One Step Forwards, Two Steps Back | A Need For Speed Unbound Critique

oh Unbound you have to be the most conflicting racing game that I've played in years as someone who found heed and its predecessors to be a little stale Criterion heading the next big entry in the series certainly got me to listen up on initial announcement I kept an open mind but I had an inkling in the back of my head that it would end up just feeling like a slightly expanded Need for Speed heat the one thing that I was really hoping for was to completely ditch the format that ghost games had set for Need for Speed and Unbound in some ways does and has some improvements over heat and in many many others seems to have gone completely backwards what's good here is really really good but is that enough to negate the fundamental wrongdoings of Unbound well let's take a deep dive into Need for Speed Unbound and find out let's rip that neon color Band-Aid off right away easily the most controversial part of Need for Speed Unbound is the New Direction in art style in some ways this is by far one of the things I love most about the game it takes the improvements that heat made to overall sense of speed and driving character and amps it up to 11. sitting in a burnout right before launching your favorite Supercar which in most games is shamefully stale considering the concept feels like an event every single time in Unbound leaving the ground around you in a plume of smoke and explosive character is an icon leap off ramp and the music slows approaching the climax of your jump only to fade in R2D2 having a stroke or something as your wings and giant boom boxes at that audio visual presence that no other Racing Experience gives you even simpler things such as activating a perfect nitrous boost will make you feel like you just activated turbo in all Pursuit except funnily enough when you look at your speed you don't actually go that much faster but it doesn't matter you feel like you're going a million miles an hour something that I have been craving to have back in racing games for Eon and it's more than just your own car as well once cars hit over 100 miles an hour these jet stream-like effects pop up from the taillights which look especially impressive on cars such as the Lamborghini Countach with intricate tail light designs and then there's the other half of the art Style's choices I still don't understand the decision to take the associated idea and apply it only to the character models if you're gonna go with a different theme for the game apply it to the whole thing or don't apply it at all auto modelista did this incredibly well whereas in Unbound it just feels not quite half-assed but more confused or playing it safe than anything else and that fits quite well with the rest of Unbound it feels like Criterion wanted to take risks possibly in the earlier stages of development having plans for something like a spiritual Need for Speed Nitro successor for the modern era and possibly didn't have the development time or had too much of a baseline to work with from Ghost Games or names after heat so the idea was too far in production to scrap but also not quite complete enough to use for a whole game speaking of aspects being similar to heat let's talk about cars and Unbound if you like Need for Speed Heat's car list you're in for a treat because at least 90 of this list is copy and paste for me and I'm slightly disappointed by this now I'm not one of those people who feels we need 6 000 cards in a game for it to be great I think a smaller list is a good thing but if you were to ask me what my deal car situation would be for Unbound is to keep some of the really special and iconic cars and make the rest of it all new Need for Speed did this every single year between 2010 to 2013. so it's not exactly unreasonable put the list side by side and start scrolling and it's pretty undeniable how prevalent this is you have to really scroll to start getting into some of the new cars on them and unfortunately a large portion of them are just cars from previous games such as the Crown Victoria from payback and the RX8 from Hot Pursuit there was also convertible versions of cars from heat which I personally don't think count as new cars now looking at the ones that are in fact new I think Criterion made some pretty good choices with some older Automotive Legends like the Mercedes 190e and a handful of mule releases like Lotus Amira 982718 Spyder Mercedes AMG TT Black Series and the new Countach is it a bad car list no not even close but it just feels a little too samey for those of us who have logged countless hours into the past ghost need for speeds a few side notes though there are some technical issues such as the 488 GTV having the rear wheels from the Pista and cars such as the Countach and LaFerrari not having working active Arrow these will be patched out but it's important to know then there's also the fact that the reward cars for some of the challenges aren't anything super special just cars that were purchasable in heat from the get-go which is definitely a little deflating for the completioness out there convertible tops on cars such as the 458 Spider also don't work this is definitely confusing to me because back in 2013 with Need for Speed Rivals and the exact same cars they worked so so why couldn't they get them working