Need for speed review. Need for Speed (2015)

We were promised a full reboot of the series. We were promised all the best times Underground and Most Wanted, flavored with full web integration. Well, somewhere in the heart Need for Speed really does hide all the promises.

Prologue

The Electronic Arts Black Box, which delighted us in the early 2000s with the best games in this racing series, has not existed for several years. After closing, the guys from this studio dispersed to new places of work, doing along the way The Crew and World of Speed, and their yoke within Electronic Arts was first taken over by the authors Burnout, then Ghost Games. After not too good Rivals did not really believe in the success of a complete restart at their hands, but they promised a lot and, as always, competently.

Heart at Need for Speed 2015 really knocks as it did in 2003, when many of our readers were still in school. We were presented with the very excitement, those very night races. Let the city not stand out too much against the background of, for example, a giant The Crew, but the tracks inside Venture Bay were built very competent: there is always where to turn around, where to knock, where to go through a gentle turn by drifting, and so on. Maybe he lacks lighting and seems faded, but we'll talk about that later.

They can when they want

In the meantime, about the good - about drifting. He is in Need for Speed turned out to be high level and requires almost no getting used to. Difficulties begin only on difficult tracks, but the rest of the time the spectacle on the screen is what is needed. Especially if you turn on the action camera that everyone has seen in the videos. It allows you not only to accurately determine the angle of the skid, but also to maintain the direction of movement, which is very helpful. And you can safely disbelieve those who scold Need for Speed for physics - it is moderately difficult and often reminds of itself at high speeds, when any movement of the steering wheel can pull the car to the side.

Speaking of drifting, we must also mention the famous jimkhana - damn spectacular races, the essence of which consists of a combination of speed and style, jumping and drifting. They were invented in Japan (yes, the inhabitants of this country can not only in cartoons) and popularized by Ken Block, who, after breaking the contract with Codemasters, found a place in Electronic Arts and Need for Speed. This can be considered a major gameplay innovation that delivers a lot of fun.

But as always with EA, there is one "but" - a strange balance of difficulty. For some reason, some ordinary ring or sprint races are difficult to pass, but even a beginner can gain the required amount in drift. Naturally, dzhimkhana also suffered from this, and the races, if they do not treat them with respect, are more reminiscent of a circus than a sport, when there is no point at all to carefully "trim" each tree - why, if there will be a gentle turn on which it will be possible score half the points you need and relax again?

The highly publicized "5 Driving Styles" turned out to be not what was expected, and becoming an adherent of one thing will not work. But you didn't believe in those promises, did you? Even in advertising, it sounded impossible. In the end, what we have is five friends, each of whom is a fan of some kind of star: speed lover Magnus Walker, the Risky Devil drifters team, tuning master Nakai-san, the outrageous Morohoshi-san and, in fact, stylish Ken Block. Each of the five gives their tasks - time trials, team drift (the closer to the team, the more points), jimhanna, sprint and ... that's all.

Attention, police wanted

Why four? Thing is, the police in Venture Bay are plushies. They are not looking for you in this city, but you are looking for them. And finding them can be so difficult that tasks inspired by Morohoshi's deeds are not impossible to complete, but it takes too long to look for a suitable opportunity. We do not know at all why this was done, because it leaves the red line of violations as an outsider.

Returning to our "five samurai", all these styles remain just a way of leveling up and branches in the story. Impressed someone - good for you, now the next one. Trying to earn reputation and levels with one thing will not work - in any race there will be drift, and destruction, and tuning, points for which at the end of the race are generally not clear how they are counted.

There is probably some kind of complex system, since tuning itself is quite complex. Not the most impressive in terms of size, the fleet consists of 51 cars for every taste - from classics of the 80s to super-fashionable super-fast supercars. The main thing here is balance. How do you like the tuned Volvo 242, which takes less than three seconds to reach a hundred? By the way, it turns out to be even faster than an expensive Lotus with similar bells and whistles. It takes us back to the times Most Wanted 2005, when any car was competitive after all the bells and whistles.

Moreover, they will all react to tuning with their unique change in driving characteristics, and not every purchase will be 100% useful in any car. You have to choose, watch carefully, and if you can't go through some long sprint, then perhaps your car needs to think about maximum speed to the detriment of overclocking. And if you are going to jihana, then you should put the appropriate tires. This is a completely normal situation in Need for Speed. The only upsetting thing is that the effect of nitro at any level will not be particularly noticeable, just adding a little more seconds to the time of its use for each rank. Alas, we no longer rush at the speed of light by holding one key.

The external visualization editor is not far behind, but you will have to spend even more time in it if you want to achieve results. Stickers - the sea, body color is adjustable in the widest range of settings, body kits are not universal for all cars, and so on. But it will be enough time after the release before we see some really interesting work.

Element Eighty - Broken Promises

We are ready. 1000 horsepower in the Skyline, two hours in the render editor, it's time to kick the ass of someone alive, not artificial. And here Ghost Games have composed the greatest fiasco in their not yet long history.

