8 ) Hiya Tom! So our rivalry is going to meet head-to-head one day?
Excellent! It'll take me a while to get this show online, but I know it'll happen eventually.

So I've finished with Vector and moved on to Venom!

Venom: Ah, finally I'm seeing the difficulty! Vector was too easy, Venom is challenging, I can see where this is headed! Okay, that's not bad at all, I was worried that Venom was going to be as much of a cakewalk as Vector. So far, I'm not getting that SR gold on my first attempt every time anymore. At least, not on the tough tracks. They take another try or two.
Citta Nuova: Okay, I officially hate this track even more than Stanza Inter. I didn't think it was possible! There's a period of time where you're at a dead stop unless you do that 180 perfectly onto the boost pad (not quite there yet) and it feels like it's about a year and a half long. On the up side, there's no track that gives as much of a feeling of accomplishment when you really nail it like this one.
Weapons: I hardly noticed them in Vector, but they're a lot more important now. Disruption Bolt might as well be called "Player Killer" since it's totally useless against AI opponents and will likely slaughter a player, I'm glad it's gone in the next version. The weapons are hard to aim, I like that. It'll really take some skill and experience to become a killer on the track, I don't think I've even heard the Contender Eliminated! yet. For a racing game, that's likely exactly the way it should be.
Physics: Sliding downslope is awesome. The incredible inertia of the craft is also fantastic. Really takes me back to WO1. I'm still getting used to how early you have to turn and airbrake to really nail the corners. Definitely liking it.
Weapon Physics: Why does any weapon hit lead to sliding off the track? Is it just me, or do you always slide off the right side? What on earth is up with that? For a while this was incredibly annoying and I didn't know why, now it's annoying and I know why. Every single offensive weapon in the game is also somehow a Grav Stinger (yup, one of the many awful features of Fusion), kills your speed and your engine for a moment. Good god, why? So far, I think that's the only significant flaw to the game.
Progression: Zone mode unlocked nicely, Beta and Asension unlock nicely, but after I got them the unlocks started going real slowly. I've got all the Vector TTs and I think that gave me Karbonis VR, and all the Vector and Venom SRs and that gave me Sagarmatha VR, I haven't got many golds left to get and there's still a lot to unlock by the looks of it. I get the impression I'll have to unlock Flash (or whatever it's called) before I can unlock the rest of the VR tracks. I would prefer to have that whole Classic Tournament fully unlocked before moving on to Flash. A minor nitpicky point, but I think the feel of the game would be improved if things continued to unlock smoothly instead of petering out like this.

So my next challenge is to finish off Venom, and the main obstacle in my way there is getting gold medals on Citta Nuova...