for a bound let's move into the garage I want to personally thank whoever's idea it was to remove the limit of cars that you could have in your garage from Heat this new menu might not look as cool as having all of your cars laid out in the garage but in all honesty the glamor of that faded really quick and this greatly enhances player convenience so that's one Improvement there let's talk upgrades and customization starting with style I've mentioned before that I'm not a fan of body kits and tacky non-functional kits on cars I prefer more OEM and OEM plus look for my cars so keep that all in mind for subjectivity that aside though I'm not exactly sure a world of the wild praise for unbounce car customization is coming from the vast majority of the list has barely if any additional Parts wouldn't compare to heat which already had wild potential for making your car well let's go with unique what's new here isn't even really name brand tasteful modification I find most of it to be some really hideous additions like these new long tail style ridiculates which genuinely make me want Pokemon eyes out you can remove some body panels on very specific cars but it really isn't that many which is disappointing as it was shown off quite a bit in the promotional material yet hardly actually shows up there are the legendary Customs where you can buy pre-customized cars and some body kits and also some that you can get throughout the story such as the GTR which is uh it's uh definitely one of the cars of all time I'll say that and then there's the wheel situation you wanted some highly requested wheels from Big names in the industry now you get pizza error discs but in all seriousness the wheels are ripped straight from heat as well apart from these Arrow discs which are a really strange decision something else I noticed is just how far the ride stance options have downgraded since Need for Speed 2015. we used to have of course height alongside vehicle rake individual camber and track width front and rear and Unbound we only get the option to lower the car and Camber front and rear I don't exactly know why this was removed especially considering this game's major focus on customization building cars before we get into into performance tuning and paint let's talk effects you first have of course effects which are the cartoonish style smoke and icons that play Whenever you drive in a certain manner I mentioned before that I really like them but for those who don't I wish there was a better option just completely turn them off the least obvious option is still quite glaring sure it's a minor critique but it's one that I know bothers a ton of people but who knows maybe they'll add something in the future that can allow you to really turn it off and adding on to that you can't choose individual effects for each car which is a little odd as you can with horns and most other customization options there's also samples which will play sound effects when driving around but by far the best audio Edition is easily the ASAP Rocky horn BB then there's the carryover stuff the paint and vinyl crater is virtually the exact same as in heat and still has some really strange Lighting in the garage which makes it really hard to pinpoint the exact color you're going for but maybe it's a meeting and then there's Performance Tuning I'm glad they ditched the upgrades tied to rep level from heat but I think replacing that with the paid tiers for upgrades is a bit odd you have to pay a lot more for the higher Trier upgrades in the end so what's the point of paying up front just to access them unfortunately that's the only real change made to Performance Tuning the rest is ripped straight out of heat without any improvements that get even looks the same but isn't that bad considering Heat's upgrade system was fine but it doesn't really excuse the fact that there really isn't anything different here now I've been quite critical of unbalanced cars so far but there is one thing I haven't mentioned yet which is a massive step forward how they actually drive I have never been a fan of the physics in 2015 heat cars felt far too light and unrealistic and would have the strangest reaction to high-speed Maneuvers the exact opposite of what you want in a Need for Speed Unbound plays a million times better most of the time when everything is all set and perfect and you've built your car right this is potentially my favorite grip handling in the entire franchise it is genuinely great cars have real weight to them you can predict what the car is about to do so much better as you can get the real sense of when the car is about to slip the handling here also has a pretty solid learning curve as you learn to trust the car more and more you can really grow alongside these new physics and master them but there's a catch you like drifting this game sure doesn't from the first corner you ever try and drift and Unbound something is immediately off if I were to describe it to someone who hasn't played the game yet it almost feels to me as if as soon as the rear wheels break traction an immediate weight gets chucked onto the rear of the car as if the weight balance is suddenly 80 of the back of the car to make things worse the front wheel seemingly lose traction as well you know that feeling when the front wheels lift off a little bit causing the steering