It will be easier to explain with an example. You are constantly online, and seven more real players ride around the city with you. This counts as your "team". But in order to start a race with them, you will have to first send all of them invitations to this team. But they have no idea what you want from them! Someone goes through the plot, someone rummages in the car, and they do not care about your desire to drive together. Well, let's say we managed to persuade a few. But even after that, you need to come to the place of the race (well, there is a teleport for the lazy) and send out invitations again, and only then it will be possible to ride. And where is the lobby for those who IMMEDIATELY want to come face to face? Electronic Arts felt we didn't need this.

Moreover, the author sees almost no advantages from being constantly online. Another simple example - you are going through a difficult sprint, the finish line is already near, and suddenly eight hungry nutcrackers fly into the opposite lane. Ah, so this is another player who also fulfills the plot! But if you can still dodge the truck, then eight Lamborghini irons will blow you away for a sweet soul. Maybe these players can help you complete the storyline race? No, they cannot - you must first complete it yourself. And also there is no pause, as in Rivals. The only plus from all this - in free movement around the city, you can stumble upon a player, offer him a race and start right from this place, and the game itself will come up with a route. But you must admit that the benefits for all the torments are somehow not enough. Leaderboards with friends' faces can sweeten the pill, but not for long.

Ghost Games' failures don't end there. From now on in Need for Speed has no magic bumpers to save you from the wrong route. Instead, there is a marked route on the mini-map, which, by the way, is not the most informative, and small arrows on the surface of the route indicating the right path. The problem is that they are not visible on sharp turns, and turning in the wrong direction is as easy as shelling pears. But you cannot return to the track with a wave of a magic button; instead, you need to turn around and do it yourself. Well, or start the race again.

Story Of The Year - And The Hero Will Drown

Well at least the graphics did not disappoint. The car models are beautiful, the wet asphalt looks amazing and the water drips from the bottom of the car. Of course, it is not recommended to stop and look at the surrounding walls - you risk slipping on the soap. But strong point Frostbite Engine here, thank God, is viewed perfectly well, and the lighting turned out to be very realistic. But why make different times of day at different locations fixed? It turns out to be comical situations, because after driving through one area, you can look at the sunset, and at dusk, and at dawn in five minutes. And all this is seasoned with a not very pleasant post-processing filter, which is especially noticeable on screen shots.

It looks like Ghost Games hasn't tested it thoroughly Need for Speed (minuscule beta test does not count), because the comic is not only observed in this - all five adherents of the styles will call you on the phone. Call VERY often. One and the same character, judging by the conversations, may even be in two places at the same time, trying to remind you of the forgotten races that you did not pass. “Hey bro, Risky Devil is in town. This is our only chance! ". “Listen, Risky Devil can drive with us, this is a once in a lifetime chance!”... For the tenth time, nothing remains but irritation from such conversations. Although, it is worth praising the actors who tried during the scenes, it is at least not their fault.

Epilogue, with hope for the best

Maybe the city hides some secrets and is worth exploring with grief? Unfortunately, there is nothing of value in it, except for spare parts and body kits, and the notorious "donuts" (drift "ring") give so little criminally reputation that you quickly forget about them. Even a very decent soundtrack fails to distract from annoying factors. Let the times of Static-X, Element Eighty be a thing of the past, but what we were given in 2015 can be listened to too.

So what is it that Ghost Games ruined everything? In fact, the central part of the game is made the way the fans wanted it, and you shouldn't listen to those who think it's new. Need for Speed boring. But everything else is the worst ideas of Criterion and Ghost Games, and if you want multiplayer, then at least you should wait until it is brought to mind.

Night rider

Events on the world map open as you level up. The right to participate in prestigious races must still be earned.

But let's start in order. There is a night city, and it is larger than Olympic City and Bayview combined. It's hard to find fault with the surroundings: there are mountain serpentines, ideal for honing the skill of controlled drifts, and wide freeways with long straight sections, where it is easy to check what you can squeeze out of your eight cylinders.

The only annoying thing is the forks with dividers, confused like headphones in a pocket - unsuccessfully rebuilt in the wrong lane at a speed of 300 km / h, missed the fork in the road, and at least start the race again. Supercars with their 1000 horsepower under the hood look a little superfluous here: they perfectly entered the spacious roads of Redview County, and in the city their potential is difficult to reveal.

Each race is commented. Even if you drive like James May, Twitter will give you something to praise for.

The types of competitions are also reminiscent of the classics: ring races, sprint, drift, time trial, only drag racing is not, but it is promised in patches. There were also new events: dzhimkhana, where you will not only have to drift for points, but also pass the route in a specified time; togu - the same competition with drifts, but with a bonus to the leader of the race; team drift, where you cannot leave the group in order to earn points.

Yes, in Ventura Bay they like to burn rubber in drifts more than chase each other. In most competitions it doesn't matter at all which one you come to, the main thing is to accumulate points. In this regard, a drift trial looks a little awkward, where there are no rivals, no timer, and it is enough to make a few police turns to score points. Good or bad, I don’t presume to judge, just take note.

Drifts in Need for Speed are not very realistic, but gliding on the track is easy and pleasant. If you've hated drifting in other games, you might love it here.

A few points to the nostalgia are added by the characters familiar from the first Underground - Eddie and Melissa. It seemed that just recently this couple stood between you and the title of the coolest racer in the city, and now they are invited to a series of fifteen races with the opportunity to win the legendary Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec. However, do not count on some kind of intrigue - it's just a race, nothing more.

