I didn’t notice the problem with pop-in that Henning mentions. I suppose it would be more obvious if I were watching for it. At any rate, that didn’t cause me nearly as many issues as just not being able to see the track.

They definitely improved the car selection screen – in the original MS game that was way too slow. But at the same time they added a random element to your car choice, which I don’t remember seeing in any other racing game I’ve played, and it reduces the feeling of control. People are happy when they feel in control, and less so when they don’t, so it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to remove control of anything unnecessarily.

As Henning says, there is no display of your progress relative to your competitors, other than a placement ranking. And at the end of the game, it won’t tell you how close you were to the others at the finish line, either, which seems like a trivial thing to add, and an annoying feature to be missing. A minor nit to pick, I suppose.

Overall I’m looking forward to playing it some more to learn the tracks better, and to try out some alternate routes on each one, along with trying out the different vehicles. Dirt bike FTW!