Best Need For Speed game ever??
- Thread starter Revell
- Start date
I'd have to say underground and underground 2. Never really played any of the others since, but they all seemed to be really samey racing games that blended into each other so much that I can barely tell the difference.
to me, Hot Pursuit and to some extent Porsche Unleashed
so many hours of split-screen fun with my cousins were had in Hot Pursuit
though we were more of the San Francisco Rush 2049 kind
and some Motoracer here and there too
so many hours of split-screen fun with my cousins were had in Hot Pursuit
though we were more of the San Francisco Rush 2049 kind
and some Motoracer here and there too
So far it's been Underground 2 and Most Wanted. Hopefully the new installment (NFS: The Run) can change tha....AHAHAHAHAH, who am I kidding? It has quicktime events. In a racing game.
Hot Pursuit, both the original and the remake. The original had great tracks, great cars and was challenging enough to make it a decent thrill. The driving physics however...sucked. Let's face it. The remake is improved in almost every way due to it being over 10 years younger, but the more arcade style feel and the physics make it really fun to play, while not as engrossing and the original.
Have to say Underground 2, followed by Most Wanted. Didn't really care for the story in either game, but damn, the cities were just so fun!
Hot Pursuit (2010) was my favourite as I loved the Burnout games.
I also really liked Most Wanted and Carbon.
I also really liked Most Wanted and Carbon.
I've enjoyed most of the series since Underground (never really played many before that, had a brief experience with the first title way back in the day), but NFS: Most Wanted is easily my favourite - it's a game I still play after all these years and I can forgive all of its faults (the rubber-band AI, the lack of drifting events, the idiotic story) because the cop chases were just so much fun.
Ah, the Need For Speed series. I've had a long history with it. Used to be some of my favourite games ever, but no longer... My experience with the series goes like this:
Hot Pursuit 2 - Great game. Was never that in to it that much but I had some good times with it. It was actually the 2nd NFS game I owned. I got Underground first.
Underground - Fantastic game. Really made a bit impact on me and started a huge trend in racing games focusing on the tuner style. My tastes in cars have changed a bit since then but the game is still great fun. It's also still a pretty hard game. Takes some reasonable skill.
Underground 2 - Blew my mind. Took everything that was fantastic about the first game and blew the concept wide open. Fantastic feel to the cars and great open city to drive in. Yet again it was a game that defined a genre. I loved it so much I bought it twice. Once on GC and then again on PS2. Still have lots of fun with it today.
Most Wanted - Another amazing game, but where the cracks start to show. Lost some things but also added a lot of things. I was disappointed that some of the customization options were taken out, but they more than made up for it with a wider range of cars and bringing back police chases. And that police chase mechanic was so amazing. I used to spend hours and hours just trying to get the police to chase me just for the fun of it. The city layout was also really good. I don't know if it was objectively better than the city in U2, but that place holds a special place in my memory. More than the city in MW. The handling model in MW was really good. About as good as the one in U2. Like the rest of the game it's better in some ways, but worse in others. Also I wasn't really a fan of the speedbreaker thing. Always felt a bit cheap to me. I try to avoid using it as much as I can. I also got this game twice. When I first got the game I didn't have a 360 so I got it on PS2. I also got the limited edition version which was only available on PS2. Then I got it again on 360 when I got one, even though I had already finished the game on PS2. Had a ball with that game and I still go on it sometimes.
Carbon - Pretty flawed but still fun. The last NFS game that I've been able to enjoy playing for extended periods. I liked the visual style they went for in the game. It was like an evolution of the Underground games. The Autosculpt idea was really cool, but wasn't implemented as well as it deserved to be. More thought should have gone in to it. The different classes for cars was a terrible idea. They screwed up the characteristics of a lot of cars, and how some of them compare is just idiotic. Like making a Lotus bad at handling and overrating lots of the muscle cars. But it wasn't a total disaster. Some fun could still be got out of the driving model if you picked the right car and learnt how it worked.
