Been a while since I was here. Has anyone out there tried Drift City? It's published by ijji (who also put out Gunz: The Duel amongst others), and is basically an MMO Burnout ripoff with cel-shaded graphics and a bizarre Korean pop soundtrack.
The car models are pretty fun, and completely thieved from real life. The names are cute - VW Beetles are now Dragonfly, Mini are renamed cleverly to Maxi, and that all-American creation the Hummer gets the new moniker of Tyrant. Nice. Jeep, Chrysler and Dodge actually have licenced names in the game, which I suppose is something different from opening an island in Second Life. Me? I'm driving around in an MMT1 at the moment, aka the original Smart car!
Drift City's got it's drawbacks - perhaps a little too simplistic, lag hits when swapping from map to map (just wait a sec before taking those timed missions on, let the map load!), and a collection of players in chat that makes Barrens chat look, well, tame really.
But for all that, the multiplayer racing is fun and balanced, the lure of trying to get an extremely long chain of combo points going is quite strong - and that bloody soundtrack will stick in your head whether you like it or not. I haven't even tried partying yet, but I suspect some Dukes of Hazzard style shenanigans would ensue ;)