Genre racing is misleading. It should be stealth, because all you do is basically playing hide and seek with cops, but they spawn out of nowhere 10 feet from you. And just for the fuckery we will send a helicopter every 10 seconds so you have to hide in the bushes and stand still with your engine off until it passes. Oh, you made it to your destination and finally can start a race? Sike, 3 cop cars exactly at the spot you need to start your race at. Now shake the cops for the next 10 minutes just so you end up 5km drive from your destination again.

1 Star for the Art Direction because the game is pretty af.

Like with any years' sports game titles, I'm not really "finished" with NFS Unbound and will keep playing it whenever I feel like racing, but I've played enough of it now to throw it in the ol' Backloggd.

I absolutely love it! Like with any yearly iteration of a sports game, I knew I would like this going into it; it's racing, it's got dress-up dolls, I like the general vibe of it.

I don't have incredibly complicated thoughts except for that it's fun to dress up your character and car(s) and drive around and race and just have a blast. What more can someone ask for from a racing game? Any racing game that has a customizable dress-up doll racer is gonna be leagues ahead of the others in my book.

I love this game!

Finally, some good fu**ing game. Played it on release and it was very good optimized and worked perfectly. ACTUALLY good story and characters if you will listen dialogues through all game. Very strong visual customization, but i expected more. Surprisingly very cool and good emplemented in game performance tuning and actually great game design in many aspects, like personality of your opponents, even little side quests when you have chance to get to know them better and it's not only in faces and names, it's expressed in their driving style, car and skills too. Awesome open world, which i enjoyed to be part of and just explore, great feelings of the car and physics in general (except drift). But there are a few cons: races bounded to classes of the vehicles and fixed lists, and there are really not so many of them in every part of the city (to which they are bounded too), than in late game you are already played all the races million times and it's kinda not good for the such not that short game, but okay, it's common issue and it's very hard to fix. Another problem is drift events - they suck. I love drifting and nfs: carbon has my favorite drifting physics (even if i like and rescpect drifting like in corsa or carx, beamNG and etc., but carbon is the most enjoyable) because it's fast, it's fun, and it's skilled. In Unbound you can do dirty abusing or just having problems with keeping drift going cuz drift events wants you to do as long (like distance wise) drift as you can, on very low speed, like 2-3 gear (and yes, there is no gears tuning like in NFSU2 or Tokyo Extreme Racer Drift 2) which is sucks, borring and very not friendly, it's like uncomfortably hard to keeps drift going in a good angle or just unreal and not satisfying to control, idk. Also, drift in races is good and very enjoyable and satisfying, it's only drift events problem.

OKAY. I can say ALOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT of words about the game and it's aspects, but in a few words it will be like this:
Game is really cool and you will like it if you like good and clean racing, ready to sweat a bit, enjoy tune your cars and explore open world.
You WILL NOT like this game if you just want to open your beer, watch stream on second monitor and play the game with one hand, casually earning all you want and restarting every race you will not finished on the first place. Game requires a bit of patience\attention\care and thinking.

Edit on 26.07.2023: Now online is very good and playable, you can for sure have fun here with friends, if you like cars, tuning and challenges. But still too much grind for unlocking cars in online.

Unbound will not save the arcade-racing genre… but it was close

I honestly don’t remember when I last enjoyed an NFS title. I grew up playing (amongst many other things) Hot Pursuit 2, Underground 2, Most Wanted and my all-time favourite racing game – Carbon. The last NFS titles I bought were Undercover and Hot Pursuit 2010, which were also solid. The thrill and excitement of driving dangerously while street racing is something, which we won’t find outside NFS. And I’m glad to say I did indeed have fun playing Unbound… for the first few hours. Soon after, the more I played – the more I find my experience tedious and in some cases infuriating.

