Need for Speed Unbound Review: Reheated

Famine · Nov 1, 2022

This is the discussion thread for an article on GTPlanet:

Need for Speed Unbound Review: Reheated

As one of the longest-lived gaming series of all, never mind just the racing genre, a new NFS game is kind of a big deal. Or at least we thought it was; the promotional lead-up to Need for Speed Unbound, from the moment it was announced, was just eight weeks long, and EA sent review codes out the same day as pre-order early access went live...

K24911SC · Dec 7, 2022

Been playing for about 3-4 days and have enjoyed the game. What’s unfortunate is that EA keeps missing a different target audience. I’m 33, and have been an avid NFS fan since Porsche Unleashed. I now own a Porsche 911 likely due to childhood nostalgia of playing these types of games.

GT, Forza, Assetto. They have sim racing locked down, each with their own pros and cons.

What the market wants is a realistic street racing game where we can build our cars from a list of real world licensed parts. Tune the performance (a form of simplified AFR math like tuning gears in GT7, that would have damage implications if you push it too far, so on and so forth. Tied in with a visual dyno run showing the results of the changes you’ve made.) And a community feel on a large AI generated map. Where you could drive for quite literally minutes/hours in between major towns to meet up with other communities (think a simplified no man’s sky). Each major city would be a different server and on and on it goes.

I want to squad up with my car buddies and go out to meets to show off my creations and chat in proximity chat with other enthusiasts. Maybe talk a little trash and throw down on a race. Have a spectator option like GT’s lobby so that the meets crowd could watch as two ego infested Honda and BMW fanboys go at it.

EA, Build it and they will come.

nukleabomb · Dec 8, 2022

I think most of the very positive reviews come from people who havent played (or played little of) Heat. Besides I think FH5 also suffers from the "copy paste" syndrome, where all the would be new features were implemented into FH4 with much less polish or depth.

Unbound, post single player story, is severely lacking in content or things to do other than 100%ing it. It could be remedied with a new game+ or something but then the lack of even variety will rear its ugly head in.

It is best experienced with a subscription, not worth full price imo. Maybe a year or 2 down the line, when it is really cheap and the Unite mod is released (along with the official DLC and content updates), is the best time to get into it. Heat Unite is the easy recommendation over Unbound, as it gives virtually the same experience while having a lower cost of purchase. OFC all this is only possible on PC.

ICEYOU3 · Dec 8, 2022

Well this review definitely has made me think twice about getting this game, thanks for the write up Famine.

DonZonda · Dec 8, 2022

Overall I agree to the OP, but the sense of speed ? the game feels really fast in 3rd person especially due the high FOV. The crawling which is mentioned here I feel in GT7 due to the narrow default fov and static camera except cockpit, but not in NFS.

Sounds design is a little odd some cars are really quiet (WRX Sti, as an owner a little let down) while others are loud and also the load on the throttle changes the volume, you can be at 6000rpm and apply just a little throttle and your car is basicially quiet... while when you put 100% throttle in low RPM's it screams. it's a little weird.

ICEYOU3 · Dec 8, 2022

K24911SC
Been playing for about 3-4 days and have enjoyed the game. What’s unfortunate is that EA keeps missing a different target audience. I’m 33, and have been an avid NFS fan since Porsche Unleashed. I now own a Porsche 911 likely due to childhood nostalgia of playing these types of games.

GT, Forza, Assetto. They have sim racing locked down, each with their own pros and cons.

What the market wants is a realistic street racing game where we can build our cars from a list of real world licensed parts. Tune the performance (a form of simplified AFR math like tuning gears in GT7, that would have damage implications if you push it too far, so on and so forth. Tied in with a visual dyno run showing the results of the changes you’ve made.) And a community feel on a large AI generated map. Where you could drive for quite literally minutes/hours in between major towns to meet up with other communities (think a simplified no man’s sky). Each major city would be a different server and on and on it goes.

I want to squad up with my car buddies and go out to meets to show off my creations and chat in proximity chat with other enthusiasts. Maybe talk a little trash and throw down on a race. Have a spectator option like GT’s lobby so that the meets crowd could watch as two ego infested Honda and BMW fanboys go at it.

EA, Build it and they will come.

Well TDU is coming

Razor281 · Dec 8, 2022

Famine
This is the discussion thread for an article on GTPlanet:

Need for Speed Unbound Review: Reheated
As one of the longest-lived gaming series of all, never mind just the racing genre, a new NFS game is kind of a big deal. Or at least we thought it was; the promotional lead-up to Need for Speed Unbound, from the moment it was announced, was just eight weeks long, and EA sent review codes out the same day as pre-order early access went live...

