Alrighty, after completing this game, I don't know if I can say it is better than heat. But I can say it just manages to be on par.
This game has one of the SLOWEST openings I've ever seen. It took more than an hour for things to finally open up and get into things. I felt like freaking dropping it.
But then once things open up, it is a freaking great game.
The gameplay, is what carries this game so hard. It's so fun. It's addicting, and you just can't stop playing. The new visual effects are so unique and enhance your cars and make them feel so powerful and fast and look so cool. And the gameplay, it feels so so good. Just like the old need for speeds. It gave me nostalgia of carbon, especially since they brought back light trails. I was hooked. Much better here than heat, a huge step up and feels like a throwback to the old nfs racers we loved, not to say heats is bad but this is a clear improvement and what makes the game worth it, as it should.
The graphics, performance, car models, are all better than heat here as it should be.
Car customization, and audio design is on par, if not better, it was already so good in heat and it's all here as well.
The soundtrack is amazing, just as good as heats and better. So many good tracks, a few bad ones it is a modern ea game, but overall very nice.
The story, it's a step up from heat I feel, but that's a low bar. It's cringe and bad but it's more fun here than heat. I liked the characters, not at the beginning they're terrible but as the story goes on u kinda like Tess, Rydell, and even Yaz near the end. Still overall as a whole it's pretty poor and kinda just gets the job done and gives u some enjoyment. However, the plot itself is more nfs than ever, your cars get robbed, you gotta rank up get cars and win your cars back. You become a legend. And man some of the missions are very very fun. Like the ones where you steal cars and one of the missions you get to drive the freaking iconic M3!!! So yeah, on the right track hopefully the next one is actually good and not just meh okay good. I also liked how npc racers were given more personality but not that much better here hopefully they can find a way to improve that.
The grind and pacing of the game, excluding the first 2 hours is very good. Earning cars, doing pink slips, and just racing feels fun and fair. You win so many cars and get to try out a different variety of them and it encourages you to. Some of the cars are a bit pricey, but it's still fair for the most part.
The night and day system are very much here, and they are just like heat. Super fun, and night starts off not being that exhilarating, but ends up being as good as heat if not better. I will say I had more fun in some of the chases in nfs heat, but I also had so much fun here. It's great, the cops still rubber and and have crazy catch up but it's not that bad here. Honestly I kind of miss the nfs heat cops lol.
The world is also great, pretty much as good as palm city, but it's better, filled with so much life. And overall just fun to drive in.
I wish they went more in with the effects, but the effects offered here are great and have a good variety.
Very good ui design and solid UI, looks very nice easy to get to where u need to go like heat. I like the aesthetics here more but heats was also great. I really enjoyed the colours and the way things look and transitions and etc here.
Now we get into the bad.
Multiplayer. Absolutely awful. Awful. Probably the worst multiplayer I've seen in the modern day a complete step back from heat.
Here's the problem with the game, story and multiplayer are SEPARATE modes and your progress is NOT synced. In nfs heat it was seamless. Invite your friend, boom done. Play missions change cars and you progress and are not penalized. And it's super fun, because you can do story missions whatever and you keep your cars and yeah, it's multiplayer.
Here, you start from 0 in multiplayer. None of your progress is synced, and the cars u have in story u don't have them in multiplayer. Why would I do the same thing twice. Also there's no story in the multiplayer LOL. It's a joke.
The crew system is completely scraped here as well. Why? Why is it gone? It was a perfectly good system and you could level up and look forward to rewards with friends and the community but it's just gone here. What a stupid decision.
And the garage system is also scraped. What a joke. It was nice displaying your cars and stuff and it's just gone here.
But overall here, there's lots of fun to be had here as a SINGLE player experience. Definitely would not recommend this if you wanna play this with your friends, just play heat. And honestly, because of that heat feels closer to full price than this game, but like heat unbound went on sale fairly quick. And no mtx, bs marketing, just a release date and they dropped the game so fair play. It's a great game, the core gameplay, customization, soundtrack, story, almost everything here is a step up. The gameplay is so addicting.
Another, good step forwardish? For the franchise, hopefully their next one they figure out all the issues and learn fully so we get a masterpiece.