With a kind word, it would be worth remembering the soundtrack, after all, the game has tracks from almost all the classic parts of the series, but there is nothing to say in an amicable way. The music here is not that bad, it is like a sniper's bullet: it flew into one ear, flew into the other. There are very few memorable compositions, this collection does not stand up to competition with Underground, not to mention the very dynamic soundtrack of The Run.

If the game had been made by Polyphony Digital, there would probably be some rare achievement for that.

Everything else in the new Need for Speed is a reference to Rivals and current trends in general. Instead of speedpoints, we accumulate reputation (it is given for any "sneeze" on the road), which opens up access to advanced competitions and car improvements. New cars and their attachments are purchased for credits awarded for winning events and completing daily challenges.

The series continues to drag into the abyss of online. You always play with up to eight riders: they go about their business and are easy to track on the city map. And it doesn't matter if you want to challenge them or race together - unlike Rivals, an Internet connection is required, and if the connection is broken, you will simply be thrown into the menu even in the middle of the competition.

You can call other players to the races, and if one of them wins, and you are ahead of all the bots, the victory is still yours.

Apart from the online collar, the game does not force teamwork in the way that The Crew, where some races are easier to go with friends, and others are not allowed at all until a group is typed. It is easy to go through the entire campaign alone, and I don’t remember any precedents for someone from living players to interfere with winning the race - the world is so big that you simply will not intersect with them.

Correspondence competitions have become less: there are no more photo radars and high-speed sections that measure how quickly you and your friends passed this or that section. There are no counters showing that someone was able to score more points in a test run. Only occasionally do you see Autolog recommendations calling for surpassing the result of a friend, but this is the lesser of possible evils.

Five for one

The Need for Speed series can be endlessly scolded for being too simple, secondary and self-copying - all this is inherent in the reporting part, but the developers nevertheless "pumped over" some game elements, and first of all it concerns control. Let the game remain the purest arcade, but in terms of the number of settings for driving characteristics, it will plug many serious simulators into the belt.

Each car (except for prize money) can be controlled by the drift-grip scale. Your task is to find the line between the concepts of “cow on ice” and “one hundred ton iron” so that the car does not fly off the track at the slightest collision, and does not resemble a tram chained to the rails at turns. In some races, grip is important, in others skidding, so you can't get by with one calculation for the whole game.

I didn't have to drag the slider to extreme values on the grip. The fast wheelbarrow is competitive even on a balanced configuration.

This fine-tuning does not end there. Disable the skid stabilization system? Make nitro more powerful or longer? Decrease the pressure on the front and rear tires? Increase steering response? Adjust the corner entry radius? No, this is not a joke, the game is really called Need for Speed, and all this is not only there, but it really affects the handling.

The "stuffing" under the hood also matters. Differential, block of cylinders, brakes, suspension - everything can be improved, there would be credits. New parts are usually better than the basic ones on an incremental basis, but it does not always make sense to install everything at all: Lamborghini Avendator, for example, becomes almost uncontrollable after installing a turbocharger, so I decided to abandon it on this car.

Daily Challenges - good way earn extra money. And for completing all three in a day, they also give unique stickers.

Those who like to stand out have prepared a luxurious editor for stickers and coloring pages: you can stick around a wheelbarrow with anything, even leave some kind of inscription on it, and if you are too lazy to mess around with all this, several ready-made "skins" are at your service. It's strange that the custom wraps library got lost when ported to a PC - some work is possible with the toolkit here.

But the external body kits (hoods, bumpers, spoilers) in the new Need for Speed are obscenely few: at least a couple of options, and some details have yet to be looked for on the city streets and unlocked as the driver level increases.

Town. Night. Raindrops fall on the windshield and you gaze sadly into the distance. The Snapshot Pro photo mode creates this mood, but so far only on consoles.

For the first time in a long time, something resembling a storyline campaign appeared in the series, and this time the creators moved away from the almost canonical scheme with betrayal and rise from the bottom to the top, overcoming the majors on pumped cars. The writers got rid of such a youthful representation of street races and were able to convey the atmosphere of these competitions more faithfully.

The story revolves around an unnamed hero and five of his friends. Each of the homies is obsessed with his own, let's say, driving style (speed, style, team, tuning, violations) and dreams of climbing in this direction, reaching the level of their idols. So, the haughty Manu longs to get into Ken Block's team, becoming one of the hoonigan, and the cutie Robin raves with a group of street drifters Risky Devil.

During a free ride around the city, you can only stuff turnips. That is, reputation points. But this is also faster to do in the races.

There is no plot development as such: you go through the marked races one after another, then get acquainted with the style icons, helping your friends to make a career. You can move along the branches sequentially or in parallel, so I completed a series of Spike's tasks at the end, since sprints need a powerful car and top-end parts, and on them you should first accumulate credits and reputation, whereas in drifting this is not critical.

And do you know what makes this the best script in the history of the series? Excellent rollers. You are often invited to a garage, cafe or refuge for intimate conversations about racing, cars and tuning, and this atmosphere of geeks, who are somewhere “on their wave”, is conveyed here incomparably. Even for me, a person who is infinitely far from street racing, it is easy to believe that this is how everything really happens.

