6 Things I Learned From A Weekend With Need For Speed

The moment is nearly upon us - the new Need For Speed will be released imminently, and thousands of racing gamers across the world will be taking their mad modified creations for a blast around Ventura Bay. We were given exclusive access to a copy of the full game, and have poured many hours into it this weekend. Here are our first impressions:

1. The handling isn't realistic, but it doesn't really matter

Let’s state the obvious: Need For Speed is not a sim racer. If you want ‘realistic’ handling then you’re better off taking to the likes of rFactor and Assetto Corsa.

What NFS does well is to make the car handling very approachable, so you don’t necessarily have to understand things like weight transfer or how to catch a slide to enjoy it. The downside for me is that I feel like they take it a bit too far. In Forza Horizon, you don’t get so much of a sense that the physics engine is drastically different to Forza Motorsport, whereas here knowing how cars handle doesn’t really help you. You have to start with a clean slate and learn how the game handles.

Once I started to get to grips with how the cars move, however, the game became infinitely more enjoyable.

2. Drift is way more fun than Grip

To me, it feels like the cars are generally quite nose-heavy, with really numb steering. You can increase how quickly the steering reacts, but if you make it too quick in Grip mode you just end up with an extremely twitchy car. Therefore, I don’t find the Grip races as enjoyable as Drift events.

That being said, it’s taken me a while to suss out drifting. There are various assists to help you out, but with the controller it takes a while to figure out exactly how to countersteer - I kept finding that the car would grip up in the middle of the corner and catapult me towards the barriers.

Despite having the handling style pushed all the way to Drift, it wasn’t until I had more power, an adjustable differential and other drift-friendly modifications in place that I could hold a slide. That does make sense, but it made the early Drift missions rather frustrating.

3. The world is fairly big, and incredibly beautiful

Ventura Bay is like Ghost Games’ interpretation of Los Angeles. Therefore you get a lovely mix of quaint residential streets, imposing industrial estates, and rolling hills. The map isn’t massive - it’s got nothing on GTA V, for example - but it’s certainly big enough. Thanks to the nice variety of scenery, if you do find things getting a bit repetitive you’re just a short hop over a bridge from something completely different.

It’s also incredibly beautiful. Thanks to the mix of perpetual rain and night time setting, you’re constantly bombarded by gorgeous reflections. Off in the distance you can make out the skyscrapers of the city centre, but unfortunately you can’t actually drive to them - there is one district with a smattering of small skyscrapers, but it’s a bit of a disappointment given what’s on the horizon, just out of reach.

There’s also an interesting filter over the world, that gives it a rather grainy look. It’s an intriguing move, presumably made to make things look a little more gritty and ‘underground’, but since the graphics are so pretty it seems a bit of a shame to dull them.

4. Ventura Bay is a ghost town

It might be big and beautiful, but there’s no life in these streets. Obviously in a game like this you can’t really have pedestrians wandering around, however it would be nice to see a few more cars. Admittedly it’s the middle of the night, but in some of the more built-up areas it’d be good to have a bit more traffic to negotiate.

5. The cutscenes are cringeworthy

One of the cool aspects of this game is the ‘Five Ways To Play’ feature, in which you have five different storylines pursuing different aspects of car culture. You hang out with a group of five people, who each represent one of these storylines.

From time to time the story is dragged along via cutscenes, and the only positive thing I can think of is that they cleverly keep all the characters involved without contradicting how far you’ve advanced through other sections. The downside is that the acting is so cringeworthy; it’s all so overly dramatic and difficult to watch without cringing yourself into the foetal position.

I know cutscenes aren’t a deal-breaker, but they’re just so damn painful to watch I can’t not mention them…

6. Modifying and wrap building are great fun, but...

The wrap editor is fantastic. There are numerous shapes and logos to plaster over your car (including the Car Throttle logo!), so you can really have fun with your designs. People with more spare time than me will be able to create some wicked car designs, of that I’m sure, and I can’t wait to see what people come up with. The only negative is that changing which layer you’re selecting is a little fiddly.

Modifying your car is also good fun, but annoyingly certain parts of the car’s exterior styling are locked from modifying until you achieve a particular level. It seems unnecessary, given that modifying is at the very core of the experience. There also isn’t a huge amount of styling parts for some of the cars. For example, on my S15 there are no individual bumpers, or side skirts etc, with only three full bodykits to choose from.

Performance-wise, again, most of the advanced modifications are locked until you reach certain levels or complete certain missions. It feels less annoying here, however the parts are all fairly generic. There’s not a whole lot of thought needed for upgrading your car; you pretty much just bolt on whatever you can afford at the time. It’s not revolutionary, but it works.

Conclusion

Need For Speed has been a long time in the making, and for fans of the series the question is this: has it been worth the wait? The short answer is yes, it has. The long answer is a little more complex.

The game is far from perfect. The world could do with feeling more alive. At the moment it feels like a game world you’ve been dropped in, rather than a living, breathing city. Unfortunately I doubt we’ll see more stuff added to the world, since it already suffers from the occasional popup.

The handling takes a lot of getting used to (maybe not if you’re a Need For Speed veteran), and I would like the cars to feel a little more agile - Forza Horizon walks the tightrope between making the game approachable while making the cars fun for experts, NFS doesn’t. This could’ve been helped by supporting wheels. Once you get a handle on things, though, it becomes much more fun.

All in all it’s a great game, and while it’s not the perfect game we’d hoped it might be, it’s a bloody good effort. With decent DLC, Need For Speed will be a fantastic racer for a long time to come.