This game has one of the SLOWEST openings I've ever seen. It took more than an hour for things to finally open up and get into things. I felt like freaking dropping it.
But then once things open up, it is a freaking great game.
The gameplay, is what carries this game so hard. It's so fun. It's addicting, and you just can't stop playing. The new visual effects are so unique and enhance your cars and make them feel so powerful and fast and look so cool. And the gameplay, it feels so so good. Just like the old need for speeds. It gave me nostalgia of carbon, especially since they brought back light trails. I was hooked. Much better here than heat, a huge step up and feels like a throwback to the old nfs racers we loved, not to say heats is bad but this is a clear improvement and what makes the game worth it, as it should.
The graphics, performance, car models, are all better than heat here as it should be.
Car customization, and audio design is on par, if not better, it was already so good in heat and it's all here as well.
The soundtrack is amazing, just as good as heats and better. So many good tracks, a few bad ones it is a modern ea game, but overall very nice.
The story, it's a step up from heat I feel, but that's a low bar. It's cringe and bad but it's more fun here than heat. I liked the characters, not at the beginning they're terrible but as the story goes on u kinda like Tess, Rydell, and even Yaz near the end. Still overall as a whole it's pretty poor and kinda just gets the job done and gives u some enjoyment. However, the plot itself is more nfs than ever, your cars get robbed, you gotta rank up get cars and win your cars back. You become a legend. And man some of the missions are very very fun. Like the ones where you steal cars and one of the missions you get to drive the freaking iconic M3!!! So yeah, on the right track hopefully the next one is actually good and not just meh okay good. I also liked how npc racers were given more personality but not that much better here hopefully they can find a way to improve that.
The grind and pacing of the game, excluding the first 2 hours is very good. Earning cars, doing pink slips, and just racing feels fun and fair. You win so many cars and get to try out a different variety of them and it encourages you to. Some of the cars are a bit pricey, but it's still fair for the most part.
The night and day system are very much here, and they are just like heat. Super fun, and night starts off not being that exhilarating, but ends up being as good as heat if not better. I will say I had more fun in some of the chases in nfs heat, but I also had so much fun here. It's great, the cops still rubber and and have crazy catch up but it's not that bad here. Honestly I kind of miss the nfs heat cops lol.
The world is also great, pretty much as good as palm city, but it's better, filled with so much life. And overall just fun to drive in.
I wish they went more in with the effects, but the effects offered here are great and have a good variety.
Very good ui design and solid UI, looks very nice easy to get to where u need to go like heat. I like the aesthetics here more but heats was also great. I really enjoyed the colours and the way things look and transitions and etc here.
Now we get into the bad.
Multiplayer. Absolutely awful. Awful. Probably the worst multiplayer I've seen in the modern day a complete step back from heat.
Here's the problem with the game, story and multiplayer are SEPARATE modes and your progress is NOT synced. In nfs heat it was seamless. Invite your friend, boom done. Play missions change cars and you progress and are not penalized. And it's super fun, because you can do story missions whatever and you keep your cars and yeah, it's multiplayer.
Here, you start from 0 in multiplayer. None of your progress is synced, and the cars u have in story u don't have them in multiplayer. Why would I do the same thing twice. Also there's no story in the multiplayer LOL. It's a joke.
The crew system is completely scraped here as well. Why? Why is it gone? It was a perfectly good system and you could level up and look forward to rewards with friends and the community but it's just gone here. What a stupid decision.
And the garage system is also scraped. What a joke. It was nice displaying your cars and stuff and it's just gone here.
But overall here, there's lots of fun to be had here as a SINGLE player experience. Definitely would not recommend this if you wanna play this with your friends, just play heat. And honestly, because of that heat feels closer to full price than this game, but like heat unbound went on sale fairly quick. And no mtx, bs marketing, just a release date and they dropped the game so fair play. It's a great game, the core gameplay, customization, soundtrack, story, almost everything here is a step up. The gameplay is so addicting.
Another, good step forwardish? For the franchise, hopefully their next one they figure out all the issues and learn fully so we get a masterpiece.