to become really vague and light as a feather yeah well that's the exact same thing that happens here it's a shame because while I'm personally not that into it these games have a massive culture around drifting and it's what a lot of the fan base looks forward to but if you're anything like me you just build your car strictly for grip and you'll have a damn great time there's one last thing to mention however nitrous is a ton of fun with these new effects but activating a full Boost nitrous while being anything other than dead straight will crush any chances you had at winning a race think of it like having an instant Turbo from Hot Pursuit I don't want to make these issues over the handling to be a major thing because 90 to 90 of the time this is some of the best grip handling in Need for Speed history and honestly the drifting issues may even be sorted out in a future patch or update in which case you get the best playing Need for Speed in a decade since the reboot in 2015 Need for Speed has been near the Forefront of racing games with stories 2015 wasn't anything great but it was so cheesy and didn't take itself serious to the level that I found some sort of enjoyability out of it payback and heat devolved into genuinely terrible predictable and uninspiring writing alongside characters so cookie cutter we might as well make [ __ ] Shaw cookies for Christmas unbound's new art style for characters was a chance to break this formula and at least try something different unfortunately what we've ended up with is not only hands down the worst in the 2015 and up era but debatably the worst in the entire franchise and before I get the excuse of oh racing games don't need a story true they don't but if you're going to attempt one there is no excuse to have won this ignomius and lazy let's go from the top and allow me to make my case for how genuinely horrific this story is we start off with you the self-insert player character and Jazz chest driving the car are that the two of you alongside your father figure and Mentor Rydell built the choice of your starter car is being between an S14 Sylvia 69 Dodge Charger and a Lamborghini Countach yeah way to shoehorn that in there for some nonsensical reason after a small running with the cops there's a Meetup that you've heard about from Jazz that you need to convince Rydell to lend you the car to use for Riddell is definitely one of the characters of all time his one-liners are painfully cringy and uninspired and he even goes down to the level of forgetting the saying Need for Speed like how on Earth do you do that he warns you about Racers from Cyril Heights unless you take the car out to the meat Jasmine calls you bruh for the first of about 9 000 times and it's off to go meter let's talk about these quickly meetups are handled so strangely the characters that you meet at the start of the game at these meet-offs don't do or say anything yet they are your only competition for the rest of the game if they had any sembling of a reason to race against them then sure that would be great but they just show up at the meets and race for seemingly nothing you know you could have done something as simple as having them be from cereal Heights there's some sort of rivalry but no there is nothing this is shown perfectly after your first meet when Jazz gets you to pick one of them up and bring him to a safe house this happens in the daytime when he has no police attention and just listen to this dialogue sitting in silence yeah who on Earth is writing these scripts speaking of writing though Rydell wants Jazz and the player to meet back at the garage for a little barbecue and this is where one of the most poorly set up plot points is revealed Jazz isn't with you so you call her and ask her to come to the barbecue and all of a sudden for zero reason Jazz has gone full Salt City and refuses to show oh oh no I sure hope this doesn't evolve into a Revenge plot for absolutely no reason in the future jazz is suddenly in a great mood again and wants us to pick up a car for her friend Alec you bring the car to the location and oh no no one is there and oh no Jazz won't answer her phone all right time to head back to Rydell and oh no Jazz betrayed us I sure hope there's a reason for this Revenge plot no no no no no nothing at all she just LED an unidentified crew over to steal riddell's cars oh and she takes your own car too which made me drop my jaw in awe that was such a clear way to call back to most one in 2005 but with absolutely none of the connection that was just lazy fan service a way to appeal to those who yearn for the years that the original Most Wanted for easy Nostalgia points and unfortunately this is not even close to the only instance of this we now skip two years into the future the garage has slowed down down to a halt and is struggling and Rydell is teased to have some sort of a depression Side Story which gets multiple times and yet nothing is done with it off to a meet-up and oh boy it's time to meet Tess I didn't hate Tess at first sure she's got a healthy serving of cringe and quite possibly has the highest bro and bruh count in history yeah I'm gonna get into it when it comes up but yeah she just falls into a complete downward spiral of strange writing later on jazz is at the meat completely destroyed your car from the beginning and talks a