When I learned a new Need for Speed game was coming… Well I wasn’t excited, just like everyone, especially after Undercover failed horribly. I’ve seen a few videos, still wasn’t excited. But then reviews popped up… and it was actually getting decent scores scores and comments. I decided to rent it and I was surprised. Partly by the complete change in the gameplay style, and partly because it’s actually really good.

Read on and see if it redeems the NFS name!

Developer: Slightly Mad Studios
Publisher: EA
Date of Release: September 15, 2009
Platforms: PS3, 360, PC, PSP(downgraded version)

Genre:Racing Simulator
Players: 1 (more online)

Looks and sounds
Well the cars look great. The reflections and overall looks are pretty awesome. Might be a step down from what we’ve seen from GT5, but that definitely doesn’t mean it’s bad. The environments look fine as well, though they could definitely look a bit better.  To go on with the looks, well the animation is mostly fluid and realistic. When you’re in “behind the car” few, you can see the driver shifting gears when you change them, but not when you’re in “car interior” view, which is pretty weird. And the physics range from really good to completely screwed up. Sometimes the cars will act realistic during crashes, other times cars will start floating and just sliding over other cars in completely unrealistic fashion. Overall the graphics look really good, despite not being completely perfect.

The sounds are good enough. The music is completely unmemorable though. But the engine sounds and tires screeching and all is pretty nice. Each car seems to have sounds similar to their real-world counterparts, though I’m not much of a car buff so I might be completely wrong on that. For a normal geek that doesn’t know THAT much about cars though, it sounds fine.

Gameplay
Well, I already mentioned that I’m not a big car buff, and at the same time I’m not really good at simulator racing games. So be sure to take this in consideration while reading this part.

What do you do in the game?
You start off as an amateur racer with no car. The game tests your driving skills and depending on how well you do a control set-up is chosen for you (you can change it if you want). Then you play a race and get money to buy a car. You can retry the race as much as you want until you get in first place and get enough money for a proper car.

After that you’re free to do what you want.  Modify your newly bought car, sell it, do races, tune the car. You start with only tier 1 races, and as you get stars from reaching point or other objectives in races, as well as placing in 1st, 2nd or 3rd place, you unlock more tiers and races, and sometimes international events that enable you to do races of a tier above yours. Reaching higher tiers means buying better cars and being able to buy better upgrades as well.

There’s a multitude of race types. Normal races, car battles (you chose one of 2 cars and your opponent drives the other, it’s an event where you switch between leader and chaser each lap and the first to win two laps wins the event), manufacturer battles (a normal race where all the racers have the same car, so it’s up to skill instead of being up to which car is better tuned), endurance races (SUPER LONG races), drift races and a bunch of other stuff. There’s no shortage of event types that’s for sure.

Another element is the leveling up. You get points as you do various actions during races. Following the race line gives you precision points, clearing curves perfectly gives you precision points as well, amongst a few other things. On the other end, there’s Aggression points. Those are gained by making opponents spin out, blocking their path, just touching them, making rougher turns at curves and other things. These points go towards your style, determining if you’re more of an aggressive or precise racer. I’m not sure exactly what it does once you reach high levels with either of them, but as you gain points, those join together to give you “experience” points and that levels you up as a driver. As you level up, you open international events, unlock a few parts for customizing your cars(mostly decoration), get extra spaces in your garage to own more cars and get money for upgrades and cars sometimes.

Controls/handling/etc.
The handling in this game is relatively good. I’m not great at sim racing games, and I had similar problems to other games of the genre, but I managed to perform pretty well. I think the handling is a bit easier than other sim racing games. Turning requires moving the left analog stick, and how much you turn depends on how far you turn it. I found that moving it all the way will frequently make you slide and make losing control a lot easier. I had lots of trouble at first because I kept getting off the track because of that. And the off-road… well let’s just say you have almost no control on your car in that situation, since turning your wheels will have little to no effect and you keep bumping around at random. But if you learn when to turn and how much to turn, this handles really well, and it’s actually pretty simple. I’m not sure about drifting, but it seems a bit too complicated for me to do it in there. I tried a few times and failed miserably.

What helps here is aid systems for people like me who suck at this type of game. When you first start, you’re graded and are given a suggested control type. These give you a variety of options. You can choose to have assistance for handling the car, which will make you turn properly, assistance for braking, which will occasionally brake for you, a few other random options that I didn’t find useful, and of course the racing line, which is fully dynamic. It constantly changes, giving you pointers about when to slow down and when to brake, as well as where to place yourself to take , which is really useful.  Anyone new to this type of game can be eased in relatively well if they use those options.

Overall I find that the handling of cars is a BIT less realistic than in other sim racers, but it’s a great introduction to the genre, and the tools to help you learn the controls are there if you choose to use them.

The cars
There’s around 70 cars in the game. A bit of a low number, especially if you compare to GT5′s 1000 cars. But there’s still a good selection.  My car of choice was the Corolla GTS AE86, but there’s bunch of other cars to choose from, and you will without a doubt find something that will interest you here. An interesting thing here is that each car does drive differently. Though my main car for the time I played was the AE86 (which was faring relatively well in tier 2, but not really in other higher tier events), when I tried other cars for various reasons(mostly events that force you to use certain cars) the handling and the way they drove was very different. And of course they sound different. I find it nice that all the cars have their own slightly different quirks, may it be in overall performance or handling.

There’s multiple upgrades to buy for all your cars. Mainly 3 stages of engines, turbos, drivetrains, brakes and stuff like this. You can also get aesthetic upgrades like body kits and cockpit upgrades, and the all-important weight reduction. As you buy parts for your cars, you get new tuning options. I have no idea what the effect of all the options are, but when I made changes (suggested by a friedn who DOES know cars) it definitely changed how my cars drove. You can either go with simplistic tuning like “top speed VS acceleration” or go deeper, choosing air pressure in tires, how tight the suspensions are for each wheel, multiple things in the differential and a bunch of other stuff. There’s quite a few tuning options here that will most likely let you get the best possible performance from your car if you know what you’re doing.

Overall
The Need for Speed series was in dire need of something to revitalize it, and I think it’s found it. I think competition with Forza and GT is going to hurt it, but it’s still a solid game. It’s a bit more arcadey than the average simulation racer, but it’s still pretty similar to other racers in the genre.

It looks good, it plays well (if you’re good with this type of more “realistic” control) and there’s lots to do. Overall a great addition to the franchise.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Good presentation
- Simulator-style gameplay is well done
- Tuning/customizing SEEMS pretty good (If i knew more about cars I might be able to say if it really IS good or not(my friend told me it was…), but there’s lots of options to tune your cars with)
- Good difficulty curve .

Cons
- The selection of cars is relatively low compared to the upcoming Gran Turismo 5 and Forza 3 (I’m counting around 70 cars in NFS while GT5 and Forza 3 have, respectively, 1000 and 400 cars… not sure about customization for them, of course, but i’m just going with the number of cars here)
- Unless you REALLY know what you’re doing, handling is tough and will most likely deter newcomers to the genre, even with the various assists
- The change in gameplay style might deter fans of the series’ usual arcade-style gameplay
- Drifting is pretty complicated
- The physics can be really weird at times.

The Save Factor
This game has a starting price of $60, and I feel that it has enough features and fun gameplay to be worth at least $50. So that’s the Save Factor for this one. It’s a solid game in a not-so-solid-anymore franchise and is worth buying.

jobocan Console, Games, PC, ps3, Review, xbox 360