Should You Reinstall? - NFS Unbound Vol. 2 Update Review

thank you to the guys and girls at EA for letting me check out this update early sure don't you think all right so as some of you know Unbound is going to get its first like big substantial content update in the form of volume 2. is what they called it Nea has reached out to me and asked me if I could check it out so I've been mostly playing it over the last weekend trying to see what changed trying to see what's different and yeah this is just me giving my full-on opinion on this completely unfiltered just what I think so just to get you up to speed on what the multiplayer update actually had in store this time around in case for whatever reason you didn't watch the trailer or something like that the big one was definitely cops in multiplayer that was primarily what they focused on and I think rightfully so like if you just think about everything that Need for Speed unborn was liking you could probably come up with a lot of things but cops and Unbound is definitely like somewhere at the top of the list not just because heat had it and I think a lot of other need for speeds it's just like cops It's Just Need for Speed it was being accomplices just like you know so having that in online just made a lot of sense and I'm glad that they finally actually got around to editing it in addition to that we also had three new cars that got added to the game one of them being the lotus in Mira but the Bell main Edition and an epic custom of the fair lady initially those two were the only ones that got announced like um they kept like the last car a secret and now we can finally share what that car is it is a neighbor which I actually quite like I I was at first I was kind of like okay um but the more you think about it the more it just makes sense obviously there's like a lot of cars the community wants to see like a G35 or you know cars from previous infra speeds if you really think about what does unborn not actually have yet it's like a limousine like a straight up luxury limousine and I think that I think this one is kind of perfect because it adds one to the game I think it really does fit to unbond as well so thumbs up I like it now Carlos and cops is obviously not everything in addition to that we had 14 new daily challenges as well as 15 regular challenges they are sort of similar and I think they should probably come up with different names between like a daily challenge and a regular challenge I think just from the name you don't really know what the difference is basically regular challenges are always doable and they're usually like a little bit more specific and can win you some cars for example the Maybach is actually only winnable if you get 30 stars from the newly added hot laps which is like a new activity just like drift zones or speed zones or whatever but you basically have to drive around like a chorus and depending on how fast you were you got somewhere between one or three stars and need a total of 30 of them to actually be able to buy the Maybach in the first place now keep in mind that doesn't mean you actually have to get three stars in all of them I think usually it's enough to get like two stars or one star it's like somewhere in the middle so even if you don't have like super maxed out cars or you may just not be as good in the game don't worry you can still get it it's fine it's not that hard in terms of multiplayer updates we also have new playlists which I think is great as well as the existing playlists they also got a refresh which is fantastic because a lot of people were already complaining that things got a little bit repetitive and the race roads were a little bit too you know they popped up a little bit too much and there weren't enough of them so they're actually adding more of that is also definitely a good thing and everything I've mentioned so far is free with the exception of the 240Z custom we'll get back to that but in addition to that they actually released some paid DLC one of them being the keys to the map DLC now I'm pretty sure you're already familiar with this if you played previous need for speeds basically it's like a cheap auto unlocker if you will which basically just makes everything on the map like Collectibles and zones and whatever it just makes all of that visible without you actually needing to find it in the first place and last but not least we also got some clothing items which I mean I'm actually a fan of character customization never really like looked into it too much but if you're into that sort of stuff there you go something that isn't in my notes right now but I just remembered I think they also added some driving effects and emotes which is cool for sure but what's definitely more interesting about particularly the driving effects is something that we'll get to in just a bit but yeah that was everything that got announced at first in terms of like what was actually in the trailer and um interestingly enough that actually caused some backlash initially there was a large group of people that was complaining that this just isn't enough for the last like three months that they worked on the game and that you know they would have rather seen some fixes to the existing game yada yada yada and the thing is yes but that's also exactly what they did in the initial trailer was actually only like half the story I'm not sure why they didn't also include like everything that they were actually improving into the video like into the trailer itself but there's actually a lot more to it than everything that I've just been naming I mean let's just start by looking at the list of bug fixes it is actually so long you could probably make a whole Star Wars intro out of it like it is there's a long list and I'm honestly not gonna read up all of it but you can read it for yourself if you want to but this is actually where we get to the big stuff and also the really really important stuff and let's just start off by highlighting the better multiplayer payouts this is something that almost everyone was agreeing on that was just not really good that if you go into multiplayer races and even if it's a