lot all for the purpose of money way to write a beryllium antagonist Tess and the protagonists head back to Rydell and it's time to buy your first car like two hours into the game I will say though this starter card selection is actually great there's tons of options here for you to choose from and they're all super low end apart from Unbound is now yours to progress so let's take a break from the plot and go over my next critique of Unbound story The gameplay let's start with day and night he'd handled this very well with the ability to earn cash in a day rep in the night and night time was so much more intense than it was in day at night the cops would chase you and there was a legitimate differentiator between night and day Unbound has completely removed this the rewards between night and day are so close the different is negligible and the cops are just as aggressive and will chase you in day or night and at the same time leave you alone in day or night so what was the point why not just have a day and night cycle at that point if you aren't going to do anything to differentiate them then there's the weak system to put it simply it's uninspired and monotonous six days of day and night and then a qualifier do this four times and then you're done the game there's no real difference as time and days go on it's the same meetups same tracks same opponents throughout the whole game each day feels the exact same go do a few events until your heat level reaches maximum which is exactly two events in which you're at heat level four or five and the entire game turns into a metal gear solid stealth mission where you try and avoid the cops on your way back to the garage or go to a delivery mission for some cash 12 times per week and 48 times throughout the entire campaign you know what compounds onto this and makes it so much worse is that the whole risk reward element is completely gone if heat level 5 had higher rewards like it did in I don't know maybe literally the last game in the series this wouldn't be that much of an issue you want to be in those high heat levels anyways to maximize profits so you get to heat level five and you have a ton of fun making some serious Bank while also having that genuine tension of holy [ __ ] I might lose all of this but no there is none of that the rewards for doing events at heat level 1 and 5 are the exact same the downgrade here from heat is appalling and I haven't even got into how horrific the coughs are yet that'll come later then there's the lack of gameplay variety you have two or maybe three event types race and drift events self-explanatory those ones and then there's takeovers which are just drift events with some objects placed in them they try to replicate speed cross from payback but just ended up making it worse you can Breeze through them by Smashing objects as fast as possible instead of actually driving like a lunatic they relegated time trials to side missions with delivery missions but my question is why not have some fun with game modes here Need for Speed has had some wild stuff in the past so to have gone down to this minuscule level of variety is really disappointing then there's the race AI they're fine I guess they're not particularly challenging even on the hardest difficulty which is what I played throughout bound on and while they're not quite 2015 level they do tend to like to get into accidents and of course then there's also the times when they love to do the force AI thing in which one of them was at the start of the race get about you know maybe a kilometer ahead and just stay there for the whole race I mentioned qualifiers earlier on these are your main landmarks of progression throughout Unbound a mini championship using the tier of car you mostly use for that week which unlocks more cars for purchase and More Story the first qualifier is the perfect Showcase of the god awful voice acting with lines like this long time yo is that my car yeah one you stole the same night you ripped off the garage down oh and Tess just goes and starts live streaming the whole thing because yeah she would the second one is where the game starts to tease a totally not obvious but at the same time completely pointless plot twist because yes that's how bad the writing is in this game when Tess starts talking a little too much about money and fame and oh man this totally isn't gonna lead anything is it Tess tries to bring up this Alec character again some completely underdeveloped character who is supposed to be some mysterious bigwig third qualifier time in oh no task cares more about money and fame than us like who is riding this character only damn Tass would say bruh after being kicked from our crew but oh no jazz is back with us now like what she went from being the one who wanted money for no reasonable purpose only to be overtaken by test for the exact same reason to now be coming back to us for some sort of a Redemption Arc come on this makes the [ __ ] last of us too look like a narrative masterpiece her motivation to get Alec back is to steal all of his cars too the same thing she did to us at the start of the game is there no creativity here like come on nothing ever happens with that by the way she just kind of says it yeah fantastic story it is time for the Grand and Tess has officially taken Jazz's place as the head of these meetups