This game is pretty good with a couple of flaws.
I will make a quick overview with details to every single point below:
The Flaws:
- Soundtrack
- Drifting
- Difficulty
- Progression
The Alright:
~ Story
~ Police
~ Offroad Racing
The Good:
+ Handling
+ Sense of Speed
+ Street Racing
+ Reward Mechanics at Night
+ Costumization
+ Monetization
First the flaws:
The Soundtrack: For me the soundtrack doesn't work at all. I get that they want to make it fit the setting of Florida, with some latino songs but, I feel like these songs would fit better in a club rather than in a racing game. In a racing game I want something that is pushing me, makes me want to step on the gas pedal, take corners more aggressively and produce more adrenaline and not something I would hear on the radio.
The Drifting: I cannot stand the drifting in this game. It has a very "digital" feel to it. Either you are in "drift mode" or you are in normal steering mode. I personally would have liked something that was a bit more "analog", something where you can feel the car slowly starting to slip and you try to hold it at the maximum. The drift events were also not really fun for me as there is not really a way to throw the car around, sliding from one side to another to get a nice flow going, drifting from one corner to another. Instead you go from "drift mode left" to normal steering to "drift mode right", which, as mentioned, feels very digital and clunky.
The Difficulty: For me personally the difficulty is pretty inconsistent. First I started playing the game on normal and was beating races way too easily, so I set up the difficulty to hard and to be honest I still think it is a bit too easy. If you are racing races that match your tier ranking, I feel like the AI is not good enough to really challenge you but if you start a race in an undertiered car you will have no chances with keeping up on the straights, as then their overpowered machines will just drive away. So I was often in the situation, where I was either bored because I was leading by a kilometer or had unbeatable opponents.
The Progression: This for me is the worst point of this game. The progression in this game is just kind of weird for me. When I beat the mainstory, I was level 35 out of 50 and my car was Tier 350 out of 400. I feel like the point of a main story should be that at the final you should need one of the best cars to beat it and not just a kind of a good car. Afterwards there is actually nothing really that you can do. You can grind the same events over and over again that give you enough money to buy a new car but my question is: What for? Just for me to grind for the next car, so that I can then grind for the next car again? Also I found that there is a weird gap between Tier 350 and 400 where there are actually no events at 370 or 380, meaning, that if you have a car at Tier 370 you are way too fast for 350 or 340 events but also a bit too slow for 400 events, making the problem of difficulty even more pronounced. Also after unlocking Level 50 the night races become kind of pointless as the Rep that you received for these races (which would go into leveling up) are now pointless. I guess the high heat races are meant as some form of end game content of the night races, where you have to grind races to get the best performence upgrades. The catch to this is, that this is determined by a randomized system, so that you can't choose which part you would like to receive but instead have to hope to receive the part that you liked. If you didn't, you would have to go through the process all over again. And that is where I ended my playthrough as the grind just became too much and there is no real motivation to go any further after you have your dream car. It was kind of a luke warm ending.
The alright stuff:
The Story: For me the story is serviceable. It was enough to make me want to play through the game and give it some structure. The characters are a bit hit or miss but all in all I think for what it is, a fun little arcade racer, it was enough.
The Police: In the early stages it can become impossible to escape the police at a certain point as there are no safe spaces or pursuit brakers anywhere. This can make the early stages actually a bit fun as you are trying to go a bit stealthy when you are in free roam. But it can also be pretty frustrating as in some races you can't really avoid the police and after the race ends the pursuit continues. In the midgame I think there is a nice balance, where low heat feels easy and high heat feels difficult. In the endgame your car is usually fast enough to simply outrun the cops pretty quickly, so that high heat pursuits are not even a real challenge anymore. The cops generally are a good way to introduce high stakes, as you will lose all your progress of the night, when you get busted. But generally I would not consider police chases very fun. I never engaged in police chases on purposes, like I did in NFS MW 05. In general I always tried to flee as fast as possible.
Offroad Racing: In general these feel alright but they miss the high speed feel of street races. I feel like if these were not in the game, nobody would have missed them.
You might think at this point, that doesn't sound that good, why did you give it 4 stars?
The good:
The Handling: As long as you build your cars towards grip and street handling (which I always did) the cars feel amazing to drive. They are very responsive, while still feeling like the cars have a weight to them. Also different cars actually feel different to drive.