There are enough pretty girls in the game, but it never comes to "ride" on one of them.

Another advantage of Need for Speed is its compliance with the fashion of its time. Hints in the form of "tweets" pop up on loading screens, the heroes of the game post videos of their rides on YouTube in the hope that their idol will "like" them. Something similar has already happened in GRID, but here is a completely different level of perception of modern culture, because the dialogues are voiced and the videos are perceived as a movie.

By the way, about the voice acting: it is done with dignity. The level of dubbing in Electronic Arts games has grown dramatically in recent years, and it seems that there can be no complaints about the Need for Speed actors. There are no serious blunders in text translation (and there are a lot of texts and subtitles in the game): after all, the result is that the publisher is engaged in localization directly, without the involvement of intermediaries.

Running in a circle

Despite a lot of obvious improvements, the game does not pull on the heir to the throne of the genre: even in comparison with the good, but passable Rivals, the new part was not better in everything. The fleet has more than fifty cars, but unlike its predecessor, only five can be stored in the garage, and in the case of a sale, the purchased improvements are also lost, and their cost is not fully reimbursed.

But what is sadder is that almost all races can be completed on two or three cars, so there is no motivation to try something new, and cars really differ in their driving style, the difference between four-wheel drive and rear-wheel drive is especially noticeable. In the end, it all comes down to complexity: it's okay when story-driven rides are easy, but apart from them, there is really nothing to do in Ventura Bay.

The lack of complexity was compensated by the duration of the races. Towards the end, races of 20-30 kilometers will become the order of the day.

Events are scattered throughout the city: drift, sprint, time trial - everything is the same as in the campaign. At first, it is interesting to deal with them, especially if you find some kind of competition to your liking, but when you are fed up, digging up money and reputation, you will most likely score on them, because there are no rewards for completing them, and swinging is much more profitable in story-driven races.

Local gathering has the same fate. Visiting places for photographing, finding free parts, making "donuts" (turning on the front wheels in a skid, in a specified area) - all this is interesting only at the beginning of a career, when there is not much money and reputation. The map is not very logical either: by default, already collected items of the collection are displayed on it, although this does not make any sense.

The photographing spots only allow you to see the sights of the city. And you can hardly remember these places after the photo session.

The most unpleasant surprise was the policemen. They are in Need for Speed, and this is where their merits end. And so that you better understand the level of their professionalism, remember the gendarmes from Saint-Tropez or Commissioner Gibert from the movie "Taxi", with a discount on the fact that local law enforcement officers drive a Ford Crown Victoria with a 365-horsepower engine and simply cannot catch up with your sports car.

What does a typical Ventura Bay chase look like? You are in second gear and slow down constantly to keep the cops behind. This is necessary in order to fulfill the conditions in the spirit of "save up a $ 5000 fine" and "break two obstacles in one round-up." There are no helicopters, no spiked belts, no EMP, and the number of wanted stars only affects the frequency of outposts on the road.

You can negotiate with the cops if the amount of the fine does not exceed $ 500. Sometimes it's easier than getting caught up in another boring chase.

The ill-conceived details are depressing. The control style changes only in the garage, so you often have to rush there, observing by no means fast downloads. You cannot filter events by type on the map, and some even have the same icons. At the start of the race, you are asked to position yourself in the desired direction, although then it is still loading and you start steering after the cut-scene.

Alas, the PC version is currently inferior to the console version in terms of fullness, and we missed not only the freshest update with hot rods and drag, but also elements of past patches, for example, gas stations are still not active, at the entrance to which visual damage to cars is eliminated ... The good news is that the developers did not split the game into a bunch of paid DLCs, well, let's hope that the elements lost during porting will still be returned to us.

Five solutions that could make Need for Speed better

Open world. The ability to travel around the city outside of the races appeared in Underground 2, but the roads are not the whole world. Remember Forza Horizon 2, where you can cut as you like through fields, forests, meadows, and some tracks even go through rough terrain. And even if it were a direct analogue, there is nothing like this on the PC or on the PlayStation 4, and is not expected, so such a concept could take off. Ubisoft tried to work in this direction with their The Crew, but this undertaking can hardly be called successful.

Unusual means of transportation. Motorcycles, cards, buggies, off-road vehicles, monster trucks are rare guests in games, except for specialized "serious" simulators and the aforementioned loser The Crew. But in the old Midnight Club II it was entertaining to ride a two-wheeled vehicle, not to mention GTA, which is full of everything. And the more variety in the game, including special units and races for them, the higher the likelihood that the player will not delete it after completing the story.

Motivation for pumping. The bitter experience of restarting Most Wanted showed that if all the cars were made available immediately, nothing good would come of it: the players rode, realized that there was nothing to do in the game, and fled. Buying cars for money, as in Rivals and NFS'15, is also a bad decision: you can save up too quickly for the most expensive car. It is much more interesting to get new cars for all kinds of challenges or setting records, like in Burnout Paradise. All useful actions, from gathering to winning races, should be rewarded, and always something desirable.

