Need for Speed Retrospective #22

Not only the first NfS game I was willing to finish in a while, but one I actually enjoyed all the way through. It's nowhere near the heights of the series, but after contemplating to give up on this retrospective more than once recently, it was a huge relief to finally be playing a competent and confident product again instead of something cobbled together in the last possible minute.

As the reboot title might suggest, they went back to the Underground/Carbon era look that the series is most known for. And despite building heavily on these earlier titles, I like how different and recognizable 2015 is. The permanently rainy and foggy night-time world looks and sounds absolutely stunning and the first-person cutscenes, as cringeworthy as they might be, are a decent stylistic fit.

Even in the gameplay department, it seems they were going down the remake/sequel route for Underground 2, my favourite game in the series. Comparing the two titles side-by-side, I can see that 2015 is doing remarkably well in many regards, though sadly lacking in others. Where unlocking and exploring new areas was a huge driving factor in NFSU2's gameplay, 2015's open world is wholly accessible from the start. Fast travel (even to unexplored areas) is immediately enabled and hidden secrets are close to nonexistent. All this makes the open world appear much smaller than it is and, frankly, quite useless.

Despite these points and some minor issues with the difficulty curve, I enjoyed 2015 quite a bit. After ten bumpy years of hit-or-miss games in the series, I am finally feeling optimistic again.

(One final point: This game has absolutely no business requiring a constant internet connection. Both idea and execution are terrible.)

Não é como se fosse uma arte, mas é um jogo legalzinho, tem uma boa gama de carros, historia tem seus pontos e personagens memoraveis, uma boa interface e funcionalidade, graficos muitos picas, ambientação muito linda, provavelmente o melhor Need For Speed nesse quesito, mas não adianta nada ser um jogo de carro bom com uma dirigibilidade horrivel, o jogo te trata como uma criança de 6 anos e bota acessibilidade em qualquer ação que tu fez, basicamente tu não tem controle sobre seu proprio carro, e vai umas horinhas até se acostumar com isso, mas assim, pegou o jeito, ele é um jogo que da pra se apegar, mesmo que demore um tempo.

Um ótimo jogo do gênero que começa meio lento e sem graça, mas com o tempo fica divertido e desafiador.
Com certeza se destaca pela variedade de eventos e customização dos carros, apesar de a história ser deprimente e todas as cenas darem aquela sensação de vergonha alheia no jogador.

O único porém é que tentaram forçar demais a vibe "Underground" nele e isso tirou um pouco da essência própria que ele poderia ter, deixando aquela sombra de um grande jogo tomar conta do que poderia realmente ter sido.

É uma pena que a Ghost Games tenha assumido controle da franquia NFS na pior época possível. Eles claramente tinham ideias boas que foram prejudicadas por decisões terríveis da EA, mas ainda sim entenderam bem mais a essência da série do que a Criterion.

Com esse reboot lançado em 2015 o estúdio levou NFS de volta à cena do Street Racing, relembrando a era de ouro da Black Box e quase sendo um Underground 3. O jogo acerta entregando uma das ambientações mais fenomenais apresentadas no gênero, que até hj impressiona visualmente e é bem difícil de esquecer, um sistema de customização interessante, boa lista de carros com mais enfoque em veículos japoneses, boa variedade de eventos no modo história, entretanto patina por ser always online que gera muitos incomodos de conexão, ter muitos problemas técnicos, tentar ser uma experiencia bem voltada pra drift com uma gameplay de drift desastrosa...mas ainda sim foi um jogo que me divertiu e eu nunca vou esquecer do hype pré lançamento lá em 2015.

Shortly after the ‘Need For Speed’ film was released EA had gone for a film-like video game with photorealistic graphics and live action cutscenes, some of the cringiest yet. The gameplay is not too far removed from the previous games. Open world map with races and a garage to buy and upgrade your cars. There is however an increased reliance on an online connection which is one of this game’s biggest downfalls.

Don’t ask me what was going on in the story with this game, all the cutscenes are your crew seemingly talking nonsense which made me tune out pretty quick. Your crew are also CONSTANLTY phoning you throughout the game which is very frustrating as you don’t get a moment’s peace from them. I do really like how they incorporate your CGI car into the live action cutscenes. It doesn’t look 10/10 incredible but it’s good enough to be a great addition. I did notice how the cutscenes feature Faye Marsay who went on to star in the ‘Star Wars: Andor’ TV show.

There is the usual upgrade system for your car’s performance and visuals as mentioned previously. One new addition that I really liked was having a library of preset visuals and also the ability to save your own so you can copy and paste it between cars, saving you from starting all over again after you buy a new car. I did feel however that there were far too many parts of your car to customise for a novice like me. I can imagine this is a godsend feature for life loong racing fans and petrol heads but for me it was all just a bit too much. The game does allow you to fast travel between races which for someone like me where time is precious this is a welcomed feature.

I’d like to address the online reliance and loading times of this game as they were a big bugbear of mine. The past few games in the Need For Speed series have been online based which affected such things as not being able to pause the game which is a big frustration. By default each time you boot the game you need to wait a long time for the game to load (even on Series X with a fast SSD). You’re then launched into an online game with other players or bots. If you’re like me and don’t want your game ruined by them you need to go into the settings menu and select play offline. The game will then reload at the same excruciating pace as before and then put you in an offline game. You need to do this every time you play the game. The setting does not stick. I eventually ended up not playing offline as it was adding too much time onto my playtime. Twice I was kicked out of the game, once for a connection issue and another for their servers rebooting. Each time you’re kicked out the game and then when you reload you need to again, go through all the long loading screens. I once also stepped away from my game for long enough that I was kicked off the game and back to the main screen and yes, I had to reload all over again.

