Need For Speed reboots successfully for the stanced generation

 

Need For Speed is one of the longest running game franchises in the industry—and quite possibly the most veteran in the racing genre. The first NFS appeared back in 1994 and was as close as console gamers had ever gotten to a sim racer, featuring realistic (for the time) handling and real-world cars. Over the years sequels came and went, as did NFS's reputation among gamers. Now, NFS is old enough to buy itself a beer, but is this latest version—a reboot developed by Ghost Games and the series' 22nd entry—any good?

NFS is an open world racing game, a subgenre we first saw with games such as Test Drive Unlimited back in 2006. The action takes place in Ventura Bay, where no one ever sleeps and the sun never shines, because the entire game takes place at night. You play an unnamed driver who meets up with Spike, a trustafarian and young Brad Pitt lookalike (played by Adam Long) who introduces you to his rather engaging crew of underground racers, drifters, and tuners.

As with most games of this sort, you start out off with a rather cheap and underpowered car—in this case either a Honda Civic Type-R (the EK9 version), Ford Mustang (Fox body), or Subaru BRZ. You'll be able to supe your car up with prize money from races and drifting competitions, or you can save your winnings and upgrade to something faster and more exotic, including bona fide icons like the 1973 Porsche 911 RSR, Ferrari's legendary F40, or even the just-released McLaren 570S. Choose wisely; your garage will only hold up to five cars, so you'll have to sell one if you fill it up and want to drive something else.

Despite the name, NFS isn't just about going fast. The game is quite clearly aimed at a certain kind of car lover. If you read SpeedHunters religiously, if names like Magnus Walker or RAUH Welt mean anything to you, or if the word "stance" is your thing, this is your game. In addition to being able to buy go-faster parts, you're also able to customize your cars extensively, from paint jobs and decals (with a very Forza-like graphics editor) to new bodywork and wheels, even down to things like extreme wheel camber and stretched tires of the kind that make this nearly 40-year-old reviewer shake his head in sorrow.

Races and drifting competitions come in several flavors. Some are called missions—one of your crew will call your phone and tell you to meet them at a certain map location—while others are persistent events which you can find at any time. There's also a bit of GTA thrown in for good measure. If you blow past a police car at 100mph, expect to be chased—and even fined if they catch you. Your progress through the game results from points given for five different driving attributes: speed, style (i.e. drifting), build (customize that car and use nitrous oxide), crew (complete missions), and outlaw (dodge the cops, or drive into oncoming traffic or through obstacles).

As you might expect of an open-world game in 2015, you'll encounter other human players as well as AI cars. You can form crews and race together, but there's also the option to play alone should you wish. This marks a departure from recent NFS games developed by Criterion, which heavily encouraged online multiplayer to make progress.

You'll want to play NFS with a controller, and it's definitely much more on the arcade side of the spectrum than Forza Horizon 2, which is probably the most similar current racing game in terms of concept and game mechanics. In that way, NFS will appeal to a younger or more casual gamer—if keeping the throttle pinned to the firewall is your default racing mode, you will do much better in this game than one of Turn 10's offerings. We also noticed quite a lot of rubber-banding of the AI cars. If you're in a sprint race, you can build up a mighty lead, but expect it to evaporate away if you need to brake for a corner.

Visually, NFS is rather attractive. In addition to taking place in a seemingly permanent night in Ventura Bay, it's also almost always raining. This gives NFS a rather film noir-ish tone (although the water simulation isn't anything like Project CARS or Forza Motorsport 6). There is also no in-car view, which is somewhat surprising given how highly we praised previous NFS games for how they look and feel from within cars' cockpits.

The live action, filmed cut scenes are very good—our favorite aspect of the game, in fact. They look almost-but-not quite like pre-rendered animations, thanks to the frame rate and whatever post-production filters Ghost Games employed. The actors strike the right note in their performances (particularly Howard Charles, Faye Marsay, and Long), even though your reviewer is at least 15 years past the target audience. Certainly, these parts of the game are much more entertaining than The Crew or even Forza Horizon 2.

It's not entirely perfect though. The game bogs down far too frequently, causing the frame rate to drop into the single digits as the Xbox tries to sort everything out. And it doesn't just happen when you've got several cars in frame, either. Sometimes you can be the only car for miles, and everything still grinds to a halt mid-drift.

It can also be quite tiresome to have to keep returning to the single garage location on the map. This is the only place you can tune your car, and you may well find you want one set up for races and a completely different one for drifting. Other open-world racing games usually have some way of fast travel back to home base, and we can't help feeling that would be a welcome addition to NFS. [UPDATE: we were wrong about this, as Christian Moe points out: "At any point you want, just hit the back/select/funny squares button on the Xbox One controller and you can fast travel directly to the garage. Also, when you go to select a race, click once, then press left of the stick, and you can choose an option to fast travel to any race as well."]

Overall, we actually enjoyed playing the game, which was somewhat of a surprise given the spotty reputation for this long-running series.

The good

• Engaging and enjoyable cut scenes that avoid being exploitative.
• Fun, arcade-style game play.

The bad

• Everything bogs down and churns far too often.
• No option to race during daylight? Really?
• No in-cockpit camera angle, for some reason.

The Ugly

• The painting tools can be a pain to use.

Verdict: A great racing game for the younger or more casual gamer, and for fans of modded cars. Others should try it.