Spectacular moments. Graphically, the new part is good: it looks modern, fashionable and expensive, but after hundreds of races you will hardly remember anything that would have surprised you in an amicable way. But in The Run there was an escape from an avalanche, and a race in a sandstorm, and skirmishes with mafiosi armed to the teeth - in a racing game you can give free rein to your imagination. And even if you add more interactivity to the roads, like a water tower falling on a script, there would be a completely different feeling from the game.

Dynamic plot. The story in the latest NFS is good and original in its own way, but it won't go off twice. And if other games are firmly entrenched in the rest of the niches, why not take a step towards cinematography and release Call of Duty from the world of racing? In fact, no one has done rides on behalf of a car, scenarios about policemen driving can also be counted on one hand - a field untapped for imagination, if only again not to enter into the cliché "you killed my brother and I will take revenge."

Conclusion

The series does not stand still, Ghost Games cannot be accused of doing nothing, as well as the publisher selling the same product from year to year. Games turn out to be different all the time, but they don't get better: alone good ideas remain overboard, new ones come in their place, also not bad, but frankly weak points for some reason it doesn't get smaller.

The new game in the series is good in itself, it is not much inferior to the classics, but the trouble is that others have already been able to do better. For fans of open-world racing, there is a wonderful Forza Horizon 2, connoisseurs of spectacular accidents still drive in Burnout Paradise, and in terms of original concepts, no one has surpassed Driver San Francisco. There are simply no niches left for Need for Speed these days.

Verdict: the promised restart of the series turned out to be another game in the spirit of its predecessors. Decent racing arcade, but completely exhaustive after completing the story.

Rating: 7.9 ("good").

Vitaly Krasnovid aka Dezintegration

We express our gratitude:

Nvidia for the key provided for the game.

Discussion of the game at the conference site.

Performance

The release of the game on PC was delayed by a whole five months, but the developers spent this time with benefit, doing everything possible to make the game work at 1080p at 60 frames per second. My observations have shown that to ensure such performance at high graphics settings, a video card of the level of GeForce 970 is not needed, as it is written in the system requirements: a comfortable ride is possible on a GeForce GTX 770.

Nvidia itself recommends this configuration for comfortable gaming in Full HD resolution.

Sometimes in involuntary places there are drawdowns of up to 40 FPS, but judging by the reviews of other players, this phenomenon does not depend on the power of the hardware and happens on different configurations, which means it will most likely be fixed in the next updates.

For "ultra" two gigabytes of video memory is no longer enough - the FPS counter drops to 30. But the difference between "ultra" and "high" is purely arbitrary.

Outwardly, the game practically does not differ from the console versions, even the grain effect remained, which they promised to remove. But in general, the visual part makes a very pleasant impression, and you can't say about Need for Speed that it suffered during porting.

Restart Need for speed from Ghost games PC users had to wait a long time to find out what to do. So, new game promised to be a return to the origins, to the very atmosphere of "Fast and the Furious". Everything seems to be there: night, a community of illegal racers and a peculiar atmosphere. But the devil, as they say, is in the details ...

Operating system: Windows 10 (x64)
CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K @ 3.4 GHz
RAM: 8 GB
Video card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB

An Xbox 360 controller was used as a control.
Already at the entrance "L" to exit to Windows forces to put the keyboard aside.

The intro hints that NFS is primarily a big party.

First impressions

At the very beginning, the game plunges into an abundance of video inserts. Essentially, the interactive movie begins, it is often difficult to see how the video turns into gameplay. Immediately you feel like a part of something global, and not a simple inhabitant at the screen. There is no particular boringness or plot drama: the hero rode from the cops, received recognition, then immediately to the club / garage. The actors are fine too. As a result, the single player campaign looks like this: video, car, race, video, car, race, race, video ... Everything is like in the good old days.

An attempt to socialize the game as much as possible is striking - even tips when loading are given in the style of Twitter, and racers are bursting with their calls and messages in the messenger. Management for, in principle, typical. It is often called "tank" or "rail". It is still better to increase the sensitivity of the sticks (arrows) in advance, otherwise the steering will be zero.

I know that you actually came here with only one question:
"Does the new NFS have the spirit of the Underground or not !?"

I will not torment. The answer is partially. I even downloaded and played Underground 2 again on purpose for comparison.

Ghost Games managed to preserve and even slightly improve the behavior of cars, the atmosphere of the night city from Underground 2 (the same, by the way, empty and boring), make the modification of cars extremely pleasant and interesting, and also evoke a feeling of nostalgia with video inserts with a local get-together.

Alas, as such a reboot did not happen, just this time the creators tried to please both the old fan camp and the new one.
It turned out to be a mess: on the one hand, there was an open city and arcade network races (hello, the last parts), and on the other, there was a plot and a tense single career (hello to the good old ones). In this mess, they also added the police, who do not create a real threat, but add at least some kind of action. The soundtrack is also stuck somewhere in between.

Whether you specifically capture the spirit or not depends on your exacting attention to detail, as well as what exactly you liked about those games of the early 2000s.

Gameplay

You probably already know the basics about the gameplay. Open world, the deserted city of Ventura Bay, where bonuses and tests are scattered. Here, of course, there are no pedestrians and very little traffic. On some systems, the "seamless world" is filled with seams. In a literal sense: the car falls through the texture. This is rare, but it is a shame when you go in the first place, and in the end you find yourself in the Russian-Samara "pit".