but aside from that the game takes a dig at Fast and the Furious doing the same thing over and over yet have they seen themselves this has to be the least self-aware roast I have ever seen this game Throw except for 30 seconds later when we call Tess corny like what I haven't mentioned the mid-race dialogue yet but this is the perfect time because during the final race which yeah we're here already there really is that little to talk about with this story the most asinine lines get thrown out from these god-awful characters uh just listen to these this is it I've been holding my nerve for two years there are creams for that you how long left I take my keys with a slice of humble pie my glue nice comeback loser final stretch I can almost see the finish line oh I know it is because I'm just about to cross it oh fine fine this story is coming to a close Tess literally finishes up her character Arc by winning money and then hopping into some random NPC's car before leaving to Nowhere God this character is awful we take Jazz back to Rydell and she proceeds to quote one of his lines from earlier to prove that she learned to come back to Rydell and trust him again and that's the end good Lord everyone throwing out eights and nines for a game with writing like this makes me lose all faith for Humanity literally the only good thing I can say is that you get a cash reward at the end for finishing the story unlike heat which just ended out of nowhere and gave you nothing for it speaking of nothing post game damn this sucks the weak system is still here completely unchanged except for randomized events so sometimes you'll get events that pay Jackal and sometimes it's half decent you're supposed to focus on exploration and completion now but with no motivator to do so what's the point Unbound locks you into doing story story story when you're going through the campaign and do the out of the week system is implemented it doesn't really allow you to have fun mid-campaign since every day has to be used for gaining money but by the end of this story when you actually have the chance to the game's already burn you out of the repetitive gameplay Loop which doesn't change at all after you're done it really feels clumsily put together and it's a shame considering that when this game is fun it really is the most fun I've had in a Need for Speed in ages they just really didn't know how to Showcase that well and to add as a side note to the whole story I can't be the only one who expected ASAP Rocky to be a much larger part of the game he barely shows up at all and feels a bit like they just wanted to show him off in promo material to get more buyers this whole story and campaign here is why Criterion needs to try a different formula no one is expecting narrative genius from Need for Speed but each one is becoming derivatives of every single cliche that they can find and closer to the end of this video I'll go over my personal suggestion on how Criterion should handle the future of Need for Speed but for now let's talk about these cops I thought we were past the stage of poor cops in Need for Speed but I guess I was wrong while in no way perfect heat struck a damn great mix with his police sure you could cheese them pretty easily if you wanted to but if you wanted some great and thoroughly intense chases look no further you could spend all night racking up massive amounts of wraps and then be sweating bullets as you dodge the entire police force shocked at you a wand they did not hold back when it came to some really clever Maneuvers which was definitely possible due to your health being a reasonable amount you lose everything and have to start from square one all inbound had to do was iron out some of the minor flaws in the placeroom Heat and they could be some of the best in the series however due to reasons we will probably never know they lost it and while not as useless as the police in 2015 they have to be in the bottom tier of Need for Speed police and there are a ton of reasons for this let's start with the risk and reward aspect sure you can absolutely have all of your cash taken away if you manage to get busted or taken out by a cop but there are critical errors which make this virtually impossible unless you've never played in Need for Speed first off is the amount of Health that you have head-on hits from heavy units do just about as much damage as the salami an overall damage is strangely low that or Criterion decided to give the player an exuberant amount of Health which is pointless as repair shops exist speaking of repair shops have been changed from heat as well instead of having a limit on how many times you can use them you get a timer which will reset if you lose out of the cops or of course when the time is up I'm mixed on this it makes it so delivery missions have absolutely zero consequence as you can just fix the call right before drop off without affecting your actions of the free roam at all again reducing the element of risk which would have been so much better if you had to choose between repairing this drop-off car for more money or playing it safe so that you have an extra chance to repair your car afterwards in case you get into a Chase and then there is the glaringly obvious oversight and I don't know how this made a past QA testing that you can just quit the game load back in