full Lobby and you win the titles are just nowhere near enough especially with how much the cars in the game can cost it just wasn't really good enough and lo and behold they actually addressed it so I was doing some races with some other people in the community in the Early Access phase that we had last weekend and full stop I lost pretty much all of the playlists um and was also only like heartfelt like we never actually had a full Lobby going I think the max we had was like four or five players and the least amount I got being in last in a half a Lobby was 30k which all things considered is not even that bad I think 30k was what you had before if you were first in like a somewhat filled Lobby now I think it's like 80k I've seen some people in the community getting like up to 80 000 credits uh for winning in a full Lobby which is huge upgrade now moving on to another big Improvement for the multiplayer is the fix for the big class Pista and for that matter also any car you could basically downgrade more than two classes that would end up being overpowered as a result I think the Pista single-handedly killed almost every single b-class racing playlist so to see that finally addressed so that you can actually like do some proper races in b-class as well and also all the other classes it's definitely fantastic with that they have also been various other balancing improvements honestly I haven't really gotten around to testing all of them out because I'm actually not even that far into the game yet especially not the multiplayer but um yeah it's definitely nice to see all of that addressed another maybe small thing at least it sounds kind of small initially but I think it's actually huge in terms of just playability is that now if you enter a playlist you can actually change your car between every race which is fantastic because oftentimes you have like races that you know maybe have more turns maybe a little bit more off-road and you may have different cars that serve different purposes so now you can actually swap out cars in between players which I think is also another good one but moving on from all the multiplayer improvements they have also been a numerous amount of improvements that don't just affect the multiplayer but the experience as a whole and one that I personally really really really appreciate is that now you can actually choose the driving effects her color I'm not sure why this wasn't a thing in the base game but they basically changed it from it being in a way where you can only assign driving effects generally so you would basically choose a driving effect and the moment you do it would get applied on every single car at the moment you want to change cars you also have to change the driving effect because the one you have selected may not necessarily fit to the Caribou driving or you just switch to basically and now the driving effects so the smoke the effects and the even the sounds if you want to all of that is now tied to the car which I think makes so much more sense and I think it actually improves the customization by substantial amount now one that I think a lot of people are pretty happy to hear is that um you can now skip music tracks I know a lot of you guys weren't really a fan of the soundtrack and I've been kind of like air on it too I actually think there are some tracks in the soundtrack that are fine like it's not all trash I think some of them were actually kind of good but there were also some uh yeah well I'm definitely gonna be pressing the skip button in the future that's for sure and then lastly I just want to highlight the improvements to collisions this was something that actually got highlighted very recently and I think it was white lights video on Unbound where the collisions were just kind of weird where sometimes you can hit something really hard and it doesn't crash out your car and other times you hit something very lightly and it does and also like how no matter how small the crash and how like low speed it was the car would always tumble all of that has been addressed and so far I haven't really had any weird moments with collisions like every time I actually crashed out it felt Justified and it just feels better overall which is another really good thing right that about rounds it up for I think Volume 2 uh is what they call it now in Unbound and I gotta say it is a pretty decent update I know it's kind of been a popular thing to just kind of like hit on new games and hate on Need for Speed but I just gotta say like this is definitely much better than I'm used to with other racing games nowadays I actually think it's a great thing that they focus more on fixes and improvements to existing shoes rather than just further inflating the game with more and more content that people may not have many would have been asking for at all I don't want to call out any game specifically in this video but um there's definitely a lot of games where the devs or Publishers or whoever thinks it's fine to just add like a couple of cars every month and call it a day without actually addressing any of the major issues and that's something that honestly just really annoys me because just adding up few cars into the game doesn't really make the game any better it just further inflates it even more so I think that this approach that unborn is taking where they're like hey you know let's listen to the community see what they say and see what we can fix with the next update and then actually going out of their way to do it is a great approach and it's something that I wish would I wish we would see more often in other racing games it's just a shame that they didn't really make like that the center point of the news as I said earlier the trailer was all about the new content which obviously isn't all that much considering they were actually busy with fixes and improvements which as I said is a great thing and so I really wish that you know they rethink their communication for future updates because the second wave of responses they got once they actually announced all the improvements was much better and out that with the next update they can just kind of like let the