Awesome! The crash is handled with a good sense of finesse aswell, nothing overly spectacular to make a big event of it, but viceral enough to make it look like a crash. Handled with class, as usual.

Not that it matters what I'm guessing, but I'm guessing RT for accel, LT for brake and A for hand brake/front.

Also on the bikes: Is the analog for turning and the bumpers or triggers for leaning?

Gamepad layout should be interesting with kudos!

Ok, well, the bikes look good enough from a gameplay perspective. Turning looks like it doesn't have a lean (or wasn't used?) so the cornering aren't as smooth as I would hope. But the fact a car wipes it out gets 2 thumbs up. Mixed emotions on hitting walls... it stops you, but at the end the nearly dead on smack doesn't result in a wipeout. I guess good from a gameplay perspective, but a wipeout would be better imo. ditto cars should get trashed with such and force an "invisible restart from dead stop + small delay". But overall the bike looked fast and nice.

Graphically... wow. Even reflections in the little cycle mirrors. The rain looks beautiful and the sky and lightening are really sharp -- and classy, not over blown/obnoxious like KZ2. Nice balance of motion blur on the side walls, and the AF and tarmack detail seem to be excellent. The crowd is more detailed and animated this time around. Good draw distance (foggy on this level for art purposes) with good sense of speed and solid framerate. The detail in the bikes and cars is amazing.

Bizarre Creations does an amazing job with the lighting and shadowing in this low contrast overcast ambient lighting situation. It isn't a sexy setting -- pitch black with dynamic spot lights or full bright settings with crisp shadows look artistically much prettier -- yet PGR4 absolutely looks solid. No effect is overwhelming -- reflections, HDR, atmospherics, etc are all in check and balanced -- which may not make it stand out like some games which scream, "HDR overbloom!" or "we have reflections! LOOOooooooo......k see!" but the game just balances out really nicely. Shadows are solid, as well as occlusion.

Easily one of the top handful of games this gen graphically. Beautiful game.

It matters to you what I'm guessing? That's so sweet! :O

Yeah, I am not into the artificial, "Oh, look at me! I am a giant weather balloon... helicopter... jet... hang glider... bird man!!" flying over... for the sake of flying over.

PGR4 has a lot of real world locations which have AMAZING real detail. The buildings are beautiful. The variety, as well as authenticity, of the cities is a breath of fresh air. Sure, I want breath taking vistas... but I want them to find them in the real world, not just make them up. Sure a couple fantasy tracks would be cool I guess, but I really dig driving in real world locations. Maybe a good variety of such... but they have 10 already.

It is a racing game however so stuff like pedestrian traffic is a now go. They have some greatly detailed crowds and atmospherics and beautiful tracks. In the heat of a race I don't really care to see some stuff fly by; the crowds and cameras are pretty cool in my book, but that is just me. I am looking for a super sexy arcade-sim racer with style set in the real world; forgiving but rewarding skill and quality racing.

So what in your opinion is GTHD specifically doing in its world that makes it full of life and detail that PGR4 lacks?

With PGR2 I'd agree with the lifelessness concerns, but PGR3 totally fixed that with the spectators. PGR2 was all ghost town like.

GTHD dodges the problem by not having a city track in it. "Nature" will never look awkwardly empty because there aren't really a lot of people running around there... Usually.