A distaste for Need for Speed?

Ando85

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Apr 27, 2011
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I'm not overly knowledgeable about racing games, but I like to play one every once and awhile. When it comes to car racing games on Xbox 360 I've played
Forza 2,3,4, Horizon
Dirt 1,2,3
Grid
Burnout Paradise

The only Need for Speed I've ever played was Shift thanks to some recommendations on this forum. I enjoyed it. Very solid racing game. But, it seems like every other NFS I see a great amount of distaste. I was always semi-interested in the series but never really knew where to start until Shift was recommended to me.

What is the source of all this distaste for the majority of the series?
 

josemlopes

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Jun 9, 2008
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There are a lot of reasons to not liking it.

-Its from EA and its part of those games that EA keeps forcing an annual release.
-They never really seem to aim at being something unique, it reminds me of that period after Underground where it was a mismatch of concepts with games like Carbon, Pro Street and Undercover.
-The driving isnt very good (Criterion did good with Burnout but the driving in Need For Speed feels wonky as fuck, like there is some huge delay)
-There are better alternatives (not many now since Codemasters decided to be terrible at the only thing they were good at, and they were really good at racing games)


For me the biggest dislike is the lack of focus, I dont remember exactly what games came out after around 2005 and in what order, some were reboots (Most Wanted, Hot Pursuit), some tried to be realistic (Shift), some tried to be Test Drive Unlimited (Rivals did that, right?) and others tried to be a movie (The Run had quick time events and shit).

There was no progression to the series, it all just seemed like they were trying something and if it didnt stick they wouldnt evolve around it but just ditch it and do something else like reboot some other part of the series or go in a totally different direction.

In a way I guess it could be seen as a good thing to have a series change so much over time but the gameplay itself doesnt seem to change that much with some rather obvious exceptions like Shift, usually there are games where the first one shows some cool potential but doesnt really nail it, the second then comes along and does it right. With Need For Speed they just keep doing that first game over and over, never really showing how good it can be.
 

LaoJim

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Aug 24, 2013
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I'm a big fan of racing games, and it seems like there are not a lot of them around these days, so I'm happy that NfS exists, even if the quality of the games has been very variable over the years. Shift is not representative of the games as a whole, it being far closer to Forza/Gran Tourismo simulation (but not quite) whereas most of the others have been closer to Burnout Paradise.

If you own a PS2 then Underground and Underground 2 were some of the best arcade racers around in that generation. This (just gone) generation the series has been very rocky. Basically

2005 Most Wanted
2006 Carbon - both games were solid enough but really showing their age now. Both city racers involving illegal street racing and police chases. Carbon was basically Most Wanted but at night and was also way to easy.
2007 ProStreet - total failure, tried to get rid of the open cities in favour of track based racing; like Forza but replaced the handling with obnoxious attitude.
2008 Undercover - another total failure, back to street racing, but badly implemented, ugly and with really weird handling. Also cringe worthy FMV acting.
2009 Shift - you know about; very credible first go at a simulation style racer
2010 Hot Pursuit - after Undercover, EA brought Critereon (aka the Burnout guys) over to the franchise. The result was a much better racing game that focused on multiplayer. Was a little bare-bones as a single player experience.
2011 The Run - another failure; supposedly a story-based coast-to-coast race across America, but suffered from some really annoying gameplay. It does look quite good and I actually ended up playing it a lot, especially the multiplayer. Not sure I'd spend much effort in defending it though.
In this year EA also released Shift 2 but downplayed (or removed entirely I'm not sure) the NfS banner from it.
2012 Most Wanted (again) Critereon's second NfS game combined element from Burnout Paradise and the NfS series. Its one of the better NfS games, but since most of the stuff that works was cribbed from Burnout and much of the stuff that doesn't (i.e. police chases) from NfS, that's hardly high praise.
2013 Rivals - haven't played this yet.
2014 series taking a breather.

So to basically answer your question, the series as a whole gets negative press because we've had nearly a decade of some very mixed games, many of which have little to do with one another. At this point the words "Need for Speed" mean nothing more than "racing game published by EA".

Despite the fact I've been quite negative here, I've played nearly all the games and enjoyed most of them in a limited way. I'd classify them in the following way.