Finally an honest review, it seems most YouTubers are afraid to state these facts!! Yeah thank you, I played the demo and wasn't that impressed.

Hazel · Dec 8, 2022

So far, I've been impressed by 2 of 3 streamers I've watched playing it.
I shall elaborate:
First watched Jimmy Broadbent live streaming it, main takeaway the physics are not realistic; ie he crashed, a lot!! It's NFS, what is expected of latest versions?; I have played all of the early ones which had remarkably accurate physics for the machines we were playing on.
Then I watched Alex (Failrace) and this was hysterically funny because of usual Failrace antics, main takeaway you can't adjust buttons and dont even think of using manual.....
Lastly I watched SuperGT playing multiplayer. Forza turn 1 antics but actually legit in NFS, might have the side effect of making Forza & GT7 cleaner......

I want this game, just not at £60-£70.... if it was £35-£40 I would already have a copy. Will make do with the 10hour free demo on Xbox.

tl;dr it's mindless fun in cars without the trip to A&E (ER), but too expensive.

NLxAROSA · Dec 8, 2022

Really enjoying this title so far. Very fun, always having to balance choices, lots of stuff to see and do.

A couple of negatives:

The career mode is a weird thing, it boxes/corners you in for no specific reason. And then it just lets you repeat the Friday anyway, which is, well, weird. The post-career map is way more enjoyable. Should have been like that from the start.
nVidia driver on PC combined with the game is a hot load of garbage. I'm expecting a patch, new driver, or both.

The game doesn't explain a lot of things: like being able to turn off the brake-to-drift mechanic, or the gas-to-drift mechanic, or both (initiate with hand brake instead). Why the heck was that not the default??? It's the sole reason for not being able to brake outside of a straight line! Disabling it instantly removes that negative. At the least it should have explained this. Also not explained: stopping and turning off engine doesn't just make you harder to detect: it completely prevents choppers from seeing you. And there's a couple of other things.

That said, nothing that can't be worked around. But keep that tap-brake-to-drift option on OFF!

Moglet · Dec 8, 2022

K24911SC
Been playing for about 3-4 days and have enjoyed the game. What’s unfortunate is that EA keeps missing a different target audience. I’m 33, and have been an avid NFS fan since Porsche Unleashed. I now own a Porsche 911 likely due to childhood nostalgia of playing these types of games.

GT, Forza, Assetto. They have sim racing locked down, each with their own pros and cons.

What the market wants is a realistic street racing game where we can build our cars from a list of real world licensed parts. Tune the performance (a form of simplified AFR math like tuning gears in GT7, that would have damage implications if you push it too far, so on and so forth. Tied in with a visual dyno run showing the results of the changes you’ve made.) And a community feel on a large AI generated map. Where you could drive for quite literally minutes/hours in between major towns to meet up with other communities (think a simplified no man’s sky). Each major city would be a different server and on and on it goes.

I want to squad up with my car buddies and go out to meets to show off my creations and chat in proximity chat with other enthusiasts. Maybe talk a little trash and throw down on a race. Have a spectator option like GT’s lobby so that the meets crowd could watch as two ego infested Honda and BMW fanboys go at it.

EA, Build it and they will come.

This sounds awesome but there's no way EA would spend the money to create this when they can just churn out Need for Speed games for a fraction of the cost. For every person you see on forums or reddit complaining about the specifics of the handling, the soundtrack, the car list etc. there are probably hundreds of casual players who are just blasting about in supercars without a care in the world. As long as they can keep selling to those customers they'll keep re-using content and adding some new features here and there.

Personally I'm really enjoying Unbound and don't mind that a lot of it is repeated content from Heat as I didn't play Heat for that long. I'm spending a lot of time in the wrap editor and just blasting about the city so I'm definitely getting good value from it.

YT04KA · Dec 8, 2022

Playing since last Friday, and quite unexpected for me, I've got a ton of fun. I missed Heat and Payback, but played 2015, and my main complaint was driving, so i'm happy that unbound fixed it for me. I set all sliders to middle, and got surprisingly fun racing (also i really like how they made dualsense here). AI racers are fun to compete, and police at high heat is so aggressive that i love it. Even character design looks fine to me.

Nacho Libre · Dec 8, 2022

Well, I've played enough of the 10-hr trial to confirm that the game is not for me. It had some good things and the visual style surprisingly didn't bothered me at all, but as arcade things go IMO The Crew 2 is better.

