I think I missed something with this game. I played it for a couple of hours, and I was seriously underwhelmed. Is there more to it than the races and other events? It seemed like a large chunk of the game was missing, because I never found anything worthwhile. I made my way to the C license doing races and stunt runs, but they all seemed to be the same to me. The most annoying part by far was the slow motion replay EVERY SINGLE TIME my car grazed any other object on the road, be it a car, a barrier, or a building. I couldn't go more than 30 seconds without the game slowing down to show my car crashing. Why? And why bother with an "open world" when you can't even get out of your car? I'm sure to keep an E rating, they had to remove anything resembling people from the game, but Paradise City just felt like a barren world with nothing to do.
And for the record, I enjoy racing games – all types of them in fact: Mario Kart, Gran Turismo, Metropolis Street Racer (the forerunner to Project Gotham Racing), Need for Speed. I just really didn't understand this game.