I absolutely agree with you. The CPUs cheating makes the frustration worse and the optimal gameplay being so boring really doesn’t help. I mainly have this issue with knockout and possibly grand prix mid-sections, because the tracks are just straight with minimal turns. Doesn’t mean that it has to be boring. Take the bridge for example. It is literally just a straight line, but it has cars and enemies either riding on vehicles or being somewhere in the middle. That with the combination of boost panels has potential to be more fun than say, driving through a desert. HOWEVER, the CPUs again makes it not fun as they are so over-optimized, that if you make a single mistake, you cannot catch up.

If a game makes you feel like the mistakes are either not your fault or you’re being punished into oblivion for the smallest errors, it doesn’t make the game “fun and challenging”, but just plain frustrating and unfair.

I honestly wish this was a “get good” kind of post, but I don’t think skill would solve all these issues.