Need for Speed

Developer: Ghost Games | Publisher: Electronic Arts | Release Date: 2016 | Genre: Racing / Arcade | Website: Official Website | Purchase: Steam

Welcome to Ventura Bay, the Los Angeles inspired West Coast playground that serves as the twenty-second installment in the Need for Speed series. As evident by the title, which is simply ‘Need for Speed’, this installment also serves as a reboot for the series. What this means is that, unlike Need For Speed: Rivals, which felt like a fusion of Most Wanted and Hot Pursuit, this game seems to be drawing its inspiration from the Underground entries in the series. Seeing as both Need for Speed Underground and Underground 2 are considered to be the best in the series by many fans, this meant that Ghost Games had some big boots to fill. Unfortunately, the results are somewhat mixed, which has resulted in a game that feels like a step backward in many regards.

Need For Speed sees the return of FMV cut-scenes with a story mode that’s all about earning reputation and impressing the icons representing various styles that dominate the city. Players step into the role of an unnamed and unseen racer who never utters a word and instead communicates solely through the use of fist-bumps. Fortunately, the inhabitants of Ventura Bay all love fistbumps and will do all the talking. The talking is also frequently very fast and over-exaggerated, which might have something to do with the copious amounts of Monster Energy product placement in each scene. These cut-scenes are certainly never going to win any acting awards, but there’s something charming and nostalgic about how bad they are. 

 Arriving a year after the game’s console release, this PC version at least makes an effort on the platform. In contrast to Rivals, which had the audacity to show up with a locked 30 frames per second frame rate, Need for Speed goes all out with an unlocked frame rate, 4K resolution support, and support for steering wheel peripherals. Sadly, we found the controller support to be completely broken when we first attempted to play the game, but this appears to be a common enough issue that someone has come up with a working solution that can be applied via downloading a config file. Not a great start, but it worked and resolved all our controller issues.

One of the things we really disliked about Rivals was its always-online requirements, and unfortunately, Need for Speed has also chosen to continue down this route. The idea is obviously to make the city feel more alive, racing, and challenging other players, but the reality is far less glamorous. Instead, you have a game that can never be paused, and other players are much more likely to try to sabotage your race by lurking around the final corners of a race and trying to smash into you. Thankfully, you can set the game to single-player mode and avoid this nonsense. However, bizarrely, you first have to enter online mode and then select it, which causes everything to reload again. Considering the already lengthy load times for this game and the risk of the game crashing when selecting this mode, we would have much preferred to have this option straight from the main menu. We still recommend going through the effort, though, unless you like getting thrown out of the game in the middle of a long race because you lost connection or want to see the dreaded “server shutting down for maintenance soon” message pop up mid-race. 

When it finally comes to the gameplay, the Underground inspiration is clear to see. Need for Speed finally brings back the body modifications, which have been missing for the past few installments, and you can fine-tune your cars with parts from real-life tuning companies. However, the tuning basically comes down to either setting your car up for grip, which is great for racing or drift, which is great for sliding around in style. The game is built around five distinct categories, which are also represented by the five “icons” on the box cover. These are speed, represented by Magnus Walker, Style, represented by Ken Block, Build, represented by Akira Nakai, Outlaw, represented by Shinichi Morohoshi, and Crew, represented by Richard Fisher. This also means that there are five overlapping stories featuring these icons that players can dip in and out of. The members of your crew are all fans of one of these icons and want to get noticed by them. By taking part in events associated with them, players can increase their reputation and progress through the story. So, for example, Robyn will encourage you to do drift races, Spike is all about point-to-point sprints, Amy loves time trials, and so on. They’ll frequently call you on your phone during races to distract you by babbling about the next challenge they want you to complete.   

Races in Need for Speed are spread across the reasonably large map of Ventura Bay, which includes plenty of city streets, highways, a harbor area, and the canyons. When not taking part in events, players are free to explore and find things like “donut” spots, hidden parts, and scenic spots. However, as scenic as the city is, we found ourselves mostly teleporting from one event to the next, as the free-roaming aspect is not that exciting. The events themselves are decent enough for a Need for Speed game, but are not without issues. Your car selection includes famous brands like Chevrolet, Dodge, Ferrari, Ford, Honda, Lamborghini, Mazda, McLaren, Mercedes, and many others. You have space in your garage to keep at least five of them, and we recommend having a dedicated drift and a dedicated race car unless you enjoy constantly making tweaks between races. 

As is usual for a Need for Speed game, the handling is very arcade-like, and players can expect plenty of rubber banding from the AI drivers. This is nothing new for the series, but it can obviously be annoying at times. The same goes for the intelligence of your crew members, whom you need to work with for certain events. Unfortunately, it feels like they didn’t get the memo and will do weird things like bump you out of the way during events where you are supposed to drift together for points. It’s even worse in events where you need to drift close to other cars to earn points, but they are all either far ahead or way behind you due to the rubber banding. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Need for Speed game without the AI traffic being a massive nuisance, so you can expect them to frequently turn right in front of you to cause a crash. 

After the big role that the police played in the previous game, we were somewhat surprised to see how irrelevant they were in this game. They are still present, and you are even required to mess with them during the Outlaw events, but to say that they pose little threat would be an understatement. Despite there being no difficulty settings, we were not caught by the police once during the entire game, and they rarely become more than an annoyance when they appear during races. 

Visually, Need for Speed returns to the night-time rain-soaked style of the Underground games, so don’t expect to see more than a glimpse of the sun. The dark, rainy streets look stylish, but it can make everything start to look the same after a while. The cars all look great, and being able to make body modifications as well as apply wraps is a welcome feature. Rather disappointingly, the audio feels like a downgrade compared to previous installments. Even though the soundtrack features the likes of Avicii, The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, and a few others, there’s only a handful of tracks that are really memorable.  

Overall, Need for Speed is a brave attempt at recapturing the magic of the Underground era of the series, but it doesn’t quite get there. We appreciate the fact that it doesn’t feature any microtransactions or paid DLC, and EA was generous enough to deliver six free post-launch updates that added new cars, daily challenges, music, drag races, customizable license plates, and more. The version that is for sale on Steam is also the “Deluxe” edition, which comes with a permanent discount on in-game currency purchases, a VIP icon, exclusive car wraps, and a pre-modified starter car. Players who yearn for the glory days of Need for Speed will probably be disappointed by this installment, as it still feels like a mish-mash instead of its own game. It’s entertaining enough while it lasts and the updates have given it some much-needed replay value, but unfortunately, it’s far from the most memorable entry in the series.