Need for Speed

The reboot of the popular Need for Speed series is finally here, and now fans get to see if it lives up to the expectations set by EA and Ghost Games when they promised the new game would be everything that fans loved about the previous games and more. Can Need for Speed really live up to the hype? Keep reading to find out.

This is Your Chance, Bro                                                          

The extremely meager storyline can be summed up pretty easily – you’re an unnaturally talented newcomer to the illegal street racing scene, hoping to make a name for yourself in a single night. The story is peppered with all the right clichés, and even features some true “legends” like the rally and gymkhana star Ken Block and Porsche freak Magnus Walker. The cut scenes drift into the ridiculous (and somewhat annoying) pretty early on with their mediocre acting and hilariously heavy-handed use of street racing slang. They provide some rationale for you to meet in certain locations in order to advance the story. You also keep getting calls from your friends, telling you to drive to a certain spot or pushing you to take part in a certain race. And yes, they even call you in the middle of races, and they’ll keep calling back unless you answer them. Throughout all of this you – or better yet the completely opaque player character – don’t let a single word slip. But at least you see your own fist whenever you fist-bump one of your bros, which seems to happen a lot.

 

Rubber-Band AI and Always-Online

If you want to play Need for Speed, your console will need to be connected to the Internet at all times. This also means that you can’t ever pause the game – if you want to take a quick look at the map to see where you have to go, the car keeps running, often right into the nearest wall. This is especially annoying during races – if someone’s at the door, you either have to ignore them or lose the race.

Another thing that really counts against the game is the poorly balanced rubber-band AI, where it might look like you’re way behind your opponents, then they apparently slam on the brakes right before the finish line. On the other hand, if you’re driving a perfect race, the AI will sometimes overtake you with ease. Neither of these AI adjustments would be that bad of an idea in principle, if they weren’t implemented so badly. In any event, they’re supposed to be releasing a patch any time now that should fix the rubber-band AI issue.

 

 

Tuning fans, on the other hand, can definitely expect to get their money’s worth. While the game doesn’t offer quite as many options as, say, Underground 2, there’s really nothing more you could ask for here. From a wide range of body kits to all kinds of modifications for your engine, transmission, chassis, etc., there’s a lot for gearheads to do here.   

Come and Get Me!

Despite the obligatory always-online connection, at no point do you ever have to actually play online with other players. Apart from the Autolog social platform, the only thing you ever really get to deal with other players is when you randomly end up in the same online session. There are five real players on the same map as you at all times, and if one of them leaves, they’re immediately replaced by another. If you want to race against a particular player, you have to actually drive over and challenge them. This might sound really cool at first, but it ends up being a rather bland and kind of annoying sideshow. While I was playing, it wasn’t all that uncommon to lose my position in the race because some other player drove in front of me during an event; and I should admit I did the same thing to other players. But even if you do decide to challenge someone to a brief sprint and make the effort to drive all the way across the map to meet them, it could easily happen that you reach them at the exact moment they decide to quit the game, or they enter an event themselves, in which case you’ll be unable to talk to them.

The most annoying thing of all is that, since you can’t pause the game in any way whatsoever, players are always stopping in the middle of the street every other minute or so to answer yet another obnoxious and pointless phone call or check the map for the nearest event. These even happens when you’re leaving the garage, which is in the same position for all players, of course. It could very happen that you leave the garage and end up getting stuck behind players who have also just left their garage and are currently looking at the map or messing around in the menu.

 

Aracade Racer? You Got It.

Steering is just what you’d expect of an arcade racing game: very direct, very forgiving, and not realistic in the slightest. You want to take a sharp curve at 160 mph? No problem. Just brake a bit a few feet before you go into it and you’ll hit the apex at a breezy 60, or you can just drift through it without braking. Of course, handling makes a world of difference – each car handles a bit differently, and the different options available in the garage can easily add up to a hundred completely different vehicles … except that the garage can only accommodate five at a time. Overall, though, driving is a lot of fun in Need for Speed, and you can tinker with the options as much as you want until you find your perfect combination.

 Night – Twilight – Night

The game starts with the kind of cut scenes first seen in Most Wanted and Carbon, but when you really get behind the wheel and it feels like before, you suddenly start noticing how realistic and detailed the graphics are. Driving through the city, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was all filmed. Streets wet with rainwater glisten in the urban environment, and puddles both large and small reflect the neon lights and the street lights while the rain itself hits the car from all directions, running off in streaks along the extremely detailed body when you hit the gas. The streets do look kind of empty, unfortunately, and that’s because they are. It looks like a real city all right, but one that was made only for this game. Of course there are also roadwork sites, barricades, and destructible trash cans and streetlights, but everything looks like it was placed there intentionally, and not like an organic urban environment. Dawn looks like you could chase it forever and never catch up, until you realize that’s exactly the case. Since the story takes place in a single night, the starting twilight fades to pitch black, then it’s dawn/dusk again, with no daylight in between. This is pretty weird at first, but then you get used to it, and after all, the city looks great in the twilight.

 

Screeching Tires and More

There’s not that much to say about the sound except that it’s pretty imposing – roaring motors, tires screeching on wet streets, loud collisions, the pattering of the rain, etc. It all sounds really impressive, and more realistic than ever before. The soundtrack can also get you pumped up right from the start, with tracks that epitomize the kind of music the Need for Speed series is known for, which is apparently typical for the street-racing scene. Electronic music from Avicii and the Chemical Brothers, among others; Pounding basslines and hip-hop vocals from Major Lazer, Flosstradamus, and more. All in all, the perfect mix for the game, but somehow it always feels like you’ve heard the same song over and over again. So, good, but it gets old quick.

Summary

Need for Speed is a decent open-world racer with a completely out of control rubber-band AI, a (deliberately) defective day/night cycle, a flat and yet ridiculously over-the-top storyline, and an obligatory online component. Then again, it’s got some awesome graphics, great sound effects (and soundtrack), excellent tuning options, an empty, but impressive-looking city, and a huge selection of licensed cars that all handle differently. Is it a worthy reboot of the Need for Speed series that captures the essence of the earlier games? No. But is it a good arcade racer with a ton of content that you can have fun with for a long time? Yes! And one more cool thing is that all future DLC packs are going to be free, and EA is already working hard on patching bugs and other issues.


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