Wow, so empty here...
I had been reading a lot of threads here about NFS and especially Unbound and I thought I might share my opinion on this game as well as the recent NFS franchise in general:
I love this game...a lot. It tried to be something new and different; the style and art direction is awesome and the urban culture of racing is also pretty cool too. From the gameplay loop in Single Player, to the more, creating that perfect car just by winning lots of races and upgrading in Multiplayer. The handling is still very Burnout-like arcadey, which I have always loved (yes, I am a Brake to Drift lover in this series). Almost everything about this game is a solid 9/10 for me and it was actually my GOTY for me back in 2022. The only big issue I have with the game is Multiplayer not having quick races, which was a feature in HP2010 that haven't been back for some reason; making me have to wait for a full lobby which very rarely happens and that facing against only 1 or 2 people is just not fun. But overall, I had a fantastic time with it. About as much as Heat.
The reason why I wanted to share my thoughts on this is because Racing games nowadays seem to lean towards the more grounded and realistic side of things that even other Arcade Racers like The Crew or Grid have gone down with. I have always loved the wacky and crazy racing games like OutRun, Burnout, Ridge Racer, Midnight Club, Blur, and Project Gotham Racing, where realism gets thrown out of the window. Where drifting plays a huge part in races instead of being a disadvantage like the more sim or simcade games do. I don't want to fully Grip in a race and I don't want a game where Drifting is only fro Drift Events. But sadly, those games of that era are a thing of the past, as what one told me.
Need for Speed however, has kept that same magic that I have missed so much in arcade racers nowadays. The recent games may not be what older fans wanted out of the series, but I wasn't really interested a good amount of those Black Box games since they're too focused on Grip handling all the time in races while Drifting is only in Drift Events. The newer games let's me customize the cars' handling however I want and they're perfect for me. NFS had been the arcade racer to capture that silly and wackiness of those others from the 2000s and early 2010s. It's been a franchise I look forward to when the game game comes in.
So, it's really sad to see that some people would rather let this franchise die because NFS now wasn't like NFS back in the 2000s and everyone who grew up with those times had been doom and gloom for over a decade about the series "never going back to it's roots", which I do understand, but that's like asking a new development to to copy exactly what the older devs done and expect something great from it, when that's just not the case. Criterion/Ghost stick to what they're already best at. While I agree that they should have been sticking with Burnout instead, I never minded that NFS had eventually became Burnout's spiritual successor. For that, is why the games had been goofy fun and enjoyable to me every time I decided to try each one of them out.
If NFS dies, I pretty much have nothing in the arcade racing genre except for Indie games. Which are very rare nowadays. Yes, I am aware The Crew and Forza Horizon still exists, but again, they're more grounded and leaned more into being realistic, even though The Crew got Nitrous. Feeling like a Debbie Downer now when I look back at the amount of those games we had and now they're gone. I really just don't want NFS to go down that path of being a thing of the past either.
