My takes have really reached rock bottom with this one ngl, bad enough that I enjoy the one that's pay 2 win but also considering it the first good one since Carbon?
Hear me out I guess...Yeah the progression is awful, I hate the card system, the only decent aspect is the fact you get a card for every race which means you upgrade your car at a decent rate in theory, but in practice by the late game you really do have to start trading cards and opening up loot boxes because otherwise that last off road faction will murder you.
I reached the point where the only way to keep up was to spend 9 minutes waitin around for the store to reset so I could buy new cards to get my car level a tiny bit higher so the next race was manageable.
Buuuuuuut I can't lie the handling is pretty okay, much better than 2015 and open world wise this is the most diverse one yet probably and it's nice to explore and some of the races have pretty cool layouts, especially late game, and I did enjoy the variety in missions and the 'set piece' missions.
This is the first game since The Run to try to go for something cinematic I feel and it does it well enough, not to say the story is good, better than in The Run for sure but nothing to write home about, still its competent which is more than you could say for most NFS games, a few decent characters, really Mac is the only truly likable one (he's the bri'ish one) but oh well the others weren't exactly insufferable.
I like in the last mission how the leaders of the factions from the early parts of the story come in to help you meanwhile the ones from the late game try to sabotage you, it's a cool moment I guess. Drift events are rarer in this game and much much better since drifting feels nice in this one. They're also much easier and simpler, simply reach the amount of points needed then finish the course and done.
Drag races are here and... idk if I've mentioned em in any of my NFS reviews but yeah they all suck and even here they still suck but in this one they are prb the best they've ever been, in the sense that I only hated them a bit instead of a lot.
Visual customization is nice in this one, though that's the case for most open world NFS games (Most Wanted 2012 aside, fuck that abomination anyway) and the car selection is alright.
I like that there's different car types for different events and you can switch when starting an event, so your racing car won't work for drift events or vice versa, this is a good system, especially when considering the alternative which is NFS 2015 where you basically had to fast travel to your garage constantly to switch between drift tuning and grip tuning which itself was hard for someone with no knowledge of how cars handle and what the fuck those sliders do, simply dragging it from 'grip' to 'drift' and having that determine all the sliders seemed like a good idea but finding a good balance is hard anyway.
So yeah I'll take pressing E to change to my drift car over that...
Overall good improvement over 2015, not perfect but I can't lie to myself I enjoyed it a lot, if only the progression wasn't so fucked.
Hear me out I guess...Yeah the progression is awful, I hate the card system, the only decent aspect is the fact you get a card for every race which means you upgrade your car at a decent rate in theory, but in practice by the late game you really do have to start trading cards and opening up loot boxes because otherwise that last off road faction will murder you.
I reached the point where the only way to keep up was to spend 9 minutes waitin around for the store to reset so I could buy new cards to get my car level a tiny bit higher so the next race was manageable.
Buuuuuuut I can't lie the handling is pretty okay, much better than 2015 and open world wise this is the most diverse one yet probably and it's nice to explore and some of the races have pretty cool layouts, especially late game, and I did enjoy the variety in missions and the 'set piece' missions.
This is the first game since The Run to try to go for something cinematic I feel and it does it well enough, not to say the story is good, better than in The Run for sure but nothing to write home about, still its competent which is more than you could say for most NFS games, a few decent characters, really Mac is the only truly likable one (he's the bri'ish one) but oh well the others weren't exactly insufferable.
I like in the last mission how the leaders of the factions from the early parts of the story come in to help you meanwhile the ones from the late game try to sabotage you, it's a cool moment I guess. Drift events are rarer in this game and much much better since drifting feels nice in this one. They're also much easier and simpler, simply reach the amount of points needed then finish the course and done.
Drag races are here and... idk if I've mentioned em in any of my NFS reviews but yeah they all suck and even here they still suck but in this one they are prb the best they've ever been, in the sense that I only hated them a bit instead of a lot.
Visual customization is nice in this one, though that's the case for most open world NFS games (Most Wanted 2012 aside, fuck that abomination anyway) and the car selection is alright.
I like that there's different car types for different events and you can switch when starting an event, so your racing car won't work for drift events or vice versa, this is a good system, especially when considering the alternative which is NFS 2015 where you basically had to fast travel to your garage constantly to switch between drift tuning and grip tuning which itself was hard for someone with no knowledge of how cars handle and what the fuck those sliders do, simply dragging it from 'grip' to 'drift' and having that determine all the sliders seemed like a good idea but finding a good balance is hard anyway.
So yeah I'll take pressing E to change to my drift car over that...
Overall good improvement over 2015, not perfect but I can't lie to myself I enjoyed it a lot, if only the progression wasn't so fucked.