But there is one thing I hated about the game. The constant tyre squeal! So irritating! I had to work really hard to blank that out. It screams at you every time you touch the steering at all! Several times that's put me off playing the game when I tried it again after a long break. Also the police chases were broken in that game. They were still fun but nowhere near as fun as on MW. If you picked a muscle or exotic car then trying to weave around them was really annoying. Also spike strips were completely pointless. Once you go through one it just slows you down a bit and reduces your turning ability. Many times I've gone through one and still found it easy to lose the police after. In MW they were a real danger. If you hit one it was all over. Another problem with the police chases relates to the crew system which I'll talk about next.
That's broken too. The only useful ones are the blockers. The rest are completely useless for everything except unlocking extra parts. All they do is race ahead of you and steal the prize money. With blockers you can tell them to go behind you whenever you want and actually help you when you are in trouble. But the most useful blocker (also the crew member you get at the start of the game, making every other crew member you acquire through the game pointless) lowers your heat level whenever you race. So that makes it really hard to actually get in to a police chase when you want to! You can't start a police chase on purpose like on MW and it's really hard to get their attention by driving around.
The city the game was based in was pretty good, but not as good as before. I liked the idea of how each district was suited to a different style of car, but that never seemed to really make a difference in the actual races. So that idea kind of failed, but it did create lots of varied roads to drive around. The canyon environment and the races in them were pretty cool. They added even more variation to the game and were pretty well designed. The music they had on them was pretty awesome too.
Overall the game was still fun. Had it's ups and downs but still left me with a positive experience. It can't live up to previous games in the series though.
Prostreet - God damned abomination. HORRIFIC handling model, restrictive design compared to previous games. Pretentious vacuous style with annoying announcer. But I cannot stress enough how bad that handling model was. Totally unresponsive and wooly. It seemed to always do exactly what I didn't want it to do. I actually found it pretty offensive that they would expect me to enjoy that piece of crap, especially considering what the studio has proven they can do before.
Undercover - Had promise but failed pretty badly. The return to the open world cops-and-robbers gameplay was very welcome. But unfortunately is fell flat on it's face. The new city was pretty cool. It had some good roads and I liked how it was spread out between the huge highway. But none of the roads were as good as in U2 or MW. And the city also felt pretty boring and pointless. It was dreadfully dull and brown. And the design of the game made the existence of it completely redundant. The handling model was pretty bad. Better than Prostreet, but that's like saying it's better than terminal cancer. Cars bounced around everywhere and felt disconnected. Winning was more down to luck than anything else. Also the game ran at a horrific frame rate and was really grainy. It was plain ugly. I remember the customization in the game had some fun parts to it, but I can't remember anything about it. Still nothing compared to older games in the series. The story was abysmal too. No NFS game has ever had anything resembling a good story, but this one was insufferable. Some of the worst acting I've ever seen. It had a cool cops-and-robbers online mode which I had been waiting for MW but again it failed. The mode was incredibly restricted and the lag in the game made it impossible to play. Overall the game was a huge disappointment, which was so sad because it could have been so much more if it was given more time. Maybe an extra year in development...
Shift - I only played the demo of this game. Well, I say "played", but it was more like torture. It suffered from a lot of the same problems as Prostreet. I suppose objectively it was better than Prostreet in a lot of ways, but not the handling model. It was even worse. Unplayable. I really cannot conceive how anyone would even think that game was anything near ready for release, let alone actually be deserving of critical acclaim. You feel like you have no control at all. You move the stick and you car vaguely turns in that direction. You just pray that you somehow get around the corner. And the car slides everywhere. So irritating. And the sound of the gearbox was a joke. The sound effect sounds like it was lifted right out of Star Wars. Gearboxes aren't that loud! Stop it! Also the frame rate was awful and the draw distance was disgusting. Far worse than anything I've ever seen on this console generation. This game sickens me.
Hot Pursuit - This game is a curious one... Overall I think the game left me with a negative experience, but it had some aspects to it that were nice. The graphics were fantastic, and the ability to play on both sides of the law was cool. Gave a lot of variation to the gameplay. But again, the handling model was what killed the game. It was an improvement on the last 2 games but still not what I would call enjoyable. It felt sluggish. The cars at least felt like they were connected to the road, but braking was vague and unpredictable. The turn in felt like it had a delay to it as well, and it was hard to judge whether you were actually steering the right amount. The world map was okay. Nothing too spectacular. It had some nice scenery but there were no roads that were particularly enjoyable to drive on. And it was so small!! So so small! And I found the menu system to be pretty annoying. Way too busy and overcomplicated. I was always enraged by how you couldn't skip the cut scenes when you unlock something. Those went on far too long. I find it hard to believe that this game was made by Criterion. Totally below par for their usual efforts.
