Criterion are back after their work on ‘Most Wanted (2012) to give us ‘Need For Speed: Unbound’, yet again another refresh of the series. Unbound takes the framework of the previous game ‘Heat’ and improves on a few things as well as a dash of features from ‘Most Wanted (2012)’. I had my doubts about this game from the footage I saw prior to playing, but I ended up not hating it as much as I thought I would.
The gameplay centres around your character trying to trace down their stolen cars from their garage by winning weekly races. There are 4 weeks in total, 6 racing days a week, twice daily and then one big race day at the end of the week. You need to cough up a large sum of money to do the end of each week’s race and if you don’t have the cash you’re given the opportunity to grind the prior day until you do. By the end of week 4 you need to have at least 1 car of each class apart from class B. This structure added stress as I felt as though I was preparing for an exam and having the anxiety of “what if it comes to the last race, I have shit cars and no money?” If you’re reading this before playing the game then don’t worry too much. Play 2-3 races a day as well as the car drop off missions and you’ll have more than enough. I know that there will be seasoned players out there who could probably do this game on 1 race per week. Each race also lets you gamble some of your money depending on where you think you will place in the race.
I like how this game starts off with getting you to work up the ranks and places in the race rather than making you be 1st every time. People have commented on the unfair AI of the opposing cars but I would only sometimes see this when you’d be first and at the last checkpoint another car would rocket out of nowhere and pass you at 500 mph and win the race. If, like me, you're coming from the previous game ‘Heat’ where almost everything is destructible, well you’re going to be in for a big surprise because not everything is destructible here. This will become apparent when you will crash through one barrier but crash into another. In the heat of a chase or a race it is hard to distinguish what you can and cannot crash through so you will find yourself crashing a lot.
There is a huge car selection available and I was fortunate enough to get bonus cars from the EA play membership although I only used the “Fairlady” car. Once again you’re doing loads of customisations to maximise each class of car and get the best performance out of it. If you’re thinking of using Google/Reddit to decide on what best cars to have, take what they say with a pinch of salt. Either no one agrees on the same cars or they will recommend cars only available after completing the game.
A graphical change again for the NFS series with cell shaded characters and realistic backgrounds. As you don’t often see them side-by-side it’s not that jarring. One thing that I was unsure about at first was the animations coming out of your car and its tires as you drift or hit nitros but then I accepted it as a nice visual flare. It’s very much inspired by the new animated Spider-Man films.The realistic backgrounds look great as well as the raindrops on the cars.
One thing that has not changed throughout the NFS series is the writing. Oh god is it bad here. The problem is, it doesn’t seem self aware. It’s not deliberately cheesy, it's as if a middle aged person wrote a bunch of young people based on their interpretation of how they think they speak. The “trash talk” and patter in the game is absolutely dire. It’s the first time in the whole series I considered muting the voice acting volume. One time I was forced to hear a whole spiel from one of the characters before I could enter my garage. Before they could finish I was chased by the cops so had to then deal with a chase on top of the terrible dialogue. The game includes the real life rapper A$AP Rocky. He appears in the game as a character and his music is heavily featured on the soundtrack. One mission you need to drive him and his car from point A to point B twice. The worst part of this mission is having to hear him waffle shite for about 10 minutes.
The soundtrack is ok, a few classics and decent tunes in there but nothing with much energy that makes you think “fuck yeah” while battering through the streets at 200 mph.
Unlike in ‘Heat’ the cops are much easier to escape from and don’t have that bullshit busted gauge. Surprisingly I was never actually busted in my whole playthrough despite numerous prolonged chases. I absolutely hate the heat system in this game, I would have enjoyed it a lot more if the police were just confined to the races rather than when you’re traversing the open world. I know that this opinion may be controversial as one of IGN’s negatives in their review was that the cops were not featured in the online mode. I would get so frustrated shaking the cops and trying to stay out of their line of sight that I wanted to give up the game so badly. What was salt in the wound as well was that after a certain amount of time, if you cannot shake that one cop a timer will appear that once depleted will spawn 4-5 new cops around you. I feel like this is an absolute dick move from the game. I would also get frustrated at cops spawning right next to you in the open world and initiating a chase.
