NEED FOR SPEED Hands On Impressions - E3 2015
Racing games for the current generation of consoles are definitely not few and far between. With Drive Club, The Crew, and Need for Speed Rivals, you have a pretty wide selection of pedal-to-the-metal action for your PS4 or Xbox One. But EA wants you to add one more to your must-have list of racing games. Following the “Dropping All Subtitles and Just Naming It After the Franchise” formula that has become popular the last couple of years, Need for Speed hopes to be the definitive title of the franchise, listening to the community and picking out what they love about previous entries and compiling them all into one "ultimate Need for Speed experience." And I've gotta say, they do a pretty good job of doing just that.
A big part of this new, definitive experience is the level of customization available for your car. With a huge free-roam city in front of you with great integrated multiplayer, EA hopes to help you make your in-game car an extension of yourself. While the demo only lightly touched on the customization, I can see myself spending more hours than I should fine tuning my ride. With their usual extensive list of licensed car manufacturers, I'm sure we will have a lot of great vehicles to start with. Personally, I picked the old-school Porsche 911 and made it matte black with glossy red rims (Gotta rep my GeekTyrant colors). Then spent the rest of my customization time fine tuning my turning and engine performance.
The game then dropped me into free-roam, similar to the way it's been in previous titles like Hot Pursuit. I cruised over and started a race with the other people in the demo with me. It was incredibly fun, and the ability to customize my car's performance beforehand with such depth really helped me have a more enjoyable experience. We zipped around the very beautifully rendered rain-soaked streets, and I took a very close second. (Later I tried to put my name in the running for a free copy of the game, but I got totally wrecked by people much more skilled than I. The demo race made me cocky.) After the race, I just cruised around the small section of the city open to me in the demo racking up points in the new score system. You earn style points based on things like pursuit escapes, jumps, top speeds, car tuning choices for your play style, and even crashing through the surprisingly destructible environment in cool ways. Line all it up correctly, and you can earn a whole mess of points in an Ultimate Need for Speed Moment. (They threw terms like that around a lot. They really want to drive home that this is THE new gen Need for Speed...)
All in all, if you like Need for Speed and you enjoy your racing games a little more on the cinematic side as opposed to realistic course racers like Forza, then this is one to keep an eye on. I've always been a huge fan of the NFS franchise, and while this one doesn't blow my mind, it didn't disappoint.