The Sense of Speed: This is actually a very important point for me, especially in arcade racer. Every time you approach 280 kph you actually feel how you gradually start losing confidence and that it takes you every piece of concentration to not crash into the next traffic car and every kph you go above takes courage. I love that.
The Street Racing: This is the bread and butter of this game and what got me hooked. When the afformentioned AI difficulty actually works the right way, it leads to some really exciting head to head racing, where most tracks actually have a nice layout. Especially the night races are what I had the most fun with as on top of the head to head racing, you have to avoid the traffic at the same time, giving you that adrenaline push, that I seek in arcade racers. This also somewhat mitigates the difficulty problems, as you still have to drive very cleanly while maintaining a high amount of speed, as crashes will cost you lots of time.
The Heat Mechanics of the Night: I think this is a great addition to this game. The principle is: You get essentially XP points for races finished in the night, after that you have the choice of driving home and receiving the XP or you stay out and continue to the next races to get a multiplier on your XP but in return the police becomes more aggressive and better equipped. This is a great risk/reward mechanic. It actually gives the police a purpose instead of being a nuisance. Every time you get busted it is a frustrating experience but it is an even greater reward when you finally flee the police and get to the safe house with a huge amount of XP. I really like this feature.
The Costumization: Visually tuning a huge list of dream cars is great in this game. I probably spent a few hours alone costumizing cars until they exactly looked like I wanted them. Bumpers, lights, spoilers, fenders, muffler, rims, underglow, community made liveries, even the sound of the exhaust can be costumized. A nice little touch is that before buying you actually get an indication how costumizable the car you want to buy actually is. I loved this part of the game.
Monetization: I wanna quickly mention this because I feel like, if the monetization of a game is pretty bad it will get immediatly pointed out but if it is good nobody mentions it. There are no Microtransactions in this game, atypical for EA actually. You don't have to buy customizations with real money, there is no season pass, no performance upgrades for cash. The only thing I found was one reasonably priced DLC.
Conclusion:
As I have mentioned this game has its flaws mainly, in my eyes, the progression, but the main part of what I seek in an arcade racer, with its general great feel of driving (apart from drifting), its amazing customization options and just adrenaline filled street racing, this game nails on the head. Probably one of the best modern arcade racers. I would definitely recommend.
I will make a quick overview with details to every single point below:
The Flaws:
- Soundtrack
- Drifting
- Difficulty
- Progression
The Alright:
~ Story
~ Police
~ Offroad Racing
The Good:
+ Handling
+ Sense of Speed
+ Street Racing
+ Reward Mechanics at Night
+ Costumization
+ Monetization
First the flaws:
The Soundtrack: For me the soundtrack doesn't work at all. I get that they want to make it fit the setting of Florida, with some latino songs but, I feel like these songs would fit better in a club rather than in a racing game. In a racing game I want something that is pushing me, makes me want to step on the gas pedal, take corners more aggressively and produce more adrenaline and not something I would hear on the radio.
The Drifting: I cannot stand the drifting in this game. It has a very "digital" feel to it. Either you are in "drift mode" or you are in normal steering mode. I personally would have liked something that was a bit more "analog", something where you can feel the car slowly starting to slip and you try to hold it at the maximum. The drift events were also not really fun for me as there is not really a way to throw the car around, sliding from one side to another to get a nice flow going, drifting from one corner to another. Instead you go from "drift mode left" to normal steering to "drift mode right", which, as mentioned, feels very digital and clunky.
The Difficulty: For me personally the difficulty is pretty inconsistent. First I started playing the game on normal and was beating races way too easily, so I set up the difficulty to hard and to be honest I still think it is a bit too easy. If you are racing races that match your tier ranking, I feel like the AI is not good enough to really challenge you but if you start a race in an undertiered car you will have no chances with keeping up on the straights, as then their overpowered machines will just drive away. So I was often in the situation, where I was either bored because I was leading by a kilometer or had unbeatable opponents.