Awong124 · Dec 8, 2022

I saw this game on sale on Amazon yesterday and was going to get it, but I forgot and missed my chance. Now, after reading this, I'm glad I didn't buy it yet. I'll still likely get it at some point, maybe when it drops to $30 CAD.

inCloud · Dec 8, 2022

K24911SC
What the market wants

This is what Horizon should be, IMO. NFS is finally on right track, IMO.

Famine
article on GTPlanet:

GTPlanet could write deeper review. Overall, its on point, but feel like something from Kotaku or another generic game journalist review. After all, you are racing games website, you could give more in-depth look.

sumbrownkid · Dec 8, 2022

It definitely has its issues, but honestly the core of it is fun.

The rubber banding though is ridiculous at times.

inCloud · Dec 8, 2022

sumbrownkid
rubber banding

IMO, its nonexistent. I have few 3 lap races with 500+ yards distance between me and AI after it miss checkpoint or hit something in first corner.

leggy2fast · Dec 8, 2022

It's my first NFS in forever and since I didn't play Heat, most of the stuff I see is a breath of fresh air. I'm legit having good fun. I'ts not my aesthetic and it's definitely not the way I approach car stuff as a hobby, but it's good to immerse yourself in something different from time to time. (I'm much more of the jazzy cool vibe of GT versus the street-culture graffiti hip hop vibes of NFS)

Like NLxAROSA said, it's adamant that you turn the "drift start" assist off to enjoy the game well. My main car in the story is the GTI 76 (which im happy I can modify enough to use it against the super and hypercars!) fully tuned to grip instead of drift, and it's working wonders.

The game makes you work quite hard for money and for those upgrades to turn your Beetle into a A+ machine, and honestly I love how it has you balancing how much money you make versus knowing when to quit and return to your safehouse.

Have I mentioned how much I love being able to use the boxy GTI as my main car for the story? I love it.

Edit: I also absolutely loved the approach to character design, letting you pic different voice tones, body presentations, not gendering clothes etc. I lack the drip of the characters in-game but it was pretty nice to make a character I could enjoy playing as.

breyzipp · Dec 8, 2022

I might pick this up for like 20 EUR max at Black Friday 2023, if I even want to bother with it.

I might as well just continue playing GRID Legends, or even Heat, I kinda enjoyed that game and from the few reviews I’ve seen about Unbound, you can’t even switch day/night at will but you are forced to play it the way the game is set up. What’s even worse is that events are locked to in-game days, meaning if your favourite race is let’s say Wednesday during daytime, you need to progress through a whole week to be able to play it again. That is just AWEFUL game design, I’m sure it will be changed in a future patch, which is why passing for full price and buying later for bargain feels best. Especially with my low interest in the game.

What initially turned me off the most (ASAP Rocky or whatever that dude is called and the cartoon/anime style graphics) seems to not even be Unbound’s biggest issue at the moment.

NDFong · Dec 9, 2022

Need for speed unbound is going to be on sale this Sunday at GameStop for $44.99.

edit: Target is $39.99 this Sunday for Need for speed unbound.

GTboyz · Dec 9, 2022

NDFong
Need for speed unbound is going to be on sale this Sunday at GameStop for $44.99.

That's quick.

Moglet · Dec 9, 2022

inCloud
This is what Horizon should be, IMO. NFS is finally on right track, IMO.

GTPlanet could write deeper review. Overall, its on point, but feel like something from Kotaku or another generic game journalist review. After all, you are racing games website, you could give more in-depth look.

I'm not sure what they could have gone into more detail on that would be useful, it's not like you can review the handling in depth or anything as it's too arcade for that. They've covered single and multiplayer as well as things like the visuals, audio, and value for money. That's probably about what most people want when reviewing an arcade racer.

inCloud · Dec 9, 2022

Moglet
I'm not sure what they could have gone into more detail on that would be useful, it's not like you can review the handling in depth or anything as it's too arcade for that. They've covered single and multiplayer as well as things like the visuals, audio, and value for money. That's probably about what most people want when reviewing an arcade racer.

For example, there are almost zero info about drift related events(one mention in handling paragraph). Gameplay loop in general should be explained better - its more of a risk/reward thing than any other arcade racing game since High Stakes.

You have an entirely separate garage in multiplayer too

Not true.