The garage and a decent fleet of vehicles are definitely pleasing - over 50 cars are available for the player. Even before the release, it was known that all transport was open at once. It embarrassed and rejected: is it really that arcade search for cars again, as in? But the fears turned out to be false - you definitely will not have enough money to buy all the cars at once, you cannot find and "steal" them here. Therefore, you will have to open cars gradually, winning races. Even if the intrigue is broken in terms of which iron monster will be next.

Thoughtful tuning with a clear choice of details has already been praised by everyone and sundry. This sets the game apart from the genre, someone will obviously like to sit for hours in the garage, building the perfect look. You can even adjust the size of the ground clearance and wheel camber. With internal technical improvements, it is not so interesting - this is not a simulator for you. We just open the more expensive upgrades and put them on. Sometimes there are a couple of sliders with which you can play, but it is better to use ready-made templates for drifting or racing, without bothering too much, anyway, you will not see a special effect.

A few words about the features of the PC version

Let it be released with a delay, but all critical disadvantages have been removed: there is no severe limitation of 30 FPS, there is support for 4K resolution and a manual transmission mode. The PC version includes updates to Icons and Legends, as well as bug fixes.

I would like to note the annoying stupidity of AI in team races. For example, when it is necessary to enter the drift supposedly synchronously, points are taken into account only when both cars are together. Here, the computer sometimes decides to drive in and generally hammer on a turn, or it completely overwhelms, it crashes, and you have to drive under 60 km / h so that it does not lag behind. Fun race, huh?

Accidents in the game are another not very pleasant moment. It was as if they were trying to "skip" them. That is, the screen simply dims, at best a couple of strange flips of the car and that's it, loading, you are on the go again. I don’t want to say something bad, it’s subjective, but the accidents were much more spectacular and interesting. Damage for the genre is typical - when hitting a post at a speed of 200 km / h, the hood crumples and the bumper is scratched. It is clear, this is not Forza.

Network part

We tend to pay special attention to multiplayer, but there is nothing to say. At all. Clean (no cops) with the ability to complete races and competitions in co-op, beat other people's records and arrange duels. Without unnecessary lobbies, without problems, you can start a race with players from the network right here and now. Perhaps, if at least a dozen of your friends buy the game, all this will be fun and interesting, but, as reality shows, very few people allowed themselves to do it.

In any case, the game requires a constant connection to the official server, whether you want to connect to the network or not.

Soundtrack

To be honest, he's too dull. It always seemed to me that it should be part of the game, part of the drive. To squeeze everything out of the car to a drop under aggressive tracks and rejoice in tuning under the pretentious hip-hop. Music from Underground and Most Wanted was downloaded to phones, listened everywhere, and continue to listen. What now?

In total we have:

Excellent graphics on Frostbite 3 and normal optimization - 8 ;

Overall, solid gameplay: challenging storyline and great tuning - 7 ;

Good sound content, but extremely sluggish soundtrack - 6 ;

The middle network part is nothing new, but you can indulge with friends - 5 ;

The game turned out to be decent. But music is hard to forgive, as well as the lack of adrenaline-filled situations. However, maybe we just became too spoiled.

This material is saturated with nostalgia and good memories of the great past of NFS, in particular Underground and Most Wanted.

It is no exaggeration to say that this game was laid by many great expectations... Especially fans of the Need For Speed series and its legendary Underground. But as it usually happens, not all expectations were destined to come true ...

In this article, I want to tell you why the new Need for Speed rests on the laurels of the main street racing, trying to imitate the great Underground in everything, but is as far from it as Tomb Raider is from.

And also why the new Need for Speed will not become that icon for today's schoolchildren and students, and it is unlikely that it will make you think not only about street races, but also the desire to have your own car ...

Expectation vs Reality

From the very first trailers, the new Need For Speed has hinted that something unusual awaits us. All these videos in the style of dashing street races with police chases probably created a not entirely correct impression in the minds of people who bought the game. I wouldn't be surprised if many, like me, were waiting for something like the reincarnation of the masterpiece NFS: Underground.

To me, as an old Underground fan, the game shown in the trailers felt like that.

Old idea with new cars and modern game mechanics like reckless police chases. Just like in the trailer for the Coolio track. Yeah, I was dreaming.

https://youtu.be/vLQGXHy5m6Y

NFS 2015 doesn't smell like exciting police chases. The game can be described in two or three words - this is Underground 2 (if anyone remembers) with a screwed-on perverted social component, into which for some reason ridiculous police idiots were stuck.

Why ridiculous? Quite simply, the police here are not ferocious beaters, hunters who are trying in all real and unrealistic ways to stop you, an illegal street racer. No, these are timid, intelligent gendarmes who cautiously keep their distance from you, not wanting to create much trouble for you, slowly trudging after you along the night Ventura Bay.

Yes, even for such a person to find a policeman, you have to try more than to hide from him. It's not just easy, it doesn't create any hindrances.

Why screw up all this nonsense? It is clear that for show, but there is no interest or any sense in this.

Of particular concern is the fleet of Need For Speed 2015, there are a number of important points, thanks to which the game looks even more awkward.

