After a year off, EA is bringing us another Need for Speed.
[quote]
Let’s finish on one of the biggest discussion points around the last game: always-online. To say that this is a topic you’re passionate about would be an understatement, and whenever there’s a topic that gathers as much attention and feedback from you as this did, we take note.
So, when release day rolls around for the next Need for Speed, you will be able to play through a single player experience completely offline. Before you ask, and we know you will, this does mean you will be able to pause the game.[/quote]
Nice trailer. I hope they get a solid foundation on their physics this time. It doesn’t have to be realistic, I just sometimes find NFS games very confounding what the principles of driving should be. Is slowing down for turns desirable or not? Is sliding around corners faster than slowing down for them, etc.? I never could figure that out for NFS Hot Pursuit, the last one, 2010. The last one that Tom really liked, I think it was called NFS Most Wanted (2012, not 2005) had a more defined physics model, more obvious, which is why it was more satisfying to play. But man, I hated having to look at the mini-map all the time in that one. And if I didn’t look at the mini-map, I got into horrific accidents all the time and had to keep starting the race over and over.
I think they just lost the exclusive Porsche license that they got back then for Porsche Unleashed. Now everyone can include Porsche cars again, if they license them for their game, and they don’t have to get special permission from EA anymore like the Forza games used to get for their Porsche DLC. That’s why the new Forza can have a Porsche on the cover now, they’re out from under EA exclusive license. That was a really long exclusive license.
I played this for about an hour tonight. It’s so bad you guys.
I’d forgotten until tonight that EA Access lets me play EA games a week early for 10 hours. I don’t think I’m going to the 10 hour mark with this one. But it’s a goofy ride until then. It does amaze me sometimes just how different each Need For Speed game is, and how they can find completely different ways to suck.
The gameplay is the regular Need For Speed gameplay. Since they don’t have “realistic” physics, I am never sure in their games whether I’m supposed to slow down for turns or not. Sometimes I try to skid and hand brake around turns, sometimes I actually slow down using the brakes. It’s like learning new rules that have nothing to do with reality every time, and I’m never sure what those rules are.
Right now I’m still in that learning phase.
The game does have a difficulty setting this time, Easy, Medium, Hard. I chose Medium. I did notice that I was losing throughout a whole race despite using Nitrous and trying to be full throttle the whole race and pretty much achieving that. So I just have a slower car, right? I can’t win? Nope. The cars in front of me slowed down right before the end of the race so that I could come in first. That was very considerate of them.
I don’t know, Need For Speed games are always weird for me, and this is the same. I’m never sure if I’m racing well or not. It’s not like Forza or Horizon or DiRT or other games.
The driving is . . . adequate? Played through the prologue last night, and it seems to me that Ghost has no idea what a relateable character is, or may be actively hostile to the concept.
You see, it’s all about Douchebag #1 and his buddies Female Douchebag and Black Douchebag who are a “crew” who do crimes that involve driving super-fast and giving high-fives to each other, because they kick SO MUCH ASS YOU GUYS. So they take a “job” stealing a prototype car from Douchebag #2 via an overly-elaborate and physically impossible scheme.* And then they get betrayed because PAYBACK is in the title of the game, duh.
After the prologue I could not tell which number Douchebag was behind the wheel because they both looked the same to me and maybe it was a flashback? And then I failed the first mission because I didn’t deliver the car in time, but the endless exposition was about how I was responsible now and couldn’t be racing around anymore, so I guess I should have been slamming the nitrous in what I thought was basically a “story” mission. And then I did something else because I didn’t want to sit through all that blather again.
Maybe I should play with the sound off.
*You see, they have to steal this proto-car that’s racing on a “closed course” by jumping it off a tow-truck ramp, but how the heck could your guy get onto the closed course with a frickin’ tow truck without there being an opening in the course that you could drive the proto-car through and NOT trash the shocks and frame of a car that sits about 3 inches above the ground, but hey man, you’re thinking way too hard about this and THIS JOB KICKED SO MUCH ASS YOU GUYS.
I also love that the reason you lose the car is that you choose to leave the car running and go tend to your friend, so someone walks up to it and drives off. Oh, if only you’d taken your keys with you and locked the door!
Adequate is a good way to describe the driving. There’s no excitement.
This games me want to go back and finish NFS: The Run. Remember that one? Where you’re racing across the United States? I think I got stuck somewhere in Chicago in that one. I hope they add that to the backwards compatible list on the XB1.
