Reviews

Need For Speed - Gaming Review on Xbox One

Posted on: 2015-11-07

The cars handle really well and you don?t have to understand how to drive a car in this game because it pretty much throws all realism out the window and goes for a more arcade style of gameplay.

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Need for Speed in recent years has been hit and miss - we had the abysmal The Run back in 2010 and we had the excellent Most Wanted in 2012 developed by Criterion Games who are most famous for the Burnout series. Ghost Games have decided to reboot the series on the 8th generation of consoles and just titled it Need for Speed, it’s a fresh start for the series while taking cues from the Underground games and bits of Most Wanted. So is this the reboot that we need? Yes and no.

Believe it or not this game has a story which is about young people getting together beating other people’s records around the city to gain notoriety in the street racing world. All the exposition is delivered in live action scenes where the acting is unbearably bad that I have to turn down the volume every time I hear “hashtag” or “what’s up bro” in a really forced manner. Don’t play this game for the story its cringe worthy and plus they seem to have an obsession with fist bumping; I think I tallied well over 100 during my playtime with this game. 

No one plays a Need for Speed game for the story so let’s talk gameplay and the way the cars handle in this game. The cars handle really well and you don’t have to understand how to drive a car in this game because it pretty much throws all realism out the window and goes for a more arcade style of gameplay. What I mean by this that you can throw your car around the corner with reckless disregard for safety and it’s really fun to nail a perfect drift around the corner during a race. This game is set in an open world but it’s not as big compared to Need for Speed Rivals back in 2013, however it’s as big as it need to be so it doesn’t feel mundane driving to destinations that could be very far away, it also helps that the police will chase now and again to keep engaged while driving.

You’ll be racing under the wing of four people in separate classes which are Speed where you run course as fast as you can, Build where you earn new parts for your car, Crew where you establish a gang of drivers to cruise with and Style where looking good matters when you drive around corners by achieving stuns and drifts. The events you par take in are few but are short enough that they have a pick up and play appeal to them. You can do three events before you go out or go to work and then come back later and do another three. The events that are available to you are Drift where you have to gain points through stylish drifting, Sprint where you do one straight race with no laps, Circuit speaks for itself and Time Attack which I don’t need to explain either. They can start to feel repetitive but due to their short and snappy nature I can play it for half an hour then come back to it and do another half an hour.

Before you head out though you have to pick a car and after that you’re pretty much allowed to customise your ride anyway you want whether that is cosmetic down to how your car performs. You’ll gain new parts throughout the game and your car will get progressively faster or you can tune it for drifting. My problem with this system is that you can’t have a happy medium, so you can’t design a car that is for both drifting and speed you have to have one or the other.

The presentation of this game is fantastic. Ghost Games really used the Frostbite 3 engine to their advantage. The neon lit streets of Ventura Bay really come to life when it’s raining; you see each rain drop run down your windscreen all the way down to the bumper it’s really jaw dropping the attention to detail. The sound design is great too, if you have a sub-woofer or a decent sound system turn it up! The roar of the engines in this game are amazing you feel the grunt and power even down to the subtle details of the turbo hissing, the gears changing coupled with the squealing tyres as you drift around corners.

The negatives I have with this game is that it’s constantly online and you can’t go offline to play on your own so if you lose connection you can’t play the game so you better have a reliable internet connection. I don’t understand why it’s always online it doesn’t feel like a multiplayer game. Another is that the frame rate jerks a bit and I’ve heard that this is only on the Xbox One version and it doesn’t happen on PS4, but it doesn’t happen too often so it’s not a deal breaker.

Need for Speed is a competent reboot to the series it looks the part, sounds the part and feels the part. So if you’re looking a decent racing game to pass the time then pick this up.

4/5

Reviewed by The Bristolian Gamer for 365Bristol

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