TGS 2015: Need For Speed Races to Repair its Reputation - Preview
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 20 September 2015 / 5,331 Views
2014 was the first year in a long time that did not play host to a new entry in EA’s flagship racing franchise, Need for Speed. Need for Speed is back for 2015 and it is simply called Need for Speed. Is it a reboot? Technically, yes, but I’m not sure in reality; it plays like many NFS games from the recent past. Believe it or not it is the first game in the series to actually be called Need for Speed (the original 1994 release was called The Need for Speed) so we cannot accuse the developers of being redundant, at least not when it comes to the name.
The main focus of this entry is earning as much reputation as possible. You score reputation points for doing everything from winning races, to drifting, causing destruction, and evading the police. The demo available on the show floor at the Tokyo Game show placed four human players against each other on an open map and the goal was to earn as much rep as possible within five minutes.
First, we were given about two minutes to select and customize our rides. I chose a classic Nissan Skyline GTR and redesigned it slightly, giving it an orange paint job with a metallic finish. I also made cosmetic changes to the side mirrors and rear fender, while making performance tweaks with my choice of tires.
After finishing our customizations we were released into the sandbox open world. At the start we went head to head in a sprint race, following markers on the road towards the finish line. After unfortunately straying from the course I ended up finishing fourth out of 7 competitors (CPU cars also feature). With the remaining time left we all went our separate ways in the game’s sandbox, trying to rack up as many points as possible.
The state of the art Need for Speed booth featured a leaderboard that updated in real time, displaying everyone’s total rep. I stole frequent glances at the board trying to ensure I remained competitive and found I earned most of my rep by drifting and chaining together near collisions, high speeds, and police evasion in sequences long enough to increase my score multiplier. Other than occasionally crashing into one on purpose to cause trouble, I mostly stayed clear of interaction with the other human players. I also encountered prompts along the way to enter other races but I could not figure how to confirm my participation. In any case, by the time the five minute demo session was over I sat comfortably atop the leaderboard with over 55,000 reputation points.
Need for Speed’s open world city, Ventura Bay, seems rather generic and nondescript at night and unfortunately you won’t have the chance to explore it during the day as the game takes place between dusk and dawn. It is hard to pin down any one city that likely provided the inspiration for the map design but Ventura Bay supposedly boasts double the amount of drivable roads than the city featured in Need for Speed Rivals.
This Need for Speed boasts five unique play styles. Outlaw, Style, Build, Speed, and Crew. There will be five overlapping narratives each structured around a specific style of play. The game has taken heat for requiring an internet connection at all times in order to play but it remains to be seen how well that will work in execution with a live world of gamers connecting from all over the world.
As the first current gen only release in the series, Need For Speed does take advantage of the Frostbite engine to show off pretty graphics and sound, even in the pre-alpha build that was available on the show floor. But we’ll see if the year off was enough time for Need for Speed to repair its reputation when it launches this November on Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and Spring 2016 on PC.
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If it wasn't always online I might have got it.
I am a person that always plays online, do I do not mind that for this game as long as it holds up to what I expect out of it.
If this is the Underground 3 I want it to be, I can deal with the always online, it's rare I don't have PS Plus
I wonder if the next one will be called 2 Need 2 the speed. Or Need For Speed: Tokyo Drift.