Let’s start with the positives. I suppose most of you have already seen the numerous videos shitting on the OST. I can say those videos are completely taken out of context by selecting only certain parts of songs and only the 6-7 truly terrible songs – out of 72! A huge amount of the songs are bangers with a wide variety of lesser-known Western and Eastern European artists. The controls are good enough, but not as good as some of the older games. I like the changes to race rewards. Unlike other racing games, finishing first is not the only way to be rewarded or continue the story. The main goal is to earn a certain amount of money to continue with the story. You will lose money for placing poorly but good positions are always rewarded well. It never bogs down to repetitive perfectionism and keeps moving. The car customization system is also decent. There are plenty of options to individualize your ride. Moreover, they finally added the option to share your wraps with the community.

Now for the negatives. Unbound will test your tolerance for bullshit. The crash system is atrocious and it can easily ruin any enjoyment. Crash cams arrest control for several seconds and completely wreck the momentum of the race while the crash detections feel… unfinished. Sometimes trading paint will ruin your chances of placing in a good position, but a head-on collision can barely change your health bar. Most of the time crashes have zero physical sense. Moreover, the difficulty in Unbound feels very cheap and artificial. A.I. drivers with low scores somehow manage to dominate without you even having a chance of beating them. You can drive perfectly without making even a single mistake but an A.I. driver can still take the first spot with more than 250-300 meters lead. On top of that, you get a limited amount of restarts for the day and night (the story progress into days of the week and each day is divided into day racing and night racing). There is no fast travel so you have to drive to different events. Which wouldn’t be a problem if the police system was good. They are pests added to extend the game, nothing more. The map is also very bland with nothing distinctively interesting in it. You also can’t drive in a straight line through hills or shortcuts because of the absurdities of the destructible objects. The distinction is unclear between things that will evaporate on contact and things that will break you. The cherry on top for me personally is all the clutter that is on the screen. The tracks do look very detailed but having so many objects and effects on the screen makes it very hard to focus on the race and it was the main reason for all the frustration I had while playing Unbound. I’m personally not against the anime-like effects, a lot of effort was put into them but combined with everything else they feel unnecessary and too distracting.

Of course, it wouldn’t be published by EA if there were no shitty “DLCs”. Most of them are cosmetics but what made me laugh out loud was the “DLC” for 5€ which marks all the collectables (260!!!) and activities (190!!!). I will be honest – I bought it, installed a fast travel mod, got all the missing collectables, finished the missing activities and refunded it.

In conclusion, I find it very hard to recommend NFS Unbound. I bought the EA Racing Bundle on sale for ~20€ just because I wanted to get Hot Pursuit Remastered (which costs around the same price). It can be a good racing game, but it’s fundamentally flawed. It can be a better experience with some mods but it’s still a far cry from the golden Black Box era.

Need for Speed: Unbound is exactly what I'm looking for in a racing game. The street racing story, character customization, car customization, and pure fun. Most of the racing games out there are driving simulators that doesn't have much to keep me interested, but Unbound pulls me in.

This game does have its drawbacks though. The way it is set up leads to a bit of a tedious experience needing to have several cars of various levels makes isn't the beat experience. I understand why that choice was made as a A+ car going against B cars could be too easy, but I'd probably prefer that to making sure I have a car at every level.

Overall, Need for Speed Unbound is one of my favorite racing games in a long time and I'm glad I gave it a chance. Highly recommended, especially if you are a fan of the old NFS games like me.

These games just feel so lifeless nowadays. I appreciate the art style changes breathing a little new life into a franchise that's been on life support for nearly a decade, but that's about where my praises of the game end.
NFS still hasn't gotten the balancing of cop chases correct since Rivals. Seriously I can drive past a cop going 150 mph and they don't even see it, and on the off chance a cop notices me barreling down a crowded sidewalk it's been made so easy to escape. What happened to the thrill of a million cops surrounding you like in Carbon? There's absolutely no risk factor here, and the cop chases are half the fun in these games.
Next up is perhaps the worst part of this game, this might be the worst handling NFS game yet. I feel as if I'm comstantly fighting against the car to go the right way. I'm serious when I say the driving is so bad I booted up a few other games to make sure my controller wasn't going bad on me.
The story is something I can't comment a whole lot on but it starts off like just about any other modern NFS story would, if you've played modern NFS you know the story.
Dialogue in this game really started to get on my nerves too, so many annoying one-liners and quips during races, and out of racing much of the dialogue make an attempt to be funny, but only got a chuckle out of me a time or two.
Overall NFS: Unbound is more of the same for modern Need for Speed games. A lot of this review could probably be recycled for the last four games to come out. I hope this franchise can one day recapture some of the magic it once had, but playing this game just makes me wanna pop Carbon back in my Xbox.

