NEED FOR SPEED. PART 3. Back to basics, but it doesn’t get any better.
By 2015, EA and ghost games decided to release a restart of the series. They probably wanted to release it by 2014, for the 20th anniversary of the series, but the game required a full two-year development cycle, so it came out a little later (and much later on PC (a year later)). The game was developed by the mixed studio Ghost games. It consisted of part of the Rivals developers and part of the Criterion developers. All those who were not included in the new Ghost games were transferred to the criterion and became a support studio.
Original cover, and deluxe edition, where the faces of the icons are visible.
Original cover, and deluxe edition, where the faces of the icons are visible.
The relaunch was received coolly. The only positives that could be noted were good graphics and a good presentation of the plot (although of the characters, only Manu is memorable).
But with the minuses everything is more individual. There was tuning, but on some cars there was a lot of it, and on others there was none at all.
Physics was disgusting. The system where the player could customize the behavior of the car himself turned out to be really unnecessary, because if you configured the car completely in grip, then the car would stand on the rails and it would be impossible to turn sharply. And when setting the car completely to drift (or further than the middle of the slider), you were overtaken by the impulse of the release of force from split second and you were simply blown away, which made the control of the car feel inadequate. And we had to follow the same template, and because of this, cars with the same drive were very similar. Unless some Ferrari F40 was noticeably faster than a Subaru Brz.
The bots were stupid, and the police were downright stupid, which is why the challenge for which we play games did not arise, and the plot was easy. (Except for the violator branch, because it was too difficult to maintain a chase, and finding cops in the open world is almost impossible).
Oh, more bugs. I won’t say anything about the console version, but on PC it was the norm when the textures didn’t have time to load and you fell into them. If the start of the race was on a bridge under which there is a road, then the opponent could load on the road below.
The downloads were also insanely long. It could easily last 2 minutes if the game was installed on the HDD, but it had to be loaded often (they were noticeably faster if you put the game on the ssd, but still).
And as a result, we were promised a restart in the underground style, but what we got was a crude game, in which there were many controversial decisions, and there was practically no atmosphere of illegal street racing (but the atmosphere of the night city is beyond praise) .
2017, a pompous presentation of https://howzitcasino.co.uk/games/ a new game at gamescom with a BMW leaving a sea container, and a trailer showing the physics of the game, and it was because of this trailer that I did not buy the game. And then it turned out that everything was very bad.
Apparently the story with the run EA didn’t teach anything and they again tried to make a loud Hollywood action out of NFS, mainly due to exciting chases, but they didn’t succeed at all.
The police cars were puny and could be taken out in 3 hits, but they also hit you, causing damage to themselves.
The physics are about the same as if you moved the physics settings slider from the previous part, moved it to drift by half (although there may be a physics setting there, I just played the game for only an hour. I had enough)
And I don’t know how it is now, I downloaded the game for free (from well-known resources) and there was pumping through speed cards (aka loot boxes), which is a complete shame and failure.
I relatively know the plot. And he’s shameful.
And because of all the disadvantages, the game was received poorly, really poorly. Overall, no one liked the game. Not the players, not the critics
Perhaps this game can be called the lowest point in the history of the series.
And now 2 years later the same team releases the next part.
And as for me, these are the same eggs, only in profile.
The physics is the same, the tuning is similar to NFS 15, only the classes of parts have changed (they were legendary, but they became absolute+).
The plot became very embarrassing and stupid (this was not the case in other parts).
Except that the cops have become more aggressive, which is rather a plus.
And that’s it, I have nothing to say about this part. Stupid passerby who is not worth anyone’s attention.
And it’s time to talk about NFS, which will be released either in the fall of this year or in the fall of next year.
Indeed, there are now 2 videos, one that shows the level of the new graphics (and they are good) (this is more of a demo that shows the capabilities of the frostbyte, but the new NFS will again be based on it), and one “drain”, but some conclusions can already be drawn.
And firstly, criterion is responsible for the development this time, like the creators of the burnaut series, but no. Not really. All developers were transferred from the ghost games studio to Criterion, and Criterion to Ghost Games (and renamed EA Gothenburg) and now Ghosts are becoming EA’s support studio. Essentially nothing has changed.
And from all of the above we can draw some conclusions.
In terms of design and styling it will be something between Hot Pursuit 2010 and MW 2012, which, in my opinion, is not bad. I liked the stylization in both games.
And in fact I’m afraid that it will be the same heat or payback, only in a new cover. And the only thing that can save the series is not a game on frostbite. And given the rumors about the purchase of Codemasters, which has an EGO engine (examples of games), which is created specifically for racing games (and EA will now also have the Madness Engine, and it is also created specifically for racing).
EA should shift its focus away from frostbite graphics and realize that it’s only suitable for shooters. The new FIFA on frostbite also plays worse than the previous parts on a different engine.
And this was my opinion about the NFS series of games in three parts. Thanks for reading!