cat out of the back and say like all right here's what we improved this time around and here's what's new this way we can have like you know love this situation again because it was kind of unfortunate but the one million dollar question at the end of the day is does this safe Unbound because the state of Unbound was pretty dwindling like play accounts were dropping pretty rapidly I'd say in around January and especially February and the question now is will this update actually Revitalize the play accounts will this actually be something that brings players back and that's why I'm not super sure I think it really just boils down whether or not you liked the initial game or not if you were someone who didn't like the you know art style you didn't like the map you didn't like the Bare Basics of the game I don't think the update changes the game in any dramatic ways to make you change your opinion full stop however if they were only like very specific things you had issues with like for example the low pelts multiplayer or you know generally you like the game but there was just a few minor things here and there that you would have liked to see improved then honestly I think it might just be worth checking back into with Unbound and yeah I feel like the game before him you're probably already busy playing the updates and are probably having a lot of fun I think if we're talking about longevity when it comes to Unbound and you know with how many people actually play the multiplayer I think a lot of it is still sadly hampered by the matchmaking system which is just something that I feel obligated to bring up so in case you're not aware the way matchmaking Works in Unbound is basically you join a multiplayer server let's just say Lobby for the sake of convenience because it really is more of a Lobby and Lobby can hold at most 16 players those are 16 players that can roam around the map freely and actually join race playlists and these race playlists are then kept to eight players and if you want to play with friends it's kept to 4 play is so you can only have like four players in your party and I think this system this has been brought up multiple times it's not like anything new that I'm saying but I think it's this system that I think really does not do Unbound any favors in previous digital speeds you could basically just enter a menu and you can just go into multiplayer and you can start queuing for a race playlist or you know whatever and it would then match you up with players that are also currently looking for playlists no matter where they are if they're on the same server like none of that really mattered the way it works now is you can basically start a playlist or look for races and then that invite quote-unquote will only go out to the 16 people tops that are currently in the same lobby with you which is not really ideal because they never know what these people might be doing right like some people might be busy doing something in the garage and may not want to like actually accept a race invite especially now with the cops being added in multiplayer I think a lot of people are going to be busy with the cop chases in online and aren't actually going to except playlists because they are running away from the cops so the matchmaking sadly is still something that I think could use some improvements sadly if you know like a little bit about like the way game development works that stuff is server side and anything that is has anything to do with the servers and the way they're structured is really hard to work on so honestly wouldn't get my hopes up that this is going to be fixed with the next update I hope so but um yeah it just remains to be seen but what about my own personal opinion well if you have followed me for a little while you know that I was kind of like meh on unbalanced like I played it for I think like about eight hours and I just wasn't really warming up with it there's many due to the way the single player works like if you know some of my favorite games like grandchilds move forward Pro Series or Forza Horizon like these games are a lot more open basically sure you have like an economy and you have to do like good decisions and you can just it's not like you know the modern Horizon games where you just kind of can do whatever you want but they do give you like a lot more freedom and with the way unbound's initial video worked it wasn't really like that like the game gave you like very little bounce of money and you kind of had to do things a very specific way don't spend too much on customization in the beginning like it was very very restrictive and some people might like that because it does actually make the game more challenging and you actually have to think about what you're doing but it just wasn't for me it wasn't anything for me personally and then also seeing what the state of the multiplayer was at the time and you know without all the fixes that I've been mentioning in this video I didn't really have that much motivation to keep playing sadly but now that I actually got around to check out the update a week early over this weekend I gotta say I actually had quite a lot of fun it's pretty interesting the cops and multiplayer were absolutely chaotic I remember I wasn't a Chase with I think game riots and black panther at one point and despite us just being like three dudes the map was completely littered with cops like the entire city was on on a total lockdown and it was just a blast it was probably like the best cops I've seen in a multiplayer in quite a while like it's actually really well implemented what I also really liked about the multiplayer cops was that you actually now get cash when you crash out cops which I think is something that also should have been in the base game especially in the single player and I hope they also transfer that over to the single player but basically now if you manage to wreck a cop you basically just get 200 for every cop wrecked which is cooling concept but I think it needs a little bit more of refining 200 for each cop wrecked isn't really that much it really doesn't add up that well I think instead what they should probably