It's pretty easy to enjoy this title but I would argue the experience is mixed overall. The style is nice but they don't ever go all the way with it, making it feel very undercooked. The story can range from generally alright to incredibly cringey at times. Lakeshore as a location feels very ripe with great track potential and variety, but they rarely ever capitalize on that. And yeah as other have noted the soundtrack is absolute garbage at times.

But even with it's negatives my time with Unbound was filled with 3am play sessions where I was down for just "1 more race" before bed. Once I swapped in my own playlist and unlocked some faster cars I was all in on the fun.

In the end if you are looking for a solid open world, arcade racer, with excellent crashing physics and great race design....Go play Burnout Paradise. But this one is pretty good too.

Resolvi terminar minha jornada em Unbound e vamos a analise. vídeo da analise no canal :
https://youtu.be/LXB1BZCb1r4

Há um bom tempo que nenhum jogo da franquia Need for Speed me atrai. Apesar de ter gostado de Heat, achei que ele foi muito genérico em vários aspectos. No entanto, é muito gostoso de jogar, mas, no geral, teve pouco impacto para mim. Adiantando para vocês que, se gostaram de Heat ou mesmo se não gostaram, é provável que tenham o mesmo sentimento em relação a Unbound, já que ele basicamente apresenta os mesmos valores, apenas mudando o visual.

A história de Need for Speed Unbound se passa na cidade de Lakeshore, um lugar que funciona de maneira semelhante a Heat, com um ambiente tranquilo durante o dia e corridas ilegais cheias de adrenalina durante a noite. A prefeita atual quer acabar com isso, pois a reputação de Lakeshore está manchada devido às corridas. Ela implementa então uma política de tolerância zero para qualquer corredor ilegal.

No meio disso tudo, temos nosso protagonista, que, junto com sua amiga Yaz, restaura e turbinar um carro para torná-lo um dos mais rápidos da cidade, com o objetivo de ganhar dinheiro fácil.

É claro que você não começa com um carro super rápido logo no início do jogo. É aí que entra nossa amiga Yaz, que nos trai e leva nosso carrão embora, seguindo o roteiro clássico de qualquer videogame. O jogo se passa dois anos após esses eventos e chegou a hora de nos vingarmos.

Aí entra a jogabilidade do jogo, onde precisamos participar de vários eventos para ganhar dinheiro suficiente para entrar no evento final e finalmente enfrentar nossos antigos amigos. Além disso, há investimentos a serem feitos na compra de carros, peças e outras melhorias.

O jogo funciona de maneira semelhante a Heat, onde há atividades durante o dia e atividades durante a noite. As tarefas vão desde corridas até entregas de veículos, ajudar outros corredores, destruir outdoors, coletar colecionáveis, etc., basicamente como em Heat.

Assim como em Heat tambem, durante a noite, ao correr, você pode perder todo o seu progresso de um dia inteiro caso seja preso pela polícia do jogo. Se você tiver acumulado 30 mil durante as corridas e for pego, todo esse valor será perdido. Portanto, é preciso ter muito cuidado ao gerenciar o tempo, pois se você fizer muitas corridas seguidas, mais policiais vão te perseguir. O ideal é fazer algumas corridas, acumular uma boa quantia de dinheiro e ir para a garagem salvar o progresso. Caso contrário, você estará arriscando perder tudo.