It is very strange to see cars for 100k dollars and more in the battered garage of a night street racer. The guys hang out in eateries and cheap bars, and then get into their Porsche GTS3 and go to twist bagels. Ridiculous? Even more.

Yet this game is not about the rich, dissecting their terribly expensive supercars, but about street tramps who chase with their own kind for an extra couple of thousand green and "street authority".

And here Lamborghini (?) ?! How did they end up in a street racing game ?! The buddy who was responsible for the selection of the licensing of NFS 2015 machines, knowingly or not, planted a serious logic bomb under the setting of the game.

After all, if the guys from the street have 150k on the Aventador, then why should they compete, like homeless people for a couple of bottles on the night streets of a provincial town? Isn't it easier to come to a beautiful track with good coverage and drive there? There is no logic here.

Take a look at the list of cars in the first Underground:

Acura Integra Type R
Acura RSX
Dodge Neon (Mark I) Coupe DOHC ECC 2.0
Ford Focus ZX3
Honda civic si coupe
Honda s2000
Hyundai Tiburon GT RS Coupe
Mazda miata MX-5 NB
Mazda RX-7
Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX
Mitsubishi Lancer ES
Nissan 240SX
Nissan 350Z
Nissan Sentra SE-R Spec-V
Nissan Skyline GT-R (R34)
Peugeot 206 S16
Subaru Impreza
Toyota Celica GT-S
Toyota Supra
Volkswagen golf GTi (Mark IV) 1.8T

Do you see at least one really expensive car, supercar or at least a powerful sports coupe here? That - that and it.

This was the interest to take an ordinary serial car and bring it to mind, making your own coolest sports car on your knee, thanks to non-standard details and an external body kit. The player was interested in poking around in the tuning, I myself remember sitting for hours in the garage, perfecting his beloved Acura RSX. 🙂

Now take a look at the "humble" 2015 NFS vehicle list:

2006 Acura RSX
1988 BMW M3 Evolution ll (E30)
2014 BMW M2 Coupè
2014 BMW M4 Coupe (F82)
2006 BMW M3 E46
2010 BMW M3 E92
2008 Chevrolet Corvette Z06
2015 Chevrolet Camaro Z28
2011 Dodge Challenger SRT8 392
2014 Scion FR-S
2012 SRT Viper GTS
1987 Ferrari F40
2009 Ferrari 458 Italia
2015 Ford Mustang GT
1991 Ford Mustang
2015 Ford Focus RS
1969 Ford Mustang Boss 302
1965 Ford Mustang
2004 Honda S2000
2000 Honda Civic Type R
1992 Honda NSX Type R
2006 Lotus Exige S
1996 Mazda MX-5
2015 Mazda MX-5
2001 Mazda RX-7 Spirit R
2006 Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX MR
1989 Nissan 180SX Type-X (S13)
2002 Nissan Silvia Spec-R (S15)
1971 Nissan Skyline 2000GT-R (C10)
1999 Nissan Skyline GT-R (R34) V-spec
1993 GT-R Nissan Skyline GT-R (R-32)
2014 Nissan GT-R (R35)
1978 Nissan Fairlady 240ZG
2014 Lamborghini Huracan LP610-4
2011 Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4
2009 Lamborghini Murciélago LP670-4 SV
1999 Lamborghini Diablo SV
2015 McLaren 570S Coupé
2014 Mercedes AMG-GT
1972 Porsche 911 (901) Carrera RSR 2.8
2012 Porsche 911 (991) Carrera S
2015 Porsche 911 (991) GT3 RS
2015 Porsche Cayman GT4
2008 Subaru Impreza WRX STI
2013 Subaru BRZ
2012 Toyota GT-86
2001 Toyota Supra IV SZ-R
1986 Toyota Sprinter Trueno AE86
1976 Volkswagen Golf GTI MkI
1975 Volvo 242

This is a serious contrast. Only 50 perfectly copied virtual cars, which is many times more than in the first Underground.

Take, for example, a 1975 Volvo 242 - this is such a ridiculous iron trough on wheels, which, even at the time of its release on the market, could not be considered an interesting acquisition for those who like to drive.

I absolutely cannot understand what such a car can do on the streets of a modern city, let alone be used by a street racer to ride.

And that's just one example of the sheer absurdity of 2015 Need For Speed. After all, the same can be said about supercars, which also have nothing to do on this list, but for different reasons.

It follows from all this that it is simply not interesting to seriously engage in tuning your car, and at all.

Well, why, tell me, disfigure the already perfect McLaren 570S Coupe with wretched stickers and third-party body kits. The only thing I'm going to do is put more powerful unofficial parts under the hood, if they can be found.

We can safely say that the former excitement of customizing their car EA was killed, if not completely, then at least seriously discrete with these supercars.

Now imagine that this was just one and not even the most serious drawback of Need For Speed 2015. It gets worse.

Good and bad

If you set a goal and break the game into good and bad components as succinctly as possible, then you get such a list. Good first, as the list of bad things is much more comprehensive.