Genuinely good - Most Wanted (2005), Hot Pursuit, Shift, Most Wanted (2012)
Iffy but fun - Carbon, Shift 2, the Run
Not fun - Pro Street, Undercover

Typing it out like that, it's not as bad a record as I initially thought.
 

StriderShinryu

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Dec 8, 2009
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I really like the way NFS feels to play as it's a nice blend of arcade racing with enough nods at realism to keep it from being pure silliness. I'm really turned off, though, by the seeming need to have the stupid "street racing is life, dude!" vs "street racers are all evil punks!" storylines they insist on putting in every game. When I'm playing a racing game, I want to race. I don't need my racing to be some melodramatic story of personal redemption and sticking it to the man.
 

erbkaiser

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Jun 20, 2009
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josemlopes said:
For me the biggest dislike is the lack of focus
Got it in one.

The original NFS games were pretty serious racing sims, with real cars driving on real tracks. Even the NFS3: Hot Pursuit game, which started the arcady elements, was still a serious racer.

The series got a focus shift and tried to become Fast & Furious: the Game with Underground, which introduced the stupid cut-scenes and cosmetic car tuning. Then afterwards they tried to keep reinventing the wheel and the subsequent games are all more or less the same.

Then EA tried an MMO. The less said about that, the better.

NFS: Hot Pursuit 2010 was by the Burnout studio, and it shows. It is more like Burnout Paradise 2 than an NFS game, and the good driving is completely gone.

At almost the same time as the MMO we got NFS: Shift which tried to be Ridge Racer and failed. Shift 2 was a little better but still felt more like RR than NFS.

The Run was half quick time events, a quarter incredibly badly acted cutscenes, and some racing to get to the other parts.

Most Wanted 2013 was basically Hot Pursuit 2010 done right. I actually liked this one, Criterion figured out how to do a fun competitive racer with two sides.

So of course EA gave the license to yet another new developer, who remade the previous game as NFS: Rivals, taking out everything that worked in MW 2013 and adding forced online multiplayer and more bugs than in an ant farm.


At this point I really aren't interested in NFS at all any longer. EA has no idea what to do with the series and it seems to just be slapped on any racing game published by them. Which is a real shame, because I loved the games. NFS: Porsche 2000/Unleashed is one of my all-time favourite games.


TLDR: NFS was a series of racing games, then became weird wannabe movie tie-ins, and now the series seems to completely have lost focus.
 

stroopwafel

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Jul 16, 2013
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NFS Hot Pursuit was awesome. It's actually my most favorite arcade racer to date. No open-world nonsense just incredibly high-speed races/chases across mostly straight and narrow roads. Where the game really shines is multiplayer, espescially the 1 racer vs 1 cop Interceptor mode. Soooo exciting, addictive and insanely fun. In essence this is just a Burnout game with NFS slapped on the title. SP is lacking though and the real fun definitely lies in the MP(similarly to basically all EA franchises).

I'll skip NFS The Run since that was obviously just filler and they just had to have an annual release.

NFS Most Wanted then; didn't really like that game. Racing itself is still really good but it was stripped off everything that made Hot Pursuit so much fun and added an open world, which is cool in a game like GTA but not in a dedicated racing game. Rivals somewhat mitigated this and tried to tie Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted together but mostly fell flat due to disorganized matchmaking. Having some kind of 'emergent' online races/chases might sound cool on paper but it just doesn't work in practice.

I'm glad they didn't release an NFS game this year since its pretty obvious they were out of ideas. I would be more than happy with a next-gen Hot Pursuit though. In my opinion the arcade racing experience was already perfected in this game. Adding more shit or making things unnecessary complicated and dependent on loose MP integration into SP just doesn't make these games any better. Arcade racing games are best when they just keep it simple.

Criterion is phenomenal when it comes to the racing itself but they are obviously struggling with design. Either that or EA's management is fucking up again like they did Dead Space.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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Feb 9, 2012
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josemlopes said:
-Its from EA and its part of those games that EA keeps forcing an annual release.
Interestingly enough, this is the first year since 2001 that EA hasn't released a new Need for Speed. No plans for next year, either.