Nismonath5 · Dec 9, 2022

Firstly, there’s precious little sense of speed. Even though the game now runs at a smooth 60fps, 150mph past traffic barely feels quick. While stealthily following a truck behind a cop car so the cops didn’t spot us, crawling through the center of Lakeshore, the HUD had us at 58mph at what felt like walking pace — and that was with default motion blur turned on

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thinks this!! I mentioned this elsewhere in a discussion about the game and got absolutely mocked and ridiculed, but really! Starting the game, the sense of speed is zero.

With a full shot of burst nitrous, my stock BRZ does 0-80mph in about 3 seconds, but once the visual effects wear off its like I'm out for a pleasant Sunday afternoon cruise.

Famine · Dec 9, 2022

inCloud
Not true.

Weird then that my Multiplayer garage has a Golf (one of three cars I was required to pick when starting up MP for the first time) while my Single Player garage has a BRZ (a car I bought), but my Multiplayer garage has no BRZ (which needs to be unlocked and then purchased separately through a challenge: drifting for 200s during Tier B races) and my Single Player garage has no Golf.

There's also a really obvious disconnect if you have the Palace Edition; you have to unlock the Palace Edition cars for purchase individually in Single Player as they're each locked to a SP game week, but they're all available to purchase in Multiplayer right off the bat.

You can unlock cars in your Multiplayer garage by completing Single Player challenges/events (for example the Barracuda, Exige, and Defender from Week 1), but otherwise the garages are totally separate entities. Buying a car in MP doesn't produce it in SP, nor vice versa. Upgrading a car in SP doesn't upgrade it in MP (if you own it in both). You even have separate Bank accounts (again, PE awards $150,000... to Multiplayer)...

... and just to drive that particular knife home, your garage upgrades (making Pro/Super/Elite parts available) also do not carry from one mode to another.

So... your "not true" is in fact not true.

Dak0ta · Dec 9, 2022

the state of nfs is really sad, im really surprised at the ost, 20 years ago you had metal, EDM, rap... now its all bloody trap

is it that hard to put a natural gameplay like those from the blackbox games, tokyo xtreme racer, project gotham, grid...? the moment they hit the nail in that plus a good police system, a lot of people would move from horizon to that

Moglet · Dec 9, 2022

Dak0ta
the state of nfs is really sad, im really surprised at the ost, 20 years ago you had metal, EDM, rap... now its all bloody trap

is it that hard to put a natural gameplay like those from the blackbox games, tokyo xtreme racer, project gotham, grid...? the moment they hit the nail in that plus a good police system, a lot of people would move from horizon to that

I'm a huge fan of hip hop and rap (what's in the game isn't really trap IMO) but I can definitely see why a lot of fans are frustrated at the lack of variety in the OST. I'm not really sure what sort of metal or even rock/pop rock tracks would fit with the style of the game but I'm sure there are some out there.

Dak0ta · Dec 9, 2022

Moglet
I'm a huge fan of hip hop and rap (what's in the game isn't really trap IMO) but I can definitely see why a lot of fans are frustrated at the lack of variety in the OST. I'm not really sure what sort of metal or even rock/pop rock tracks would fit with the style of the game but I'm sure there are some out there.

NLxAROSA · Dec 9, 2022

Famine
Weird then that my Multiplayer garage has a Golf (one of three cars I was required to pick when starting up MP for the first time) while my Single Player garage has a BRZ (a car I bought), but my Multiplayer garage has no BRZ (which needs to be unlocked and then purchased separately through a challenge: drifting for 200s during Tier B races) and my Single Player garage has no Golf.

And let's not forget the M3 GTR: unlocked via single player (High Heat delivery), but nowhere to be seen in the single player garage: it's a multiplayer car only.

ron24 · Dec 9, 2022

NLxAROSA
And let's not forget the M3 GTR: unlocked via single player (High Heat delivery), but nowhere to be seen in the single player garage: it's a multiplayer car only.

And if your EA Play expires you loose M3 GTR. It gets removed.

NLxAROSA · Dec 10, 2022

ron24
And if your EA Play expires you loose M3 GTR. It gets removed.

Wouldn’t that remove the entire game? Or did you buy the full version after playing the trial?

There might be a workaround while EA/Criterion works on a fix:
You can replay the delivery missions after The Grand. They pop up during the nights, so keep an eye out for the delivery called ‘blacklisted’. (Might be a while before it shows as the events pop up randomly). I missed the car delivery during the career, but was able to pick it up later this way.

I suppose that won’t bring back the car you had purchased and modded though (assuming that one was removed too).

Need for Speed Unbound Review: Reheated

GTP Editor, GTPEDIA Author