Bright moments:

Drive... The new Need for Speed has a drive that cannot be taken away from the game. Especially there is to put a movie camera, it becomes much more interesting to play with it.
Graphics... As practice has shown, the FrostBite engine scales well and is able to show a good, even beautiful picture. True, all this is spoiled by the eternal night of Ventura Bay.
Online... An interesting idea with online. Here, not everything is as smooth and good as we would like, but the idea as a whole is promising. It is pleasant to compete on the streets of Ventura Bay with live opponents, to look at their body kits, to show yourself. Perhaps this was the dream of many in the Underground era. It is a pity that sometimes this pleasure can spoil the imperfect network code.
2016 BMW M2... This is one of the few bright spots that can delight in the ever-gloomy Ventura Bay. The car turned out to be so excellent that a separate trailer was even specially removed for it.
Really cool tuning appearance... There has never been such an abundance of settings in NFS.

Unfortunately, there is much more bad in the game:

Thresh cinematic inserts... They begin to annoy from the very first minutes with their pathetic falsity. It is clear what effect the developers wanted to achieve, but they did not achieve it, the effect of immersion or even participation in "street racing life" does not appear either at the beginning or after ten hours of the game.
Street racers, diners in eateries ride cars for 150k and above. It's about super-expensive cars that have nothing to do in street races.
Timid cops who seem to be afraid to touch the rich racers, preferring not to get involved. Finding a cop on the night streets turns into a real challenge.
Deranged physics... Yes, I understand, this is arcade racing, blah blah and so on. But not to that extent! It is banally strange when for an ordinary tuned car it is chasing at 300 km / h in the city. And these magic bumpers that stop the car at the slightest tangential collision almost to zero. Frostbite is clearly not the engine where you can set up an adequate physics model. Indirectly, the developers agree with this, otherwise why leave the control of the car to the judgment of the players?
For all types of races (drift, sprint, etc.) the same car... In principle, this disadvantage also stems from an incorrect physical model. Every time you want to drive a drift, you will definitely have to go to the garage and change the control.
Soundtrack for an amateur... It is not a failure, but it does not take into account the taste preferences of different players. There is no trace of such a variety of musical genres as in Underground OST (which in fact became a bestseller).
Lack of challenges... NFS 2015 does not try to be difficult at all, some problems may arise only due to the physics curve.

In the remainder

If you are waiting for the release of the game on the PC, then I assure you, there is nothing special to wait, pass by. 4K resolution and better textures clearly won't make NFS 2015 dramatically better.

Purchase NFS 2015 at full cost(4000 rubles) in the PlayStation Store will be a form of madness. It would be more or less reasonable to purchase the game at big discounts, as I did when I bought it for 1,700 rubles.

Need For Speed 2015 is a soulless compilation of the series' past ideas. Not to call new ideas far-fetched social functions that work sideways and at random. At the same time, the Ghost developers managed to do a lot that was much worse in previous games, to take the same police chases for show.

After a number of attempts to restart the famous racing series, which were made throughout recent years we saw many different Need for speed... Arcade, realism, Free-to-Play and even remakes - they all had some success, but none of the later games in the series could get the fame that the dilogy had Underground and Most Wanted.

The next restart of the restart of restarts, which came out this year, was developed with fanfare and promises to make almost best game series. It speaks of this as the name of the game, devoid of any additions to the name (yeah, that's how it was simply written - Need for speed, even the year was not put down), and numerous news in the press.

As if returning to the days of Most Wanted, the creators of the game decided to do everything on a grand scale. First of all, this concerns the storyline campaign, for the “filming” of which five well-known people in narrow circles were invited at once - Magnus Walker, Ken Block, Nakai San, Risky Devil, Morohoshi San. If these names do not tell you about anything, then it's okay, because during the game their role in the events is explained in all details. Each of them represents a certain branch of the plot and is a kind of "boss" who often flickers in the frame and, as it were, teases the main character.

In general, the plot is not the worst, but there are not enough stars from the sky. In fact, five mini-stories at once, the campaign mode is designed to satisfy the need for speed for the very beginning players, while for veterans of the series it will be a great skill training before the network races. Movies with live actors look quite appropriate in this concept, but do not expect something supernatural.

And this is understandable, because the greatest efforts are the guys from Ghost games attached to the schedule of the car tuning system. Here everything is exactly as it should be in the new generation of Need for Speed. Not only do the four-wheeled animals themselves look like real ones, but they can also be transformed in a variety of ways. What the developers have not come up with, adding to the game almost everything that we saw in the previous parts, diluting all this with new elements and completely new paint mechanics. Sometimes a long and thoughtful transformation of a car takes even more time than, in fact, the races themselves, because there are not just a lot of opportunities, there are a huge number of them! It is especially pleasant that the developers have even included in the game stickers with Cyrillic as well as Latin characters, so if you wish, you can make your own signature in the purest Russian language.

Need for Speed Video Review (2015)

But painting, pasting with stickers and other luxuries is just a wrapper, and inside we are waiting for a detailed system for adjusting the behavior of the car. There is no frills here, but everything is very high quality, there is nothing to complain about.

Of the obvious shortcomings, we can note the very boring fifth story campaign "Violations", which, due to the impenetrable stupidity of the cops, turned out to be very boring. In addition, they are even difficult to find, we are not talking about chases from MW. Well, multiplayer without embellishment, completely migrated from Rivals darkens the picture a little. At the end, we have a good game, but not a masterpiece either. Something in between.

In material: Need for Speed, Need for Speed (2015)