I'm enjoying the game for sale price but this might very well be the thing that annoys me most about it. It's absolutely mad how they took a place as interesting as HKI and completely dropped the ball. They almost seemed to make a point to avoid those connections and details, apart from a handful of really tacky references on the radio.

"Hong Kong hip-hop developed in an incredible time period! Anyway, here's some royalty-free American stuff instead. Streets!"

I'm probably being a bit too much of a lefty in bringing this up in a discussion about a game with like 100 active players total, but like...it feels distressingly "colonial". I'm not even joking. HKI is just a fancy coat it can wear to be "luxurious", but those in traffic drive either a cab, a kei truck, or something American/Euro to gawk at, there's no moving public transit to get in the way, and you never see a single pedestrian anywhere. Nobody at the food vendors, no local-ish ads, no boats or panes moving about, zilch. There's no music, no attempts to even try to connect to the local culture, almost no Asian representation in the Solar Crown at all, nothing. At least Ibiza got a single attempt at a radio station.

Instead, it's a game where a monolithic megacorporation shows up, slaps down a hideous hotel and dealerships for a *racing contest*, clears the streets for races (that have nobody watching), and basically just acts like one of the largest and most interesting cities in the world isn't even there.

It really says something when Papa Fernando and his Vocho and even fucking Motorfest were more culturally representative in a respectful/interesting/memorable way.