfering, then it does feel good. Not GT good or DC fun, but still very satisfying.

Sound

Tire sounds are inaudible or completely missing. I've set the engine sounds to 30% and still can only faintly hear the tires in the karts. Most cars I don't hear them at all, not even in open top cars. I can hear the brakes, wind noise is too loud and cars behind you sound closer than they actually are. Collision sounds, while much better than GT, are questionable at time. 
Feedback from the tires is very important in sims to judge when you're pushing the car to its limits. In project cars you just start sliding without any warning. Rumble is too slow and imprecise to replace tire sounds. It also makes it feel as if you're floating over the track, not in contact with it at all.
I love all the details in the sound though. While driving through rain and thunder sounds much better in DriveClub, all the noises the car makes are excellent and set project cars apart. Transmission, suspension, bottoming out scrapes, brakes, wind, and more noises I can't identify, it's all there. It's just the complete lack of tire sounds that is seriously holding back the game.

AI

Where do I start... They ignore cold tires, are not affected by rain or going off track. They'll go wide to pass you outside the corner over grass and gravel, then re-enter the track to take you out. Sometimes they'll avoid you, other times it seems they don't even know you're there and simply drive into you, or even through you ghosted out.
They ignore blue flags, still race you like maniacs during qualifying, then suddenly cut you off to dive into the pit lane. Meanwhile you get a blue flag as soon as you pass a car during qualification that has already set a time. Fast car approaching, the one that's disappearing in my rear view mirror...
I've seen them back up out of a chicane in active traffic. 30 cars taking off is pure comedy at times with a nice traffic jam at the first corner.
They never spin out and magically recover no matter how bad you crash into them. They are clearly not operating by the same rules.
You can set the difficulty from 0 to 100 in 10 step increments, however the difference of 1 step changes a race from coming in 3rd with the others far ahead, to passing them all in the first couple of corners. The difficulty is far from consistent either. Race at the same difficulty, 1 track you have to pull everything out. including a few restarts, to finally manage a very narrow win, next track you are comfortable ahead by 10 sec at the finish.

Career

Well it's all open from the start, but you still need to unlock invitationals to other championships by winning certain races. I started at the bottom with carts which are arguably the hardest to handle from the get go (until you get into an F1 car). Bad viewpoint of the track, extremely twitchy, very aggresive AI and questionable collision physics, not a good place to start.
I quickly got invites to other championships which pretty much drown out the career races. It doesn't take long until you're doing more invitationals than follow your career. Not sure why a starting up kart racer would get an invitation to drive a LMP car in the 24h Le Mans race but whatever.
It didn't take long to get bored of the career as I ended up winning the races during qualification, to then drive up front for 3 laps trying to keep my eyes open. My stats swung to 65% qualifying vs 35% race. It didn't help that the game kept repeating the same small number of UK and Ireland tracks over and over. Donnington, Oulton, Snetterton, enough with the tons!
Now I've lowered the difficulty and skip qualification and practice, jump right in at last place and try to pass them all before the end. It's a lot more fun and a lot faster, means more variety in tracks. GT style racing with 30 cars on the track. My crew keeps sending me the same disappointed emails however, too bad you screwed up qualification, screw them. (Toe cringing emails and twitter feed included with the career)

Graphics

Well it has lots of cars on track and tries to hit 60fps. Still a bit disppointing. It's a step up over GT6, but only a small one. It pales in comparison to DC. The japanese race track in DC looks better than than the race tracks in Project cars, while PC's California highway looks almost a generation behind the road tracks in DC. At night and in rain it's not even a fair comparison, DC raised the bar too high.
Temporal anti-aliasing doesn't help PC, every screenshot I take in project cars is blurry with a ghost image. I do like all the customization options, bye bye bloom and lens flares, thank you very much :)
It's nice when it hits 60fps, yet DC has a much better sense of speed at 30fps and is more responsive, less input lag. The extra fps don't help at all, yet I don't want to know how bad it will handle with a 30 fps lock. (Probably as bad as Shift 2 unleashed)
The cars look better than DC, but I hardly ever look at them, just the shiny hood in front of me.

Track selection

Awesome, rivals GT6 and surpases it in some categories. New real life tracks to drive on, ones I didn't know yet, after 35 years of racing :)
I haven't seen them all yet but I'm liking the ones I have driven on so far,.
They are a bit on the smooth side though. California highway didn't feel like driving on the road at all. And apart from the Carousel and little carousel I noticed a distinct lack of bumps on the Nordschleife.

Car selection

There aren't many, I don't really care, I race for the tracks :) The variety is fine and they handle quite differently. Perfect for my tastes.


Project cars is as addictive to me as DC and GT for now. It's competing with Witcher 3 for time at the moment and holding strong. I don't see that lasting as long as with DC and GT though, the AI is simply bad and I don't really feel like racing online with the state the controller handling is in. It's fine by yourself. Yet for quick evasive actions and recoveries the input lag is off putting.
I have the platinum trophy for GT6, same for DC including 100% for all DLC, yet I don't feel that happening with Project cars. It needs some serious fixes to get that kind of staying power.