There's a lot to like about Unbound. A nice selection of cars (minus Toyota ever since their new stance on street racing), really cool visual effects, cars handle well, and the map is just the right size too with a good amount of races and collectibles. You start out with a cheap car and work your way up, buying new parts and increasing your stock at the garage to build up during the calendar to the big events. The AI is actually pretty good and can be unpredictable and make mistakes too, which makes each race feel all the more authentic.

The plot is pretty bad and 99% of the characters are poorly written or just plain annoying, but I guess that's how NFS has always been - even back to Most Wanted. You can also tell A$AP Rocky was a hilariously huge component of the marketing. He appears at the end of every Takeover event, he appears in races, and he even talks all through the credits. But despite all that, where the game really falls apart for me is the cop chases.

Cops are an outright chore. Chases are tedious, they spawn constantly (usually right in your path too), and at higher levels they go on for so long. Unlike the original Most Wanted, there are no pursuit breakers or cooldown zones, and their road block spawns are laughably bad and miss the mark 9 times out of 10. By the last couple of in-game days, I just skipped races once I had enough money just so I didn't have to deal with them anymore.

I just really wish they had tuned the cops. I love racing around the city and will probably still go for a lot of the collectibles, but with a couple of changes this would be a 4 or a 4.5 game for me.