For most of the Need For Speed games I’ve successfully managed to complete the main story while avoiding Drift races as I just hate them so much. I tried Googling “Best drift car in Need For Speed 2015” which was the Toyota Supra. Yes it drifted well, and I can drift, it's just no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get near enough the points required to win the race. Unfortunately it comes to a point where all of the available races in this game are drift races which is where I drew the line and moved on. At this point I was at 44% completion of the main story and felt I had already experienced everything the game had to offer.

I enjoyed the time I spent with this game. It’s a good looking racer and as far as Need For Speed goes it’s not the worst. I say play it while you can as it seems like when EA shut down the servers this game will only be good as a paper weight (assuming you own a physical copy). It’s a shame I hit a wall with the drift races but that seems to be a popular opinion online with other people who have played the game.

This game gets a bump from its previous rating only cause upon revisiting I realise that we've gone backwards. An utter incredibly beautiful game. The art and tech is almost timeless. This definitely was gonna be a killer underground 3 but unfortunately it got hit with that live service stick and playing it nowadays requires fixes to get controller support working and such. But man the atmosphere alone gets the rating so high for me. The car selection although low blows my mind on how detailed they are for how old they are as well. Camera is beautifully cinematic and although physics are a bit wonky at times. I could vibe out to this game for a long time. If it didn't keep breaking on me. I wish we lived this more when it came out cause I really think NFS has regressed

It has been a while since I played Need For Speed franchise. The last I played was Carbon(which is the first NFS game which I started as a child, I guess). Nevertheless, back to this game.

Graphics in this game, as many people say, is so gorgeous, no denying here. The night atmosphere is mainly the reason of why it works. No complains here, that might be the most appropriate way for a street racing game. During all my playthrough I've never been tired of the graphics and each day I played at least like 3 hours a day to get enough dopamine for it, heh.

Gameplay on the other hand... well, it's 50/50 for me.
Overall, the return and update of drift/grip tuning I really liked, it really gave more variability to your cars and it's really pleasant to feel when you hit the right setting that has enough speed and/or drifting. It would have worked perfectly... if devs didn't fail with races. Oh, the irony...
One of the main problems with this game is that there are a lot of drift sections(as my friends said, it contains approximately 60% of it).
I, mostly, have a lot of critiques with the "Drift trial". Man, If only bots could normally drift with the player, but no, most of the time they drive at fixed speed AND route. They drive up to 100 km/h and THEN they drift. When you upgrade your car that can go from 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds it really gives a feeling of discomfort and you, as a player, literally HAVE TO match their speed, If you're too fast for them, you won't earn points; if you're too slow, you also won't earn points. It's a failed mode, to say the least.
I don't have much trouble with circuit and sprint races. Except maybe one: the difficulty, especially the "hard" ones. When I see a hard difficulty, I expect challenge, competitiveness and etc. What I get? Just longer races. That's it. I don't want to continue this topic.
Yeah, also, this is mostly nitpick, but I'll say it anyway. I've played this game for 30 hours and literally by the ENDGAME, I discovered that there are actually teleports to races. Yes, I've spent 30% of my time by riding to races. There was no mention about the race teleport(ofc I knew about garage teleports, but it's literally on your face). It's unintuitiveness has led to this result.

Now story... just the guys who love racing and thankfully to the mc, they manage to hang out with their idols. That's it, and you know what? I don't have any problem with it. The story is here just to motivate the player to race and discover it's game mechanics and world. Yeah, it's nothing special, but I mean... cmon. It's Need For Speed and the story of most of its games were "ok" at best.

And lastly, the bugs... ugh.
Yeah, that's just embarassing. Road disappearing, e-handle not working properly, cars appearing out of nowhere, cops f**king accelerating when you teleport for unknown reason and etc. I know that development for games with each year becomes harder and harder, but there are always time to fix it after releasing the game... yeah, I guess they just gave up.
Because of these problems, the "Prestige mode" practically becomes impossible to complete with 3 stars. Please note, that it IS possible, but you must have an amount of skill for this game and LUCK, so that nothing wouldn't appear in front of you. I didn't have luck at all when I spent 2 hours on 1 race. Make your conclusion yourself here.

Overall, the game is with flaws, no doubt here. Bugs can literally break immersion, story isn't much to talk about, music is ok and expectations since that time weren't met. Is it this bad?
The answer is no. This need for speed has enough amount of enjoyment when you play it, especially with its atmosphere. Driving the cars is enjoyable enough. Even some songs that I listened to were enjoyable. It is an enjoyable experience.
The criticism this game received is totally justified in every way. However, let's not forget there are positive sides too. I rest my case.

Need for Speed no se puede jugar.

Es un juego que había iniciado con ganas porque mucha gente me lo había recomendado, pero el juego te obliga a estar conectado a los servidores de EA para jugar, al principio decía bueno da igual, pero ya dentro me doy cuenta de todo lo malo que acarrea como no existir modo pausa, no existe un menú como tal para poder configurarlo todo de forma cómoda y que te obliga a jugar con gente en una misma sesión, una decisión que ya de inicio me parece malísima, pero mientras que pueda jugar me daba igual, ahí viene el problema.

Los servidores de EA son horribles y el juego te echa cada 5', al solo existir modo online OBLIGATORIO, si no estas conectado o el servidor en este caso funciona mal no puedes jugar, ósea que unlucky chat. El juego no tenia mala pinta, pero es injugable literalmente por los servidores de EA.

He buscado soluciones y a día de hoy no existe nada y es un problema que existe en casi toda la comunidad que lo intenta jugar, ojala poder probarlo en un futuro, pero lo veo imposible.