izigame.me

This is being typed up after completing the first car class, and unfortunately, the game has already left me utterly frustrated. But just to get it out of the way, most of the game is sound, and the presentation is absolutely spot on.
The big problems with PGRC are twofold: the physics engine, and lategame level design.
With the physics, it's not the drift handling that's the problem, because that's one of the things that the game, for the most part, nails. It's what the game does when it's not all four wheels on the ground that turns the game into an exercise in frustration. When compared to other drifty games like classic CTR, the airborne physics are much too complicated for their own good, and the end result is that it's all too easy for the game to just arbitrarily launch your car in a way that immediately ends your run. This also messes with Drifting, which is only Engaged via a single button, because there are bumps in the road on Course 8 that lie right on points where you are expected to start drifting. So if you try to Drift on the bump, it won't actually begin until you've landed, at which point you're likely trying to countersteer for a wide Drift and, instead, end up Drifting in completely the opposite direction.
And it's the same with the collision physics, as the car has a huge tendency to get stuck on anything and everything. When combined with what happens when you leave the ground, you can easily be sent well out of the course and be forced to restart. And in many other courses, clipping an outside kerb (or the snowbanks in Course 7) will violently drag your car off-line in a completely unrealistic fashion (even by arcade game standards) and force a restart. Even hitting walls can literally lead to the car going into a full-on wallride that completely messes up the run, and a certain wall in Course 8 can cause the car to immediately spin the other way or completely vault over it.
And then there's the course designs which, for the most part, are fine. The problem is that many of these levels have elements that punish the player for performing too well. You are expected to chain Drifts in order to increase your Speed and shave seconds off the end time, but then the game's level design forces you to slow down otherwise it becomes literally impossible to clear the level cleanly. This is made even worse by it being incredibly difficult to control the car's speed after several boosts, and the game's Tutorial doesn't explain that you're able to Brake while Drifting and still be able to get the boost after the fact (the Tutorial doesn't even mention how to do a Boost Start, and if there's any kind of Air Control in PGRC then that isn't explained either).
The two biggest problem courses are, by some margin, Courses 6 and 8. 6 has many jumps across garage levels, with several of them causing the car to crash into the ceiling and end the run if you approach them too fast. And Course 8, Liberty Island, is the absolute worst. It's fine for about the first 25 seconds, and then you get to the worst part of the whole game, the rainbow corkscrew part. Not only are you approaching this part incredibly fast, touching any of the kerbs even slightly will immediately launch the car off-track. And if you go off the jump at full-tilt, you will completely overshoot the landing zone, so you HAVE to slow down. But slowing down for the jump is incredibly difficult, as you're forced to do a Boost because you just exited the corkscrew from a long drift. And even if you do manage to slow it enough, the airborne physics and the tight walls on the other side mean that, even if you actually manage to land on the road, you're either going to tumble and end up facing backwards, trip over the walls and fall off the road, or lose all your speed. And the worst part is that this section has no Checkpoints during this part. There's one at the start of the first Screw and the very end of the second Screw, and those are 20 seconds apart... when going at full speed, which is over twice the starting speed. If you end up Resetting, you automatically lose so much time that even Silver becomes impossible to get.
It took me nearly three hours just to get a 'clean' run of Liberty Island with no Resets or significant loss of time. And when I did... it was a Top 10 time. And by then, my hands were an arthritic wreck on the controller.
As it stands, I don't know if I can recommend this game. For something centered around Time Attack gameplay, its physics and level design work so vehemently against the player, that any semblance of fun I was having with the drifting was being quickly voided by the game arbitrarily deciding to yeet the car into the shadow realm. The airborne handling of the game needs to be much, much more predictable than whatever this is, because this is not enjoyable at all. Even if it looks the part.
ADDITONAL: Another six hours later, and I was able to get one single clean run of secret level LD54. And that experience further cemented the truth that all the game's flaws are in the physics. The track layout, aside from the second checkpoint being way too easy to miss on Lap 2/3, is nigh-on perfect for what I would expect from a game like this. But every single ramp screws you over, messing with your drift timings and launching your car into the air if you're not either already Drifting or doing that and holding the Brake after Lap 1 (because you're going much faster by then), and the long downhill stretch near the end is almost complete RNG as to whether you actually make it down without being somersaulted into next week. And Lap 2/3 force you to learn how to slow the car's top speed down (just Braking isn't enough), otherwise the track will launch you when attempting to take the tight hairpin left.