Shift 2 - This one was a bit of a surprise. It was far better than I was expecting. I only rented the game but every so often I consider buying it. But I've never been able to justify it. It was everything Shift 1 was but better. Great graphics and effects and the track list was top notch. Maybe even the best list of real tracks I've seen in a game. The customization was really good as well. It was perfectly in tune with the kind of car culture vibe that's so rich right now. The partnership with Speedhunters worked well. But I think Speedhunters got the raw end of the deal on that one. The game got a bunch of tool content but Speedhunters has become sullied by being associated with the series. But again the deal breaker was the handling model. It was leaps and bounds better than the previous Shift but still had problems. It was still pretty vague, but manageable. The way cars bounce around was pretty annoying though. That ruined a lot of races and pales in comparison to Forza, despite the game being marketed as "the most realistic driving game ever". That is just a bare-faced lie. Total BS. But I admit if they make another Shift game which is improved as much over this one as it was over the first it might be worth getting.
The Run - I only played the demo to this one as well, just to try it. From day 1 it looked like an insult to the whole racing game genre. They brought back the studio that proved several times over that they can't make a good game out of the series anymore. The concept of the game sounded good but from what I've heard it didn't turn out so well. But from what I did play I can say that the game looks ugly and plays like crap. The cars look like they are made out of clay and (surprise surprise) the handling model is another joke. The cars have no feel and steering feels completely disconnected, and braking is like playing Russian roulette. It feels like you are just long for the ride. You're not in control at all. Very passive experience. The set pieces were idiotic and have no place in the game. It's like if Michael Bay made the game (that's probably why they got him to make a trailer). Also they released the game at a stupid time. The same year as the previous game for fuck's sake!
So yeah, that's my experience with the series. Sorry for the huge wall of text and the incomprehensible ramblings. I'm pretty tired right now but I had a lot to say about the series. People don't talk much about racing games here, and I love the genre. One of my favourites along with RPGs. I wish the series would just slow the fuck down and take some time to really make something worth buying. I want to like the series but time and time again they keep spewing out crap.
Hot Pursuit 2 - Great game. Was never that in to it that much but I had some good times with it. It was actually the 2nd NFS game I owned. I got Underground first.
Underground - Fantastic game. Really made a bit impact on me and started a huge trend in racing games focusing on the tuner style. My tastes in cars have changed a bit since then but the game is still great fun. It's also still a pretty hard game. Takes some reasonable skill.
Underground 2 - Blew my mind. Took everything that was fantastic about the first game and blew the concept wide open. Fantastic feel to the cars and great open city to drive in. Yet again it was a game that defined a genre. I loved it so much I bought it twice. Once on GC and then again on PS2. Still have lots of fun with it today.
Most Wanted - Another amazing game, but where the cracks start to show. Lost some things but also added a lot of things. I was disappointed that some of the customization options were taken out, but they more than made up for it with a wider range of cars and bringing back police chases. And that police chase mechanic was so amazing. I used to spend hours and hours just trying to get the police to chase me just for the fun of it. The city layout was also really good. I don't know if it was objectively better than the city in U2, but that place holds a special place in my memory. More than the city in MW. The handling model in MW was really good. About as good as the one in U2. Like the rest of the game it's better in some ways, but worse in others. Also I wasn't really a fan of the speedbreaker thing. Always felt a bit cheap to me. I try to avoid using it as much as I can. I also got this game twice. When I first got the game I didn't have a 360 so I got it on PS2. I also got the limited edition version which was only available on PS2. Then I got it again on 360 when I got one, even though I had already finished the game on PS2. Had a ball with that game and I still go on it sometimes.