consider doing is that you get different amounts of money depending on the type of cup that you wrecked like if you just wreck like a regular City Cruiser like one of the conditioned one cups you just get 200 but if you wreck like one of the faster um Corvettes or maybe even like one of the you know one of the Raptors you're actually getting more maybe like a thousand two thousand I'm not sure how they would balance that exactly we're just getting more money depending on the type of cup that you wrecked just makes sense in my opinion and then last Sunday I was also doing some races with LPN and uh pixel hidden and actually gotta say that the races were pretty fun uh they definitely feel more rewarding now that the payouts have been increased and multiplayer races feeling rewarding is extremely important like if you do a race and you know worst case you get last uh wouldn't be me by the way and then you basically just get scraps uh it just doesn't really feel very it just doesn't motivate you to continue playing but now that payouts have increased and actually get like a decent assembly decent amount even if you lose it's honestly great and I I felt the races were a lot more rewarding and fun as a result and the reason why I think this is actually a good update is because usually update supports for previous Need for Speed games has been pretty bad unfortunately one thing that I read a lot for whatever reason and heard a lot is that this is basically the same as heat how actually how let's go back to when heat got its handful of updates we got two cars with only a small handful of challenges for each of them minor quality of life improvements that almost no one noticed and the cops although they were in the multiplayer at launch when nowhere near as good as the ones that we now have in Unbound because the damage system in heat was just much worse like it was way too easy to take damage from even the tiniest things in heat which admittedly made for pretty exciting cop chases especially in the single player but now with damage just making more sense and you being able to Ram cops without taking any damage really it makes the cops in unbounce multiplayer way more fun and then another comment that I heard a lot is that this is basically all content that should have been in the game at launch well yeah but you can say that about pretty much anything if you really think about it anything any update that any game ever gets could have been in the base game like but that's just not how updates and DLC work at the end of the day they wanted to release Unbound at the end of 2022 and what we got was what we had the only thing that I feel is just unfortunate is you know stuff that was in he that launch and then not in unbounded Lodge like the copson multiplayer that's like the only thing where I'd be like yeah maybe this should have been their launch but look I'm just happy regardless that this game is getting any kind of support and any kind of love because it feels like something we have not really seen in years when it comes to the Need for Speed Series so the way I see it is that with Unbound and volume 2 it actually somewhat feels like a return to form it feels like they actually care this time around and actually want this game to be better especially as I outlined they actually fix the stuff that people complain about which is sadly kind of unprecedented so overall I just think in terms of Updates this is a big Improvement of a previous need for speeds and that's just something that I generally appreciate and I also think that I'm cautiously optimistic as a result when it comes to the future of the game especially because now they did fix a lot of their major issues obviously there's still some work to be done which is fine but most of the major stuff is kinda gone and now they can actually think about expanding the game which I think is a good point to be at but if we were to already kind of start talking about the updates which comes after this I think the next update really really should consider adding some play value it doesn't even need to be anything like mind-blowing like we don't I honestly don't really need like a map expansion for example but just some stuff like new modes you know new kind of like event types that you can participate in maybe even special multiplayer events you know kind of like Forza Horizon has them just for fun and obviously a big one that I think everyone is kind of thinking about is pink slip races and online that would be the non-plus ultra and I think that's something absolutely everyone would love you could probably already tell from just my ideas that Unbound definitely still has a lot more potential and I really hope that Criterion grasps the potential that is actually in Unbound and continues to deliver great great updates uh you know during the rest of the year because look I know I'm covering like a lot of old games on the channel but um I just want new games to be as great as they can be just as much as the next guy I really do think that Criterion is on the right track with unborn they have their head in the right space and I think they are capable certainly of um you know continuing to do great updates for the game and uh I hope that next time I can make a video on another Unbound update I can be just as positive but yeah that should cover all of my thoughts about the Need for Speed unbalanced thank you once again to a for letting me check out the update early much appreciated and I hope that was helpful to some of you but now I want to know your opinion do you think this is a good update will this actually get you back into Need for Speed Unbound I'd love to hear all of your opinions down in the comments below make sure it's been fun until we meet again bye everyone

Channel: DustinEden

Views: 34,465

Keywords: dustineden, dustin, eden, gameplay, review, reaction, compilation, twitch, best clips, top clips, twitch fails, perfect timing, funny, nfs, need for speed, unbound, nfs unbound, update, mod, mods, vol 2, nfs unbound maybach, maybach, volume 2

Id: 4kc8cX0XAlE

Length: 21min 30sec (1290 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 21 2023