Why the Need for Speed

October 14, 2008 · Filed Under Gaming, Reviews

I’m a big fan of the NFS series, I know, everyone says they’re better racing games out there, with better races, better storylines and better… well pretty much everything, and I might even concede.

Right now, though, I don’t know what’s wrong with the NFS Team. I mean, their best game ever was underground 2, and since then they seem to be in a downward spiral. The things that made UG2 were its storyline, and the things you had to do beyond the racing. Like all the points you needed to rack up for style, the magazine shoots, the DVD covers, it created a good, ‘underground’ feel to the whole thing.

But the next two installments just sort of destroyed that. I’m not sure which came fist, Carbon or Most wanted, but both disappointed. Most wanted had pretty much the same story that UG2 does, with a slight variation, and so did Carbon, with slight variations, in which parts of the story they tell, and the women.

Then the actual racing: in Most Wanted the tracks are fine, and really interesting, though being day light does take away significantly from the look. The cars are pretty much the same, I think… but what really disappoints are the visual mods. They’re almost non existent. Well what’s the point of visual mods in a racing game you might ask… well what’s the point of having to wrestle with police cars in a racing game, I’ll answer. If the idea is to create the image of a lifestyle, real or imagined, things have to be consistent, street racers believe in bling… and unfortunately Most Wanted did not. The required number of felons to get through is another thing I didn’t quite understand, I mean as an idea they were fine, but the speed with which the requirements escalate… and why they cant just be cumulative?

Anyway, Carbon kind of went to the other end, pure racing, only racing, and nothing but racing. The next big thing of customizable mods fell flat for me… because of firstly the degree of customization offered, and second they weten’t that many mods anyway. I mean you couldn’t take a mod and change it around, turn is upside down, or sideways… it was way to straight jacketed to actually be creative with.

The other thing in both these installments that I found really disappointing is that neither have the many new races they’d brought in with UG2. Street X, Drags, and Drift, these made for interesting variations on the standard start and stop racing ideas. I really was looking forward to more of them.

I’ve not yet played Pro Street, so I can really say much, but I get the feeling that once more, the reality of racing has been stressed at the cost of the image of racing, which is why a gamer is drawn to the game. If we want real racing, we’ll just hit the road!

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