Carbon - Pretty flawed but still fun. The last NFS game that I've been able to enjoy playing for extended periods. I liked the visual style they went for in the game. It was like an evolution of the Underground games. The Autosculpt idea was really cool, but wasn't implemented as well as it deserved to be. More thought should have gone in to it. The different classes for cars was a terrible idea. They screwed up the characteristics of a lot of cars, and how some of them compare is just idiotic. Like making a Lotus bad at handling and overrating lots of the muscle cars. But it wasn't a total disaster. Some fun could still be got out of the driving model if you picked the right car and learnt how it worked.
But there is one thing I hated about the game. The constant tyre squeal! So irritating! I had to work really hard to blank that out. It screams at you every time you touch the steering at all! Several times that's put me off playing the game when I tried it again after a long break. Also the police chases were broken in that game. They were still fun but nowhere near as fun as on MW. If you picked a muscle or exotic car then trying to weave around them was really annoying. Also spike strips were completely pointless. Once you go through one it just slows you down a bit and reduces your turning ability. Many times I've gone through one and still found it easy to lose the police after. In MW they were a real danger. If you hit one it was all over. Another problem with the police chases relates to the crew system which I'll talk about next.
That's broken too. The only useful ones are the blockers. The rest are completely useless for everything except unlocking extra parts. All they do is race ahead of you and steal the prize money. With blockers you can tell them to go behind you whenever you want and actually help you when you are in trouble. But the most useful blocker (also the crew member you get at the start of the game, making every other crew member you acquire through the game pointless) lowers your heat level whenever you race. So that makes it really hard to actually get in to a police chase when you want to! You can't start a police chase on purpose like on MW and it's really hard to get their attention by driving around.
The city the game was based in was pretty good, but not as good as before. I liked the idea of how each district was suited to a different style of car, but that never seemed to really make a difference in the actual races. So that idea kind of failed, but it did create lots of varied roads to drive around. The canyon environment and the races in them were pretty cool. They added even more variation to the game and were pretty well designed. The music they had on them was pretty awesome too.
Overall the game was still fun. Had it's ups and downs but still left me with a positive experience. It can't live up to previous games in the series though.
Prostreet - God damned abomination. HORRIFIC handling model, restrictive design compared to previous games. Pretentious vacuous style with annoying announcer. But I cannot stress enough how bad that handling model was. Totally unresponsive and wooly. It seemed to always do exactly what I didn't want it to do. I actually found it pretty offensive that they would expect me to enjoy that piece of crap, especially considering what the studio has proven they can do before.
Undercover - Had promise but failed pretty badly. The return to the open world cops-and-robbers gameplay was very welcome. But unfortunately is fell flat on it's face. The new city was pretty cool. It had some good roads and I liked how it was spread out between the huge highway. But none of the roads were as good as in U2 or MW. And the city also felt pretty boring and pointless. It was dreadfully dull and brown. And the design of the game made the existence of it completely redundant. The handling model was pretty bad. Better than Prostreet, but that's like saying it's better than terminal cancer. Cars bounced around everywhere and felt disconnected. Winning was more down to luck than anything else. Also the game ran at a horrific frame rate and was really grainy. It was plain ugly. I remember the customization in the game had some fun parts to it, but I can't remember anything about it. Still nothing compared to older games in the series. The story was abysmal too. No NFS game has ever had anything resembling a good story, but this one was insufferable. Some of the worst acting I've ever seen. It had a cool cops-and-robbers online mode which I had been waiting for MW but again it failed. The mode was incredibly restricted and the lag in the game made it impossible to play. Overall the game was a huge disappointment, which was so sad because it could have been so much more if it was given more time. Maybe an extra year in development...
Shift - I only played the demo of this game. Well, I say "played", but it was more like torture. It suffered from a lot of the same problems as Prostreet. I suppose objectively it was better than Prostreet in a lot of ways, but not the handling model. It was even worse. Unplayable. I really cannot conceive how anyone would even think that game was anything near ready for release, let alone actually be deserving of critical acclaim. You feel like you have no control at all. You move the stick and you car vaguely turns in that direction. You just pray that you somehow get around the corner. And the car slides everywhere. So irritating. And the sound of the gearbox was a joke. The sound effect sounds like it was lifted right out of Star Wars. Gearboxes aren't that loud! Stop it! Also the frame rate was awful and the draw distance was disgusting. Far worse than anything I've ever seen on this console generation. This game sickens me.
