Need for Speed Review

So the time has come for EA to drag out another Need for Speed game personally i’m not sure how much more speed I can handle, the games haven’t been the same for years well at least since Most Wanted. This is the second game released on Next Gen with Rivals being one of the Xbox One Launch titles in its glitchy and glorious element.

We are in the world of Social Media now and this game glorifies it to the max in its loading screens.

So what does this new Need for Speed bring to the racing table which is pretty stacked with the recent arrival of Forza 6? Well the game still utilises the arcade style of driving, and they have kept the open world which personally annoyed the hell out of me in the last game, other online racers would just smash into you when you’re racing, no lie they can hit you in a bloody race! They’ve given the player more creative abilities for their cars such as car upgrades and car design options.

They have returned to the Hollywood style of a scripted story with you controlling a character called Ghost who never speaks or is never seen (Ironic) and is involved with an unknown crew with Amy (Mechanic) Robyn (Drifter) Manu (Tough guy also a drifter) Spike (Speed freak and rich boy) and Travis the leader of the crew who personally i can’t take seriously as the last film i saw him in was a cockney football thug and now he’s a race crew leader with a god awful american accent…also i’ll make this point now if i have to endure one more fist pump greeting i’ll pull my eyeballs out, the cut scenes are so CORNY it’s funny but also still bloody annoying.

There are familiar races available to run, from sprints to drift races there is even a drift chain race where you can only score points when you’re at a reasonable distance to your crew member. Apart from that it’ prepopulated events scattered around the map. During races you will grab a massive head start and start pulling quite far ahead but one corner and you’ll find yourself out of pole position, the A.I. will catch up to you with extreme ease even if your car is miles ahead of them. This is a flaw in my opinion, i like the fact you put a decent amount of cash into your cars but your opponent may have a slower car than you but can still catch up and challenge. It really takes away that element of having the best car.

Graphically, Need for Speed looks awesome thanks to the on-screen touches. The mix of white and yellow street lights perfectly punctuates the nighttime lighting, and the wet ground reflects details rather nicely. The camera lens gets specks of magnified water whenever it rains, and there’s a light blur effect that appears at the end of the race when stats are being tabulated or when cops start or end a pursuit. The cars are detailed enough that only small decals appear unreadable while scratches and deformation is only noticeable during shots of your ride at the beginning of the race. The city fares well with the aforementioned water puddles littering the streets, buildings that show off reflections when lights shine on them, and very rare instances of texture pop-in.

Though the racing can be good, the cop chases are quite boring. While you see the lights behind you in one big blur of colour, you don’t get a sense of how close or far away they are. Cop AI gets tougher in later stages as more cars and roadblocks appear, but the AI is so easy in the early stages that the ramp up isn’t met with much enthusiasm from the player. It also doesn’t help that the aggressive AI isn’t very smart, so losing the cops is a breeze; it’s an issue because some of the challenges require you to get into long, high-point-value chases.

I did find that when i was racing an event and one of the characters called me it would cancel the event without me knowing, this is just one of the few glitches i noticed in the game, from the minor jolt when turning a corner at high speed to the bushes not allowing me to pass as if Gandalf put a spell on them. These minor glitches are a nuisance but they’re nothing like the camera angle glitch in Rivals good god!.

“Your team members call you more times that Roman

does Niko in GTA IV”

The game controls really well but at first is very tricky as your car needs adjusting to suit your style, basically in your head you want to drift but the way your car is built it won’t do it until you get the right parts, when you’re in the garage and shown the car customization options. There’s a nice amount of visual customisation you can do, from changing the colour of the car to changing out parts. You can even create your own decals from a number of pre-made shapes, but the inability to copy the creation for use elsewhere on your car is frustrating. Aside from visual customization, you have a chance to customize the internals for a more powerful car, from the wiring to the exhaust and the engine block. You can even tweak the car to be more of a speed demon or make it more likely to drift, something the series hasn’t let users do in a while. Personally the game would’ve really been better if there was a wrap specialist to customise wraps for you as well, all you have is your own which you can do loads on but mine looked like a 5 year olds paint job and the cars have a custom wrap each.

When looking around the garage you’ll notice that you have space to add more cars to your collection. In total, the game only has 51 cars to choose from, a rather paltry list when compared to the contemporary racers in the field. However, you only have space for five cars, including the one you’re currently driving. The game shifts the focus from collecting all of the cars to obtaining specific ones for your needs and tweaking the ones you have to handle specific circumstances or to be a general all-around car. This is certainly a positive shift, as you now have time to appreciate your cars and take advantage of the upgrading process instead of treating cars as a disposable commodity and being constantly tempted to switch cars.

Like most of the Need for Speed games it runs off Rep, you gain rep in free mode and in races the more you level up the more races you can take part in and also the more parts you unlock in the garage, which you still have to pay for. I loved the days in Most Wanted when you raced a leader for his pink slips, was so fulfilling when you beat them.

Your team members call you more times that Roman does Niko in GTA IV these calls open up more events, so you can ultimately face off against some real-life racing personalities, such as the Risky Devil drifting crew or Lamborghini enthusiast Morohoshi-san. Interestingly, you don’t have to participate in the events to gain points. Spend XP to open up more of the world and gain access to events that aren’t part of the main story. You can chain actions to earn XP multipliers, and crashing into immovable objects won’t take away the combo or the earned points. In a way, the more forgiving nature of the game allows players to level up faster even if they aren’t adept behind the wheel.

Upon starting up the game, you’ll notice that it immediately connects to the online servers before you reach the main menu. Get into a game, and you’re informed that you’re joining an online game. Just like Rivals, this year’s title is meant to be always online to the point where your game is unplayable without an Internet connection. Even your save file is located on the game server, and there’s no local copy on your console hard drive. For those with unreliable connections or non-existent, this is a compelling reason to skip this entry altogether.

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