NFSUG2 is definite proof that you can have way too much of a good thing.
If you take a slice of this game, it's near perfect: the driving feels great, the sense of speed is intense and pumping, customizing your car adds a lot of player expression, the atmosphere perfectly encapsulates the aesthetic it sets out to showcase, the graphics are gorgeous, the city is fun to drive around, the soundtrack is the absolute BEST licensed OST I have ever heard in any game, the gameplay loop of winning races>unlocking parts>tuning car>winning more races feels addictive and rewarding, any segmented stretch of the campaign is extremely fun in and of itself.
This changes, however, when you factor in that this game stretches well beyond 35 hours. Do that to any kinectic fun-based game (such as rhythm games, shmups, fighting games, racing, etc.) and you start noticing the formula that, as time goes on, the problems become more and more frustrating and diminishing returns kick in hard.
The more I played, the more annoyed I got at having to drive to-and-fro every mission. At first, it was immersive and fun, then it just became a massive progress-slowing hindrance. The ridiculous amount of races (you'll most likely need to win over 150 races to beat the game) meant I was forced to play every race type I didn't like 25 - 30 times each, and this gets REALLY grating when it dawned on me that half the types of races were overly gimmicky and absolutely insufferable. I'm tuning my car to race it, not have it flop around like a dumbass scoring drift-points. Even when you tune your car completely and get max handling, max acceleration and max topspeed, drifting still feels like garbage, you can definitely tell that the game was not based around that, yet they had the mechanic in and it was part of the streetracing culture of the time so they shoehorned it in to the maximum amount.
Same for drag races, a type of race where you don't control your car aside from switching lanes (like Sonic the Hedgehog jumps from one rail to the other in 3D games), instead you focus on switching gears at the appropriate time and using nitro strategically. It feels like a puzzle game, you're aiming for the perfect sequence of button presses to pass these races. It's unfun. It feels like they added the gear-shifting mechanic in there but figured out everyone would play in automatic mode so they force you to deal with it through these kinds of races. Those extremely short and curvy races are ass too.
Also traffick is often very bullshit here. Sometimes a car will be sitting there right after a tight curve and you're gonna bang ultra hard, drop to last place, most likely have to restart the whole 5+ minutes long race if it's on the last lap and there's nothing you could've done about that, no way you could've seen it.
Like I had said before, doing any of these races a few times would be okay, but up to 30 times each is absolutely ball-bursting, specially when you factor in that you also have to manually drive to the races themselves. Catch-up mechanics are not that irritating in this game, at least.
Another thing that bugs me, one that is also certainly tied to how long the game is, is that you reach a point where your car is maxed out, fully tuned and pimped, and you still have dozens of races left to do. There's no progression anymore, no extrinsic motivators, just a checklist of races you still have left to do in order to complete the game. This is, to me, the very definition of a chore.
The whole structure of having your progression being through fulfilling sponsor requeriments instead of a story is just plain boring overall, it's not engaging in the slightest.
Still, I can't stress enough how awesome it feels to see your car boosting through these streets with that amazing OST blasting in the background. When everything clicks, this game is like no other. As it stands, though, there is no amount of "SCA-VEN-GER!" and "WE GIVE IT AAAAALL!" that can carry me through tens of hours of changing gears while sliding my car to the sides like Pepsiman or drifting like a soap bar inside the world's biggest game of Operation.
If you take a slice of this game, it's near perfect: the driving feels great, the sense of speed is intense and pumping, customizing your car adds a lot of player expression, the atmosphere perfectly encapsulates the aesthetic it sets out to showcase, the graphics are gorgeous, the city is fun to drive around, the soundtrack is the absolute BEST licensed OST I have ever heard in any game, the gameplay loop of winning races>unlocking parts>tuning car>winning more races feels addictive and rewarding, any segmented stretch of the campaign is extremely fun in and of itself.
This changes, however, when you factor in that this game stretches well beyond 35 hours. Do that to any kinectic fun-based game (such as rhythm games, shmups, fighting games, racing, etc.) and you start noticing the formula that, as time goes on, the problems become more and more frustrating and diminishing returns kick in hard.
The more I played, the more annoyed I got at having to drive to-and-fro every mission. At first, it was immersive and fun, then it just became a massive progress-slowing hindrance. The ridiculous amount of races (you'll most likely need to win over 150 races to beat the game) meant I was forced to play every race type I didn't like 25 - 30 times each, and this gets REALLY grating when it dawned on me that half the types of races were overly gimmicky and absolutely insufferable. I'm tuning my car to race it, not have it flop around like a dumbass scoring drift-points. Even when you tune your car completely and get max handling, max acceleration and max topspeed, drifting still feels like garbage, you can definitely tell that the game was not based around that, yet they had the mechanic in and it was part of the streetracing culture of the time so they shoehorned it in to the maximum amount.
Same for drag races, a type of race where you don't control your car aside from switching lanes (like Sonic the Hedgehog jumps from one rail to the other in 3D games), instead you focus on switching gears at the appropriate time and using nitro strategically. It feels like a puzzle game, you're aiming for the perfect sequence of button presses to pass these races. It's unfun. It feels like they added the gear-shifting mechanic in there but figured out everyone would play in automatic mode so they force you to deal with it through these kinds of races. Those extremely short and curvy races are ass too.
Also traffick is often very bullshit here. Sometimes a car will be sitting there right after a tight curve and you're gonna bang ultra hard, drop to last place, most likely have to restart the whole 5+ minutes long race if it's on the last lap and there's nothing you could've done about that, no way you could've seen it.
Like I had said before, doing any of these races a few times would be okay, but up to 30 times each is absolutely ball-bursting, specially when you factor in that you also have to manually drive to the races themselves. Catch-up mechanics are not that irritating in this game, at least.
Another thing that bugs me, one that is also certainly tied to how long the game is, is that you reach a point where your car is maxed out, fully tuned and pimped, and you still have dozens of races left to do. There's no progression anymore, no extrinsic motivators, just a checklist of races you still have left to do in order to complete the game. This is, to me, the very definition of a chore.
The whole structure of having your progression being through fulfilling sponsor requeriments instead of a story is just plain boring overall, it's not engaging in the slightest.
Still, I can't stress enough how awesome it feels to see your car boosting through these streets with that amazing OST blasting in the background. When everything clicks, this game is like no other. As it stands, though, there is no amount of "SCA-VEN-GER!" and "WE GIVE IT AAAAALL!" that can carry me through tens of hours of changing gears while sliding my car to the sides like Pepsiman or drifting like a soap bar inside the world's biggest game of Operation.