Hot Pursuit - This game is a curious one... Overall I think the game left me with a negative experience, but it had some aspects to it that were nice. The graphics were fantastic, and the ability to play on both sides of the law was cool. Gave a lot of variation to the gameplay. But again, the handling model was what killed the game. It was an improvement on the last 2 games but still not what I would call enjoyable. It felt sluggish. The cars at least felt like they were connected to the road, but braking was vague and unpredictable. The turn in felt like it had a delay to it as well, and it was hard to judge whether you were actually steering the right amount. The world map was okay. Nothing too spectacular. It had some nice scenery but there were no roads that were particularly enjoyable to drive on. And it was so small!! So so small! And I found the menu system to be pretty annoying. Way too busy and overcomplicated. I was always enraged by how you couldn't skip the cut scenes when you unlock something. Those went on far too long. I find it hard to believe that this game was made by Criterion. Totally below par for their usual efforts.
Shift 2 - This one was a bit of a surprise. It was far better than I was expecting. I only rented the game but every so often I consider buying it. But I've never been able to justify it. It was everything Shift 1 was but better. Great graphics and effects and the track list was top notch. Maybe even the best list of real tracks I've seen in a game. The customization was really good as well. It was perfectly in tune with the kind of car culture vibe that's so rich right now. The partnership with Speedhunters worked well. But I think Speedhunters got the raw end of the deal on that one. The game got a bunch of tool content but Speedhunters has become sullied by being associated with the series. But again the deal breaker was the handling model. It was leaps and bounds better than the previous Shift but still had problems. It was still pretty vague, but manageable. The way cars bounce around was pretty annoying though. That ruined a lot of races and pales in comparison to Forza, despite the game being marketed as "the most realistic driving game ever". That is just a bare-faced lie. Total BS. But I admit if they make another Shift game which is improved as much over this one as it was over the first it might be worth getting.
The Run - I only played the demo to this one as well, just to try it. From day 1 it looked like an insult to the whole racing game genre. They brought back the studio that proved several times over that they can't make a good game out of the series anymore. The concept of the game sounded good but from what I've heard it didn't turn out so well. But from what I did play I can say that the game looks ugly and plays like crap. The cars look like they are made out of clay and (surprise surprise) the handling model is another joke. The cars have no feel and steering feels completely disconnected, and braking is like playing Russian roulette. It feels like you are just long for the ride. You're not in control at all. Very passive experience. The set pieces were idiotic and have no place in the game. It's like if Michael Bay made the game (that's probably why they got him to make a trailer). Also they released the game at a stupid time. The same year as the previous game for fuck's sake!
So yeah, that's my experience with the series. Sorry for the huge wall of text and the incomprehensible ramblings. I'm pretty tired right now but I had a lot to say about the series. People don't talk much about racing games here, and I love the genre. One of my favourites along with RPGs. I wish the series would just slow the fuck down and take some time to really make something worth buying. I want to like the series but time and time again they keep spewing out crap.
Shift was a lot better than ProStreet in some respects and a lot worse in others. For example, the drift mode was horrible and car customisation (a strong point of the series since Underground) was pretty much non-existent. I thought the first-person view was pretty over-rated too.Scrustle said:
As for the handling though, the developers deliberately went for a more "realistic" model and it was something that definitely improved as you got better cars - something that the demo really wouldn't have showcased. You certainly couldn't drive the cars as you would have in the Underground-era games, as it was all about clean and efficient lines, not powersliding.
I enjoyed Most Wanted the most, dispite it having the worst customising options it was still very fun, then Hot pursuit 2010. I'm waiting for The Run to arrive this week.
The original and the 2010 Hot Pursuit games are pretty much the only racing games I've ever particularly liked... and I loved both of them. The original was great at the time, but obviously limited by the technology of the time. The 2010 incarnation is my idea of a perfect racing game.
I don't play racing games, but my wife likes NFSUG2 very much.Revell said:
She tried a few more recent titles, but they were overcomplicated for her tastes.