I have essentially completed NFS 2015. I only have the two remaining categories, Crew and Style, plus the Eddie's Challenges bit, but for my sanity's sake, I'm going to consider this god forsaken game done, and move on the minute those are done. For the most part, my sentiments on this game echo what
@LeGeNd-1 has written at the top of this thread, earlier in the year. However, I'm willing to go into detail, bullet point style, starting from the good.
- The car list in this game is quite good - for a NFS game. There's some interesting oddballs, again for the NFS series, like the Foxbody Mustang (And It's nice to have such a wide ranging tapestry for the Mustang, from the original '65 all the way to the modern 2015) and the Volvo 242. The small number certainly makes it that you grow quite a human connection with the vehicles.
- There is no bones about it - this game still looks good, nearly two years after release, and at least on consoles, doing it on inferior hardware. The dew on the vehicles, the great vistas that are present in the game, and the general sense of speed all work really well, and it's a shame that the game isn't going to be getting either a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X update. I still think one of the best things in modern NFS history was moving to the Frostbite engine, as it really works wonders from a graphical standpoint. Even with the frankly wonky time 'cycle'
- Generally, this game has a really good aesthetic going for it. The sort of washed out tone to everything still gives Ventura Bay a really nice look to it, and it really feels, especially in the downtown core areas, like you really are running through the city at past midnight, a feeling I really haven't gotten since the original Underground, honestly. Helps too when you got some low key electronica playing in the background to really sell the a e s t h e t i c look of it all.
- It's pretty obvious that Ghost obviously has a lot of reverence for the history of NFS, and it shows in all the references. The fairly blatant callback to Underground in Eddie's Challenges not withstanding, it's making something like a Noise Bomb labelled time attack missile, or even the licenses plates calling back to the previous games, it gives me a warm and fuzzy, nostalgic feeling. Something that pretty much ends the minute I get into game action.
Now, for the bad...and it is significant, because it is legion, and more often then not either runs directly beside another problem, or completely undermines what good is even there.
- The elephant in the room: the handling. It is terrible. There is no two ways about it. Grip builds are essentially useless, turning the cars into understeering pieces of ****. HOWEVER, I was able to game the system by essentially equipping grip tires and turning the handling characteristics slider towards the drift zone, giving me a whole lot of grip and the ability to drift on command without having to essentially saw at the left analog stick and get the crab walking which is oh so famous with this game. It actually gave me one of my favorite cars in any recent arcade racer: a nearly 900 HP Corvette Z06 built for war, grippy as all hell (at least for this game) and able to lay waste to anybody that went up against me. But Ghost absolutely deserved to be raked over the coals for this frankly terrible handling model. It doesn't feel arcadey with a slice of realism that was present within the earlier NFS games going up to Carbon, and doesn't feel completely arcadey like the Criterion NFS games or even Rivals before it. It's a weird ground where nothing feels right except the set up I managed to build, and even then, compared to other games, it is utter crap.
- Contrary to other people's complaints about the rubber banding AI, I didn't have many problems with it. But it was for good reason that was pretty much baked in: I managed to get the double pack that also came with Rivals, and came with all the DLC's for both. As a result, starting this game gave me a whole metric butt ton of parts that allowed me to make a 550+ HP Civic Type R that made the early races an absolute laugh fest at how easily I was able to clown the opposition. Combined with saving money because of said overpowered Civic, it made the late races even easier when I built said 900 HP Corvette.
- The weirdest thing, even through the lack of a manual gearbox and the ****** handling, was the lack of any ability to actually
TUNE YOUR VEHICLES. Going back to the above point, said Civic Type-R was also hilariously short geared, topping out at around 155 MPH. I saw no ability to tune gear ratios, which, would have been nice to have as well as, you know, somewhat of an essential feature going back to Underground 2.
- The story is bad. Again, no two ways about it. Look Ghost, CGI cutscenes aren't cool anymore. They're the domain of Sega CD games and 90's PC strategy games with Tim Curry playing a Soviet. As interesting as it is to see my car basically green screened into the scene, that isn't enough to get me to watch a bunch of young douchebags gush about dumb street racing crap and hawk Monster Energy products. Which would be essentially every cutscene. Special mention however, goes for Amy and pretty much any Build cutscene. By god. I kept on thinking 'this is what would happen if somebody with no brain tried to replicate a Persona social link/confidant from beginning to end'. The amount of knob slobbering over Nakai-san and RWB (The cars are overrated as hell, people!) was nauseating, and it gave me great pleasure (more then I think it or this game deserves) to basically have Nakai-san come in and speak only in Japanese, meaning nobody had the faintest ****ing clue what he said.
- Special mention to the police chases for being the biggest goddamn wastes of time ever. Knowing that the cops were pretty much brain dead from my first kick of the can on PS4, I settled on doing Outlaw first. A big mistake. For one, said cops are brain dead, and more often then not, your car is significantly faster then even their interceptor Chargers. You'd be often accidentally trying to get a police chase going and blow by the cops, ending the pursuit in like 20 seconds. But the true sin for this game is the fact that
there's absolutely no easy way to figure out how the hell to get more cops onto you, or even how to get increased Heat levels. Remember in Undercover how everybody complained that the Heat levels were wonky as ****, and more often then not, you were confused switching from a normal pursuit to the Cost to State, Cars Disabled challenges, etc? Here, you didn't know what was going on, full stop. Because you didn't know how the hell to get pursuits to higher heat levels (I think I figured it out that it may have something to do with the fines you accrued, but even then I'm not sure) you're pretty much confined to keeping your distance from the cops, close enough so that they don't lose you, and not far enough that you go into Cooldown. It's essentially
in video game form, and it is infuriating, and makes said cop chases, what was once one of the most touted aspects of NFS 2015 into the biggest jokes ever. Look Ghost, what is so hard about transplanting the pursuit system from the Black Box games, and putting them into your games? By this point, I really don't give a damn about realism. All I want is to have fun, and that left your game a long time ago.
- Aside from the fact that there's a lot of stock stickers to choose from, the livery editor in this game is crap. Being used to Forza's, which may not have a lot but can make some amazingly close replicas, NFS 2015 feels like a cheap ripoff that isn't very good, with the only real benefits to the system being the fact that you can place stuff on glass.
- The post launch DLC stuff is a joke too. Drag racing is useless, the Forza Horizon style open challenges are pointless, and the collectables are just pointless and dumb. Much like a majority of this game.
As much as I've gotten down on this game in this long, rambling post, I want to say that there are *some* things good in this game. I am a firm believer in the idea that there is usually one good thing in a video game, and as a result, there are very few games that I would consider truly, awfully bad. (Might also because I read reviews and generally avoid said bad games)
NFS 2015, however, is definitely very close to being one of the most infuriating games I've ever played. The real problem lies in that it is a Jekyll and Hyde game: what precious little this game does right, it is pretty much sabotaged by an opposite design feature, more often then not on purpose. It's pretty much the sado-masochist's racing game of choice: the game hates you, and wants to see any sort of fun you've had snuffed out brutally, and painfully.
Ghost had better hope that Payback is a good title. Because I have a strong suspicion that if it isn't, or is another lukewarm title at best like Rivals, EA is going to pull the plug. And I don't think many people are going to be decrying EA for killing yet another studio like they did Criterion or Black Box. Ghost simply seem unable to even get the bare minimum of what makes an NFS game, and more importantly, what makes an NFS game FUN. Even Criterion, for as much as I hate what they did to the NFS series turning it into a thinly veiled Burnout clone, had at least some inkling of an idea of what to do in a NFS game. Ghost hasn't got a single ****ing clue.
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