The Game that Defined the Series.
First of all, the game is still extremely fun to play even after 15 years of new releases and new hardware. The far selection, albeit limited perfectly fits with the themes of the city and the feeling of being in the daylight and more sort of industrial and edgy feeling. The soundtrack is also great, bands like Bullet For My Valentine? Disturbed? Mastodon, even Celldweller... Great mixture of songs and genres, even if all I stated was metal. But there is one thing that can easily kill the game for someone like me... The big thing that for me, crushes it from being the BEST NFS is the rubberbanding, it is completely busted in this game, if you get any noticeable lead in this game, before you realize it, the AI will be right on your rear bumper again, for me around Blacklist Rival #5, the game went from really fun to really frustrating, I probably selected the wrong cars, but come on, the AI with fast cars and rubberbanding...? It’s a recipe for disaster.
The pursuits themselves are quite fun really, the whole feeling of having the city in the palms of your steering wheel chasing after you, it is a great feeling but anything past heat condition 4 becomes an absolute nightmare to get away from, when you are trying to escape and start to get away, a Helicopter spawns, for example... Like rubberbanding, it is incredibly frustrating and can completely ruin the game late game when going for the late game pursuit milestones...
The races themselves are fine, you got racing, lap knockout, tollbooths (basically time trial) and the WORST and most BS race type of them all... Drag Races...They are absolutely horrible, basically you are on a rail the entire time, the car following the set lanes for you, and you have to shift gears and swap lanes, it’s fine yeah? The problem occurs when it comes to the AI cars... Or traffic cars, they are put in places just to crash your car, oh and have I mentioned that if you hit a car too hard in a drag race you get totaled? Anyways, they turn into complete RNG and luck, trial and error also.
Final word though, I know this review is quite negative for a 4* review... But honestly it is still top 5 in terms of Need For Speed games... Not the best IMO, but up there... The game is extremely frustrating, thing all the mid 2000’s NFS titles were good at being... And the final thing I will say is that if you want a nostalgia trip, go ahead and pick it up, you won’t regret it... Even after all the frustration of the rubberbanding and the Drag Races...Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
