Uh... you can do that. You can play either a single season mode using your created cars, or using any real driver, or you can play a chase for the cup mode, where you just play through the last 10 races and run for the championship. Hard to trust a review that misses a detail like that.
That being said, I don't think its a very fair review at all. Online play, I can't really comment on, racing games online generally are pretty difficult to play since alot of people either are awful at it, or they like to just cause wrecks.
The visuals are outstanding in the game IMO. Cars look great, the tracks look great, the lighting and the effects on the cars are nice, smoke and car damage from crashes look good too.
Commentary is pretty difficult to pull off in a racing game IMO. I dont think it serves a purpose. I'm too busy listening to the roar of the engines, and hearing a car coming up behind you, or inside, or driving by, or hearing my car if it bottoms out on the track.
Bottom line to me... I think the experience this game creates overall offline is that of a great racing game. You can have some pretty awesome races against the AI. It has a few issues, sure, mainly online apparently, but I wouldnt know, but overall the career mode is nice, the paint booth is nice, the racing is fun, and challenging at times.
To be honest, a 5.5 out of 10 is way too negative IMO. For me, without factoring in online, because as I said, I dont play it, I think the game is easily a 7. I'm sure most that have it would agree that the offline racing can be really good, and alot of fun. Maybe a higher rating could be warratned if they had some more features and game play modes, and made the career even deeper, its a big step from where it was last year, but more depth is always great. Just felt like reading this review from the get go was going to be negative.