The Progression: This for me is the worst point of this game. The progression in this game is just kind of weird for me. When I beat the mainstory, I was level 35 out of 50 and my car was Tier 350 out of 400. I feel like the point of a main story should be that at the final you should need one of the best cars to beat it and not just a kind of a good car. Afterwards there is actually nothing really that you can do. You can grind the same events over and over again that give you enough money to buy a new car but my question is: What for? Just for me to grind for the next car, so that I can then grind for the next car again? Also I found that there is a weird gap between Tier 350 and 400 where there are actually no events at 370 or 380, meaning, that if you have a car at Tier 370 you are way too fast for 350 or 340 events but also a bit too slow for 400 events, making the problem of difficulty even more pronounced. Also after unlocking Level 50 the night races become kind of pointless as the Rep that you received for these races (which would go into leveling up) are now pointless. I guess the high heat races are meant as some form of end game content of the night races, where you have to grind races to get the best performence upgrades. The catch to this is, that this is determined by a randomized system, so that you can't choose which part you would like to receive but instead have to hope to receive the part that you liked. If you didn't, you would have to go through the process all over again. And that is where I ended my playthrough as the grind just became too much and there is no real motivation to go any further after you have your dream car. It was kind of a luke warm ending.
The alright stuff:
The Story: For me the story is serviceable. It was enough to make me want to play through the game and give it some structure. The characters are a bit hit or miss but all in all I think for what it is, a fun little arcade racer, it was enough.
The Police: In the early stages it can become impossible to escape the police at a certain point as there are no safe spaces or pursuit brakers anywhere. This can make the early stages actually a bit fun as you are trying to go a bit stealthy when you are in free roam. But it can also be pretty frustrating as in some races you can't really avoid the police and after the race ends the pursuit continues. In the midgame I think there is a nice balance, where low heat feels easy and high heat feels difficult. In the endgame your car is usually fast enough to simply outrun the cops pretty quickly, so that high heat pursuits are not even a real challenge anymore. The cops generally are a good way to introduce high stakes, as you will lose all your progress of the night, when you get busted. But generally I would not consider police chases very fun. I never engaged in police chases on purposes, like I did in NFS MW 05. In general I always tried to flee as fast as possible.
Offroad Racing: In general these feel alright but they miss the high speed feel of street races. I feel like if these were not in the game, nobody would have missed them.
You might think at this point, that doesn't sound that good, why did you give it 4 stars?
The good:
The Handling: As long as you build your cars towards grip and street handling (which I always did) the cars feel amazing to drive. They are very responsive, while still feeling like the cars have a weight to them. Also different cars actually feel different to drive.
The Sense of Speed: This is actually a very important point for me, especially in arcade racer. Every time you approach 280 kph you actually feel how you gradually start losing confidence and that it takes you every piece of concentration to not crash into the next traffic car and every kph you go above takes courage. I love that.
The Street Racing: This is the bread and butter of this game and what got me hooked. When the afformentioned AI difficulty actually works the right way, it leads to some really exciting head to head racing, where most tracks actually have a nice layout. Especially the night races are what I had the most fun with as on top of the head to head racing, you have to avoid the traffic at the same time, giving you that adrenaline push, that I seek in arcade racers. This also somewhat mitigates the difficulty problems, as you still have to drive very cleanly while maintaining a high amount of speed, as crashes will cost you lots of time.
The Heat Mechanics of the Night: I think this is a great addition to this game. The principle is: You get essentially XP points for races finished in the night, after that you have the choice of driving home and receiving the XP or you stay out and continue to the next races to get a multiplier on your XP but in return the police becomes more aggressive and better equipped. This is a great risk/reward mechanic. It actually gives the police a purpose instead of being a nuisance. Every time you get busted it is a frustrating experience but it is an even greater reward when you finally flee the police and get to the safe house with a huge amount of XP. I really like this feature.
The Costumization: Visually tuning a huge list of dream cars is great in this game. I probably spent a few hours alone costumizing cars until they exactly looked like I wanted them. Bumpers, lights, spoilers, fenders, muffler, rims, underglow, community made liveries, even the sound of the exhaust can be costumized. A nice little touch is that before buying you actually get an indication how costumizable the car you want to buy actually is. I loved this part of the game.
Monetization: I wanna quickly mention this because I feel like, if the monetization of a game is pretty bad it will get immediatly pointed out but if it is good nobody mentions it. There are no Microtransactions in this game, atypical for EA actually. You don't have to buy customizations with real money, there is no season pass, no performance upgrades for cash. The only thing I found was one reasonably priced DLC.
Conclusion:
As I have mentioned this game has its flaws mainly, in my eyes, the progression, but the main part of what I seek in an arcade racer, with its general great feel of driving (apart from drifting), its amazing customization options and just adrenaline filled street racing, this game nails on the head. Probably one of the best modern arcade racers. I would definitely recommend.