Need For Speed Review Xbox One

A couple of minutes into the game and a brash, energetic dude appears at my car window, excited about my driving. My first thought, is ‘wow those graphics are amazing’, till the scene plays out a bit and I realise that this is a video recording, styled in the first person, i.e. you are the lens, and the characters are talking to you. Considering the last game to use this kind of technique that I remember was Lococycle, I’m thinking it does not bode well. The scene ends though, and it is then I realise how seamless the switch from video to gameplay is, and realise the graphics are staggeringly good. The switch between video and the game is so seamless that regardless of what car you are driving, and how you have modified or painted it, the car you are driving actually appears in the video clips, of which there are many.

I’ve never been an advocate of storylines in racers, I just feel many fall flat and so good ones are the exception rather than the rule. Ghost Games then, have set themselves a difficult task of trying to make an immersive story. In all honesty though they have succeeded rather well. Whilst I, as a cynical 30-something find some of the staged-ness, overacting, characters, and general scenes to be far too unrealistic and not to my taste, I can imagine a 13-20 year old enjoying the humour and tension as the social scene in front of them plays out, and being suitably aroused as though they are part of the ‘Fast and Furious’ type storyline.


You play yourself in the game then, a young buck who has skills that have attracted the attention of a quartet of young adrenaline junkies, the (possibly annoying depending on your preference) over-caffeinated Spike I mentioned at the beginning who is all about speed, a zen-like guy who loves drifting, a female mechanic who loves to hear engines roar, and a pretty woman who is very sociable. These 4 form your crew, and due to their individual values act as champions of the real-life ‘driving icons’ in game. Spike due to his incessant need for speed representing Magnus Walker the speed icon, the mechanic links to the build icon Nakai-San and so forth. The game then, is geared to what you value most in driving. If you are all about drifting you can play Ken Block’s style path first and each of the 5 paths have their own narrative, so you can play that whole path before any other if you wish. The types of races and missions are geared towards that path too. If you go down the style path you aren’t going to be setting fast high speeds, you will instead indulge in drift events and gymkhana. If you play the crew path you will take part in crew events focussed on drifting together, if you play build events you unlock parts for your car, and obviously you have races and time trials if you are all about speed.

All this takes place in a fictional city, Ventura Bay, and all takes place at night, and rain a lot of the time. Ventura Bay is not that big, even when compared to older racers and dare I say it, lacks a bit of imagination and feels a bit samey. It’s all very well having picture-perfect graphics if the picture is worth emulating, and it may just be that with a lack of a day/night cycle the city just tends to look quite similar, and doesn’t seem to have the biggest array of landmarks. Driving the streets of Ventura Bay is very fun though for the most part. You need your concentration when nitroing through long fast stretches, or drifting through hairpins. Earlier races are easy until you get to hard missions then the difficulty ramps up a fair whack. Thankfully there isn’t too much traffic to cheat you, because you will be driving extremely fast through the city in some of the races. There are cops who will give chase, (this is also linked to the ‘outlaws’ path), and for the most part I found them easy to escape from once you have a half-decent ride. You can choose to just pull over and pay a fine at the start of a chase if you can’t be bothered which is a welcome addition, but if you don’t then the fine increases the longer the chase goes on and if you get caught may have to pay a hefty price.


Whilst racing, either through the storylines, races, or just free-roaming, you earn rep for each of the 5 driving styles and the aim is to level all of them up to 100%. Your style of play apparently shows you what kind of a driver you are. Whilst you are free-roaming, by default you will be driving through the city with other real players, as ‘Alldrive’ makes a return from ‘NFS Rivals’, and you can roam with them and challenge them to events if you wish. You can also turn this off and play solely if you want. Other drivers stay in your city if you are in an event, and can crash into you even if you are in an event and they aren’t. This can get frustrating if you are finally about to win an event you have attempted a few times and a player not even in your game crashes into you at the last checkpoint. If you like playing with friends you can all be part of a crew and roam around and do races together.  You can also teleport to wherever you want on the map, which is very useful, especially if you are miles from an event. A lack of an actual pause button may infuriate some though, if you have to stop for whatever reason, and does seem a criminal oversight.

There is an acceptable number of cars. Not Forza standards, but enough to keep you busy. You may spend a lot of time froing back and forth to the garage to re-tune your car depending on the type of event in which you are partaking. Tuning really does make a difference rather than being superficial, especially when trying to get the right balance right trying to make a car that has speed but also allows you to drift properly as if you haven’t got the car tuned right drifting will be difficult. There are many different upgrades available to your car the further you advance into the game and you will need to save some cash to purchase them all and have a car worthy of winning. Money earning is balanced about right, it’s not too easy and cars are priced appropriately. You don’t have every option available till you hit level 50 so levelling has its benefits. Upgrading parts can get annoying because as you unlock parts when you level up you get a notification but when you go in the garage there isn’t an easy way to see what parts can be upgraded so you have to click through each part which gets tedious. There are many ways to adapt your car, from spoilers to headlights so if you are that way inclined you can end up spending a lot of time in the garage tinkering away.  


Music is fresh, but is not going to be to everyone’s liking. There are various tracks from multiple genres, but mainly it’s what you’d expect, which is a blend of hip-hop and urban dance tracks. Achievement wise it looks to be a relatively straightforward completion, and most are attained simply by playing through the 5 career paths to completion. Haters of multiplayer achievements can rejoice as there aren’t any tied to that side of the game.

Overall Need For Speed sets out to be different to Forza, and tries to stake a claim as being for true underground petrolheads. The video movie clips work well, and tie the story together nicely, though the older gamer may not find it to their taste. The graphics are the best I’ve ever seen for an arcade racer too. It’s a shame then that the routes feel samey even if the cars feel different. You can ignore the multiplayer completely even though it’s there, so without a group of you playing together I can’t see much replay value. Whilst enjoyable whilst it lasts, it is missing that sprinkle of creativity in the environment, which separates good racers from great racers. It’s a neat concept, fully realised, but it’s not a classic, and ultimately you won’t be playing this come next year. Worth a rent or worth picking up when the price drops, but hard to recommend at full retail. The graphics are the game’s best attribute, and graphics do not a game make.

72%.

(I usually spend longer playing before I make a review, but just played the 10hrs available on EA Access, so my opinions may change when I get to play it for longer).

Nice review mate.

Nice review mate, sounds like an ok racer. Not one I'll be rushing out for, but will keep an eye for any bargains later on.

A nice read as usual mate.

Not one for me unless it's cheap as chips sometime in the future.

100% must buy for me!

Can't wait to play it

Sale buy for me love the review and spot on.

Good review mate, will wait until this appears on EA Access I think.

Yeh waiting for ea access is a good idea, should be less than a year and no mp achievements to scramble for. Think personally I will rent it to finish it, I'm over halfway with the 10hrs put in, so just for achievements is a sub 20hr completion.

Got to say after renting it to finish I think I was generous with my review...overall the game is just, quite simply, rubbish. Fun races are so few and far between its unreal, and it's generally things out of your control that screw you, horrible final bends, ai drivers, police chasing people not even in the race, cars that pop up out of nowhere. The games balance between frustrating and fun is skewed too much towards being unfair, it seems just to make you replay races to add replay value instead of actually having more races.

I thoroughly enjoy this game and they are releasing a patch soon to address some of the issues you mention.

The rubber banding being the main gripe of people.

It looks good and it handles well, those two things should NEVER be taken lightly.

Maybe I'm just not good enough then I don't find the handling that good tbh even with trying different setups