A personalização dos carros é uma parte que eu acho muito legal, com diversas opções e possibilidades de customização no jogo. Além disso, se você não entende nada disso, também é possível visitar a comunidade do jogo, onde você pode encontrar builds prontas e importá-las para seus carros. O mesmo pode ser feito com o visual dos carros, com diferentes tipos de visuais e pinturas disponíveis.

Em termos visuais, Need for Speed Unbound se destacou, misturando uma abordagem realista com um toque cartunesco, o que, na minha opinião, ficou bem interessante. A arte do jogo o tornou único e carismático. Apesar de achar alguns efeitos um pouco feios, principalmente em relação aos efeitos dos carros, no geral, ficou bem legal. Quanto à parte sonora, dispensa comentários, afinal, isso nunca foi um grande problema para Need for Speed.

Need for Speed Unbound, apesar de ser um jogo muito legal e se destacar principalmente por sua arte, eu admiro a ousadia, pois essa franquia existiu por tanto tempo e já foi tão incrível que é quase um pecado ela estar mais ou menos nos últimos anos. Apesar de tudo isso, pessoalmente, o jogo em si não me atraiu tanto, assim como aconteceu com Heat. Apesar de achar Heat maravilhoso em vários aspectos, sinto que falta algo especial para dar aquele charme a mais ao jogo. Claro que isso é um pouco de exigência minha. No entanto, é um jogo divertido, especialmente para aqueles que apenas querem se distrair no console/PC ou jogar em nuvem.

Prós:
- Visual legal.

Contras:
- História clichê.
- Eventos ficam chatos e enjoativos.
- Dificuldade.

Need for Speed Unbound is a solid entry in the series, but it's held back by wasted potential and some major flaws. I personally love the new cell shaded artstyle and driving effects, the driving physics are greatly improved over previous entries, and the new Takeover events are pretty fun.

The game's story, while having themes of forgiveness and accepting found family, falls flat in execution because of poor pacing and unenthusiastic voice acting. There is also a background story about political rivals that doesn't really add anything to the game. Unbound's career progression is very structured and linear, resulting in a tedious and formulaic experience.

I still think Unbound is the best of the modern NFS games (2015 and onwards), but I think there's a lot of work to be done in terms of replayability, difficulty, and core gameplay loop.

Não desejo essa experiência pro meu pior inimigo

esse jogo é tenebroso de todas as formas, ia zerar justamente porque eu queria ter um jogo ruim tambem zerado no ano, mas não da, esse jogo não é só ruim, é vagabundo em todos os aspectos, servir de uber de fugitivo da policia, drift mais pesado que a mae do criador dessa merda de jogo, trilha sonora irritante, a policia é uma merda, os personagens são tirados do mais profundo poço da desgraça do twitter, ninguem tem personalidade propria, é tudo uma merda enorme, escritos com a bunda "ah mas é um jogo de carro, pq tu vai ligar pra personagem?" porque a PORRA do jogo tem um telefonme que ficam te ligando toda hora pra falar um monte de merda nada haver com o que ta acontecendo

esse jogo é torturante, é ridiculo é patético, é a PIOR experiencia que eu ja tive com essa saga que jogo desde os meus 5 anos, na epoca do Hot Pursuit de PS1, o High Stakes, todos incriveis pra chegar na atualidade, com toda tecnologia disponivel e fazem a pior atrocidade que ja presenciei em um jogo de carros

simplesmente ridiculo, que jogo triste, triste mesmo, parabens ai aos responsaveis por trazer a vida um metodo de tortura com detalhe cell shaded pra disfarçar a vagabundisse que esse jogo é

Vai tomar no cu Criterion Games.

It hasn't much content and race types, race tracks are overly repetitive, has jarring and poor music library, and cops chases are just time wasting and annoying. Still, it is better than the last good NFS game since 2012, which is also made by Criterion.
Driving and customization feels fine as expected. There are good amount of cars, event though it is very grindy to unlock them during the story mode. The story started of good enough but obviously rushed and very predictible. Artstyle wasn't bad too. Driving effects are really good and I would take cutscenes with this style than NFS2019's live action cutscenes.