With all of the above, you may ask “so is this game worth it then for all of those niggles?” No, in my opinion it is not. There is a lot of work and stress for very little reward. Everything given to you for winning races is required for completing the main storyline. It feels like being paid in bricks to build a house rather than being given cool features to build a house. You can unlock some cool cars such as the BMW M3 from ‘Most Wanted (2015)’ which makes cameo appearances in most of the NFS games like Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars TV shows. This game marks the end of me playing all the Need For Speed game post ‘Underground’ for my article and let me tell you thank god I’m done. I’ve had ups and downs throughout the series and what a disappointing way to end my journey than with Unbound. This game would be vastly improved in my opinion of the writing was better and the cops weren’t so frustrating to manage.The only way I could recommend this game to someone would be if they have not played any of the other games but even then I’d recommend another such as ‘Payback'
The gameplay centres around your character trying to trace down their stolen cars from their garage by winning weekly races. There are 4 weeks in total, 6 racing days a week, twice daily and then one big race day at the end of the week. You need to cough up a large sum of money to do the end of each week’s race and if you don’t have the cash you’re given the opportunity to grind the prior day until you do. By the end of week 4 you need to have at least 1 car of each class apart from class B. This structure added stress as I felt as though I was preparing for an exam and having the anxiety of “what if it comes to the last race, I have shit cars and no money?” If you’re reading this before playing the game then don’t worry too much. Play 2-3 races a day as well as the car drop off missions and you’ll have more than enough. I know that there will be seasoned players out there who could probably do this game on 1 race per week. Each race also lets you gamble some of your money depending on where you think you will place in the race.
I like how this game starts off with getting you to work up the ranks and places in the race rather than making you be 1st every time. People have commented on the unfair AI of the opposing cars but I would only sometimes see this when you’d be first and at the last checkpoint another car would rocket out of nowhere and pass you at 500 mph and win the race. If, like me, you're coming from the previous game ‘Heat’ where almost everything is destructible, well you’re going to be in for a big surprise because not everything is destructible here. This will become apparent when you will crash through one barrier but crash into another. In the heat of a chase or a race it is hard to distinguish what you can and cannot crash through so you will find yourself crashing a lot.
There is a huge car selection available and I was fortunate enough to get bonus cars from the EA play membership although I only used the “Fairlady” car. Once again you’re doing loads of customisations to maximise each class of car and get the best performance out of it. If you’re thinking of using Google/Reddit to decide on what best cars to have, take what they say with a pinch of salt. Either no one agrees on the same cars or they will recommend cars only available after completing the game.
A graphical change again for the NFS series with cell shaded characters and realistic backgrounds. As you don’t often see them side-by-side it’s not that jarring. One thing that I was unsure about at first was the animations coming out of your car and its tires as you drift or hit nitros but then I accepted it as a nice visual flare. It’s very much inspired by the new animated Spider-Man films.The realistic backgrounds look great as well as the raindrops on the cars.
One thing that has not changed throughout the NFS series is the writing. Oh god is it bad here. The problem is, it doesn’t seem self aware. It’s not deliberately cheesy, it's as if a middle aged person wrote a bunch of young people based on their interpretation of how they think they speak. The “trash talk” and patter in the game is absolutely dire. It’s the first time in the whole series I considered muting the voice acting volume. One time I was forced to hear a whole spiel from one of the characters before I could enter my garage. Before they could finish I was chased by the cops so had to then deal with a chase on top of the terrible dialogue. The game includes the real life rapper A$AP Rocky. He appears in the game as a character and his music is heavily featured on the soundtrack. One mission you need to drive him and his car from point A to point B twice. The worst part of this mission is having to hear him waffle shite for about 10 minutes.
The soundtrack is ok, a few classics and decent tunes in there but nothing with much energy that makes you think “fuck yeah” while battering through the streets at 200 mph.
Unlike in ‘Heat’ the cops are much easier to escape from and don’t have that bullshit busted gauge. Surprisingly I was never actually busted in my whole playthrough despite numerous prolonged chases. I absolutely hate the heat system in this game, I would have enjoyed it a lot more if the police were just confined to the races rather than when you’re traversing the open world. I know that this opinion may be controversial as one of IGN’s negatives in their review was that the cops were not featured in the online mode. I would get so frustrated shaking the cops and trying to stay out of their line of sight that I wanted to give up the game so badly. What was salt in the wound as well was that after a certain amount of time, if you cannot shake that one cop a timer will appear that once depleted will spawn 4-5 new cops around you. I feel like this is an absolute dick move from the game. I would also get frustrated at cops spawning right next to you in the open world and initiating a chase.
With all of the above, you may ask “so is this game worth it then for all of those niggles?” No, in my opinion it is not. There is a lot of work and stress for very little reward. Everything given to you for winning races is required for completing the main storyline. It feels like being paid in bricks to build a house rather than being given cool features to build a house. You can unlock some cool cars such as the BMW M3 from ‘Most Wanted (2015)’ which makes cameo appearances in most of the NFS games like Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars TV shows. This game marks the end of me playing all the Need For Speed game post ‘Underground’ for my article and let me tell you thank god I’m done. I’ve had ups and downs throughout the series and what a disappointing way to end my journey than with Unbound. This game would be vastly improved in my opinion of the writing was better and the cops weren’t so frustrating to manage.The only way I could recommend this game to someone would be if they have not played any of the other games but even then I’d recommend another such as ‘Payback'