and have all of the cash you earned still there risk and reward has been so dumbed down and it's a shame for us to actually enjoy a little bit of challenge you know Need for Speed games now cops themselves this is one of the first need for speeds where I actively avoided getting to any police confrontation not because it's difficult but because the police in this game are an absolute nuisance to deal with things such as interceptors being light speed quick yet don't actually do anything to take you out so losing them becomes a massive pain in the ass unless they take themselves out which is a surprisingly common occurrence then there's helicopters they will track you down and spawn other police nearby like in Grand Theft Auto 5. yet they don't drop anything bike strips they run out of gas in no time at all making them a really puzzling addition same with roadblocks with gaps a large you could fit [ __ ] groon through there and of course then there's just how weak the police AI is they really don't try and take you out and honestly do a lot more damage to themselves jumping into skyscrapers and going the complete wrong direction you know what let me just check a few videos out for you to show you just how weak they are oh get a major lead in your control rounds [Music] yeah I think those speak for themselves the police in this game more than anything are just confusing and every time they pop up on the minimap it just leaves me praying that I don't get into a Chase something that should never be said about cops underneath the Speed game they're supposed to be a nice fun challenge to test yourself and push yourself to play better take more risks go for more but with the lackluster cops and the removal of heat level rewards they just feel so confused now before I summarize my thoughts on Unbound there's a few more things I want to touch on first off would be the map I didn't dedicate an entire section to it as well if I'm honest I really didn't feel that much the city's great and sure the game looks pretty at times but what AAA video game doesn't these days a lot of the map is more destructible too especially trees which I never thought could have been breakable are overall though the map is very ghost Need for Speed if you like Heat's map you'll probably like Unbound but for me personally I just felt so indifferent when you aren't in the city it just feels like generic racing game open world number is 643 and then there's the soundtrack my mother always told me that hate is a strong word and to use it sparingly and only when necessary I really hate this soundtrack I get the music is subjective but this is just awful and it isn't like they didn't have good choice hell they even have some good artists in the game with run the jewels and Kendrick but they barely show up in the soundtrack hell where is Tyler The Creator he features on one song yet this is the perfect game to have him in definitely a missed opportunity and missed opportunity is about the Perfect theme for this game as a whole I feel like when you take away the changes to art style what exactly does Unbound do that revolutionizes need for speed or even differentiates itself from heat it falls back into that trap that Need for Speed has been stuck in for years where it just doesn't have a strong sense of identity it's as if parts of these games are designed so clearly to appeal to the older for Speed crowd but that formula just isn't working we've had countless games try to replicate the formula that the early 2000 FIFA Speed games went for and honestly I just don't think you can those games still hold up well today and trying to replicate them when the old games simply just did it better themselves isn't going to work for Need for Speed and Criterion for the future I think it's time for Criterion to completely switch up the formula I really don't want to see another Need for Speed with mediocre race design okay ish gameplay an endless amount of customization to make up for the fact that the games are lacking in Creative new approaches to the series and if Criterion doesn't use this next game to do something truly different Need for Speed is going to fall into the same trap Forza Horizon is these days conforming to releasing every few years with a game with the same formula as the last only on a new map with a few new cars and body kits so what do I think they should do well this is my own personal suggestion and hear me out here ditch open world let's go back to the really really old days and go with a real arcade style Sage select racer it's the perfect opportunity to take advantage of these crazy new driving effects alongside the power of these latest gen consoles mixed with individual stages gives the possibility for some mind-blowingly impressive stages and tracks this alone would break the monotonous open world feel of the past few games if Criterion takes that risk and does something different it could play off brilliantly since sales were Unbound are already down and things aren't looking good for the future don't let this series stagnate Criterion it's your time to shine and show us the Need for Speed [Music] thank you

Channel: UltraViolet

Views: 149,243

Keywords: nfs, nfs unbound, nfs unbound review, nfs moses b

Id: ZgdKl8cSs6E

Length: 30min 49sec (1849 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 28 2022