I'm gonna throw my thoughts into the ring and deliberately doing so after only approx 3 hours on it (playing on PS4 Pro with higher resolution selected as opposed to framerate), my intention is to post an update when I've sank more time into it to see if my view changes.
I intentionally sat back and waited on some impressions videos before deciding if this was for me, mainly due to being confused and worried about the marketing and with what direction this was going in and whether SMS gamble was going to pay off. I watched some vids and even though most were negative and diverse I still opted to take a punt on it because most negative thoughts seemed to centre around the fact SMS had essentially ditched their Community Assisted Racing Simulation (CARS) mantle to push for a more arcade easy to pick up racer. A lot of the conclusions drawn up online is that it isn't worthy of the Project CARS title but heres the thing, to me it ultimately looked like it could be fun and guess what......... it is (to me at least and this is only my opinion)
So far this is kind of like my guilty pleasure of racing games, quite addictive and a nice pick up and play kinda game with some nice arcadey handling that is extremely similar to last year's Grid and if you ignore the fact it's called Project Cars it could easily pass as a Grid spin off. Now its not without its issues some of which can be frustrating, graphics as
@DAZ UK 74 as said are very hit and miss, I've even encountered glitches when in the cockpit view, the Ai can be a pain in the ass to overtake when they're packed so tightly and they seem to be superhuman in wet conditions but ultimately I'm having a lot of fun with it so far and it has that 'one more try' pull to entice you to tick off all the race objectives (corner mastering, overtakes etc) even if you have finished in 1st place.
From the time I've played so far I really do like the track variety but then I always thought PC2 had a good selection of tracks especially some of the smaller British venues like Oulton Park and Snetterton, plus there is a variety of events from standard races, hot laps and break out (drive into billboards to rack up a score to beat a target) and I think I've read somewhere that there are 210 cars included, not sure how different they are all going to feel to drive as I've only drove 3 so far but time will tell. My conclusion is that if you enjoyed Grid then you'll get something out of this, if some are still unsure then wait for sale price but I certainly recommend it. I only hope they can and will iron out the kinks and not give up on it due to bad press or feedback, the reality could be they churned it out as a kinda filler until Dirt 5 releases but I sincerely hope not.