Need for Speed (2015)

With the appearance on Steam of new parts of Need for Speed, created over the last ten years, it was impossible not to be filled with enthusiasm: the beloved series was finally on the Orthodox platform. Even though I haven't touched it since Hot Pursuit 2010, I still followed the series and didn't lose sight of it. Although things weren’t going well for her, she still harbored hope that someday electronics would return to its roots. And now, in 2016, a new part is released without a subtitle, which looks very ambitious: declared as a re-imagining, again night rides, neon streets, nice graphics. I thought: well, finally, maybe a rethink will give some good result, return the series to its former greatness. But apparently our dreams will remain so, because in reality the restart is a low-grade craft.

There are so many nuances and disadvantages here that you don’t even know where to start. Everything that we loved so much in the previous parts of the series, all the interesting mechanics and goodies continue to be shamelessly emasculated by the developers and are declared as a “rethinking”.

Tuning – completely neutered. For cars, God forbid, if there are at least a dozen spare parts, and for some they are almost absent. And it turns out that the only customization that can give your car at least some kind of individuality is stickers, with which you will spend a lot of time fiddling around to make the car look at least a little decent.

Integrated multiplayer, which makes the game constantly dependent on the online. Besides you, there are “newbies” like you driving on the map, and they pose a much greater threat on the track than local traffic or cops; they will constantly get in the way during the race.

The music becomes more and more disgusting from time to time. If you can listen to playlists from UD, UD2, MW 2005 endlessly, then here is some kind of disgusting dub step. It was as if rock had ceased to exist at all.

The cops, who were one of the features of the series, also went under the knife. They exist, but throughout the entire game you will come across a maximum of a couple of patrols, and sometimes you will have to look for them purposefully. And they chase you extremely lazily; in order to escape from pursuit, you just need to drive around the next corner. Someone might say that there is a special mod for fixing cops, which makes them many times more aggressive, and there are more of them. Yes, it helps, but this mod is useless, because in it it’s impossible to escape from the cops: you can collect several cars, but you can’t get away from them, they constantly drive at your speed, you can’t break them, there are no places to escape the chase - no, there is no time dilation for high-speed maneuvers. So it turns out that you are faced with a choice, either you ride with disabled cops, or with a mod, but you stupidly won’t escape the chase.

There are some sort of photo spots here, but that's a bummer. If in Underground 2 you were photographed for a magazine cover, you approached it with creativity, it was interesting. And here, you just arrived at the point, the camera lazily took a photo of you (you can’t adjust the position of the car: where you parked, they’ll take your photo) and that’s it.

The developers managed to ruin even the ride, making it completely insane. The car sometimes behaves inadequately at speeds, the physics of driving the car began to look more like The Crew, where the cars also controlled like fucking irons.

And they pass this off to us as a rethinking. EA, are you serious? Just think about it: the company has been mercilessly perverting the series for 15 years, since the release of MV; in 2005, EA raised the quality bar, which they themselves were unable to meet in the future. As a result, the series became a pathetic parody of itself.

This is a less good racing game, but as part of NFS it sucks. It may be suitable for new players, but I can only advise veterans of the series: don’t waste time, it’s better to replay the classics.