Need for Speed

Need for Speed is a fun, accessible racer that’s both aesthetically impressive and technically stable. The always-online requirement means server problems can affect your game and oh yeah, you can’t pause, either. I’m sorry but it just wasn’t necessary.

While Need for Speed may look and sound great from afar, it's sadly little more than a mostly empty box wrapped in shiny wrapping paper (and one which you can only open when connected to the internet to boot). If you're desperate for a new racing game experience, you could do worse, just bear in mind that your mileage will definitely vary.

Need for Speed is a well-wrought game, full of interesting features, albeit without many fresh ideas. However, it is prone to deliver most of the gamers in the uncomfortable arms of boredom sooner than later, although it is bound to satisfy the hardcore fans.

Some great modifications, but lacklustre world design, shallow progression and awful cutscenes deprive it of traction. [Christmas 2015, p.80]

The new Need for Speed is a successful sequel in the popular series, providing hours of content. It's not ideal, but examples of Driveclub or The Crew show that errors and deficiencies can be corrected over time. The final score could be higher, but we have to wait for more difficult races and some AI improvements in the promised free DLC.

Need For Speed feels like a plucky contender, that is close to greatness but tragically falters at number of key moments.

A worthy successor to the both Underground games doesn’t reach their quality though. Arcade riding feels fresh and if you are up to an easy fun you have just arrived to your destination.

When you reboot a franchise, it's done with the tacit understanding that it needs to move to a better space. Need for Speed checks off the boxes for the series, but unfortunately it's not a revaluation that necessarily improves on what's already come before.

The new Need for Speed has some solid points and it's a fun racer but we found it lacking in some points and we would enjoy it more if it was varied and lively.

You’d be hard pressed to find an automaker willing to take an extra year to reset their car line much like Ghost Games did here with their second run on Need for Speed. What we get is a more focused and competent racer but one seemingly unwilling to risk standing out from the crowd.

Need for Speed is a compelling driving experience that needs to be beefed up to stand with its competitors.

Need for Speed’s decent feel of driving and nice tuning options don’t amount to much when coupled with harsh rubber banding, boring environments and a terrible forced story mode. [Dec 2015]

It's like tuning a car on the cheap. Nice looks, but still a rust bucket underneath. It suffers from performance problems, cheating AI, a boring world, a boring story and useless multiplayer features.

Instead of a triumphant reboot we got a weird game that resembles Most Wanted (2012) with tuning options thrown in. [Issue#203, p.64]

It’s a real shame new Need for Speed turned out to be a game with a great potential that in the end offers so little.

The online requirement seems pointless, but it’s an enjoyable racing game overall.

The new Need for Speed is fun enough, but the lack of a day-and-night cycle, decent AI and offline features make for an enormously disappointing package. Oh and the less said about the live action cutscenes, the better.

With strong arcade-style racing, great visuals and sounds, Need for Speed looks the part, but falls short in other areas such as poor A.I., limited body part options and lack of incentives to keep you motivated to race.

Need for Speed is a one-night stand but it's definitely not the love of your life. A depressing open-world, some uninterested cops, an empty scenario : this reboot is not what you've been waiting for, except for the very impressive visuals.

A perfectly serviceable racer with great looks, plenty of customisation options, and passable driving, but it’s a real shame that latest reboot of this franchise had the hallmarks of the greats in the series’ past and could have been truly special.

Need for Speed looks the part, sounds the part, and is surprisingly reverent to real-world car culture. I like the direction Ghost has taken here, and I think it’s the right one, but beneath its flashy exterior it's not quite firing on all cylinders.

While I ended up being surprised at how much I liked Need for Speed when it wasn't trying to strangle the very joy out of life itself, it's a game that's obviously flawed -- the cheating AI, the always-online requirement, the glitches -- but it's still a damn good looking racer that gives a real buzz when it's working as intended. Whether people will be willing to put up with the bad in order to enjoy the good... Well, that's debatable.

Looks gorgeous, rewards driving out of your comfort zone, has pleasing physics and sense of velocity... but needlessly online-only, pumped full of irritating live-action pap, and runs out of fuel early. [January 2015, p77]

Ultimately, this new Need For Speed has rebooted nothing; it’s an open world racer the likes of which we’ve already seen many times last-gen, but when the mechanics themselves fall short – well, that’s not a message any new start wants to begin with.

Need For Speed’s solid driving and fantastic graphics are worth experiencing, but I wanted more darkness, more danger out of this game. I wanted consequences. Without it, we get an odd Need For Speed that presents a strangely empty, Disney-fied version of an “underworld” — one with guardrails on the sides of the road.

Yet in Need for Speed the handling, the fun, the art, all of this, they are so stacked under layer after layer of meaninglessness, multi-faceted surfaces that gesture at everything and deliver nothing. It was a good run, but as I came off the slope and headed into a tunnel bathed in tungsten glow the moment was lost.

What Need for Speed has done spectacularly is put the focus on the car. In every opportunity possible the game showcases these machines, almost fetishising them. And that’s great, but in achieving this, Need for Speed has left behind what makes players stay for these games. Not matter how great my car is, if I’m not driving down interesting streets, or being able to compete in diverse challenges, then slowly the thrill of the car will fade.

While Ventura Bay looks good and the game has plenty of missions and side missions to complete, the constant distractions I felt while playing it kept me away from enjoying it as much as I have previous iterations of the franchise.

The latest Need for Speed feels old in every aspect. The driving model, the AI, the story and the characters, the environments – all of it is simply poor. [13/2015, p.68]

The racing simply isn't good enough. [Christmas 2015, p.69]

This reboot feels like a slick sports car with loads of custom tuning, but with a big engine failure and a story that is nothing but embarrassing. The driving feels okay most of the time but overall the fascination fades faster than a nitro boost.

Given the lack of content, the game feels like a work-in-progress with some poorly conceived features and contrivances that only diminish the game's few strengths.

It's obvious that Ghost Games and Electronic Arts are trying to build a great Need for Speed game, but they still haven't quite gotten there. This more reboot friendly Need for Speed feels incredibly shallow, resulting in a racing game that seems to be running on empty.

Need for Speed's got many of the parts required of a great racer, but it's lacking a mechanic to assemble them and apply a lick of paint.

The live action cutscenes make Need for Speed painful to witness and the bland events and dull tracks mean you'll soon tire of hanging out in Ventura Bay. It's a shame, as the graphics are fantastic and the customisation options are top quality. If EA continue with the Need for Speed brand, they need to focus more on what's under the hood.

Need For Speed is rebooting the series with style: the graphics are fantastic and the cars completely customisable. But for the rest of the experience, fans will be disappointed by this quite boring open world racing game.