As a dude, I’m a great fan of cars, even if I’m not driving in the real world (which is a thing all you fuckers can be thankful about!). Therefore, one of my favourite game series is the Need For Speed one. Playing the fourth title in the series, named Need For Speed High Stakes (1999), opened a world of racing for me, which expanded both forwards and backwards in time, playing all the titles since the first “Need for Speed” (1994), up to the ninth, the original NFS Most Wanted released in 2005. I also did play a bit of NFS Undercover on my Xbox 360, but that’s about it. Oh, and we don’t talk about NFS No Limits which is just a gacha game with the NFS label slapped on it.
With this bit of background now behind us, I was very happy when my dear friend Sorana brought me the latest release from the series, in the form of Need For Speed Unbound. After playing a couple of hours, I kinda get where all the bad side of the mixed reviews come.
The first hint towards the fact that I got fucking old and I’m very outside of the target audience of the game. Almost the entire soundtrack of the only available radio station is 2020s skrrrt beep boop or whatever kids these days call “rap”, with some Charli XCX here and there. After about two hours play time, where I didn’t find any good song, I just turned down the music volume. And there’s so much talking during the race, because for some reason, EA decided that it’s a good thing for your companion to talk smack while you’re driving, based on what you or the others do. It also doesn’t help that the story was predictable and out of your control, and didn’t make me care about any character, especially as most of them feel more like stereotypes rather than real people.
“If I had wings, I could flyyyy”
For a game with an open world, the game is surprisingly linear and repetitive, forcing you to play certain types of races, but not others. Also the day/night cycle is annoying, as it makes you go to a safe house, then drive to a meet up, then back again and so on. And if you get busted, it’s bye bye wifi for the day. You lose the cash earned in that session and you get on to the next day or night, which is kinda shit, as there’s pretty much a cash drought. On the gameplay side, the races are fucking hard. I’m playing on the easiest difficulty, but I’ve never finished higher than 4th, and one time even finishing last. I don’t need to win every race – but this is just ridiculous. When I got to the first purchasable bodykit, I didn’t even have enough cash because of how bad I was placed in the races. There’s no single player quick race mode, where you could just pick any race, any car and just go racing, which is a very very bad thing. Basically you either play the story mode progression or there’s not much to do. Luckily, the starting Lamborghini is a good car and sounds great, and for a casual gamer it does the job until you lose it and have to start back from scratch tearing an empire apart with the help of a slow car that you have to upgrade.
The cop chases are fairly good, and they will keep you entertained for a while, until you just want to race, but first you need to spend 30 minutes to evade some pursuit.
What I found nice was the cel-shaded, graffiti-inspired effects on your car. This can be replaced with something more realistic for your car, but the NPC cars will stay the same and will become annoying after a while. I like the aesthetic, but I find it to be a gimmick that quickly loses its novelty and becomes a sensorial clutter. The same can be said about the camera glitches when you crash.
All that being said, if you turn off the music and the dialogue and some of the special effects, then the game is actually more than playable. The races aren’t very long and although the game is very fragmented, it also means that you can pick it up when your time is limited and only play for like half an hour. It looks gorgeous, the world is pretty, with a lot of realistic settings, from wide streets to small alleyway shortcuts, which make for nice cop chases, but at some point even those get annoying. As I said earlier, it’s the classic double-double-crossing story, but with more passive aggressiveness, things like “if he wants to invite me to a barbecue, why doesn’t he call me?”. Stop being a drama queen and come to the BBQ.
Once you get past the first hour or so is where the game actually start. There is a lot of stuff to do in the open world, but there is so much police roaming around, it feels like City 17 or some other dictatorship from a dystopian movie. With all these cops, you’re sure going to do a lot of running around while trying to destroy the bears or to collect graffiti across town.
It’s a solid Need For Speed title and I know that the gripes I have with it stem from my personal taste and that I come from a different generation, which means I’m definitely wayyyyy outside of their intended target audience. In conclusion, it’s a fun game, but something that will be enjoyed more by teenagers than by the older age group. And maybe I’m judging this too harshly. Looking at some of the positive reviews, I can understand where they come from. Need For Speed has always tried to be cutting edge in terms of trends, design and generally what teenagers wanted. If 2002 was the year of Bush and Hot Action Cop, those times are long gone and I guess kids nowadays prefer highly autotuned brrr prrr bap bap mumble rap, frfr.
In the end, I’d like to thank Sorana once again for making me rediscover the Need For Speed universe, and although it’s not all roses, it’s a fun ride and I really appreciate getting back into NFS thanks to her!
Get it: Official Site
