Just because Unbound is open world doesn't make it immune to comparison.
I should make note I'm not saying it's immune to comparison, I'm just saying it's not the
best comparison to make.
But if we're comparing open world NFS games, Unbound ain't better than Most Wanted (2005) or Carbon. UB is probably has a better open world than Undercover or that "reboot" EA had 2015, but that's not much of a milestone.
I'm going to be playing MW 2005 again soon-ish since it's been years now and I'm rather excited to see how it's held up now that I have some fresh comparisons and perspectives. I don't know how I feel about Carbon though, that game seemed generally half baked outside of its customization (which is funny cause MW 2005's customization was half baked). 2012's MW reboot was ass though, never finished that game. I did finish Undercover and it was...
ok I guess!
Heat and Nitro are both better than Unbound as far as I'm concerned. I will give Unbound credit for having unique aesthetics and identity compared to Heat and most modern racing games. That is actually true. Heat does have its issues, but can still be fun.
Can't agree with this one, at least as far as Heat places here (and possibly towards Nitro too, but I'd have to play it first to be certain on that).
Honestly, Heat pissed me off in a lot of places on my replay. The handling model was maybe a little too weighty and wonky compared to the fun you could have in Unbound.
While I appreciate how challenging the cops are in Heat (to the point the game doesn't need to throw literal dozens of them at you just to even stand a chance) they were maybe a little too intense. Shaking them was a nightmare at higher heat levels, they could keep up with you almost no matter what you did.
But that's not the thing that pissed me off the most. No, that was the roads. Not the way they were laid out, but how the game kept insisting on making so many of them so god damn
narrow. At extremely high speeds, if you have a car in each lane in front of you, you basically had no choice but to throw yourself into the dirt and risk spinning out or slow down so much that catching up was going to be a mess. There was barely any room to manoeuvre and even less room for error. Sure, that's challenging, but it wasn't fun. Unbound's roads were maybe a little too wide by comparison, but at least you actually had options to avoid traffic without being forced to go off-road or crash into pedestrians.
I still had fun, don't get me wrong. But some of that game started to seriously grate me by the final hours of my time with it. Unbound did too, but at least I actually liked some of the cast and dialogue enough to be invested. I could go on, but I've probably said more than necessary anyways. Maybe one day I'll play Nitro and see how I enjoy it