Need for Speed Forums Buy Now All Games Forums Buy Now Learn More Buy Now Hit the gas and tear up the roads in this legendary action-driving series. Push your supercar to its limits and leave the competition in your rearview or shake off a full-scale police pursuit – it’s all just a key-turn away. Need for Speed (NFS) is a racing game developed by Ghost Games and published by Electronic Arts. First released for Xbox One and PlayStation 4, the game found its way to Microsoft Windows devices, a year later, via Origin.
I've been a fan of the first The Need For Speed game for considerably longer than most. How so? I'll tell you was one of the eight stupid people who shelled out % for a 3D0 console in 1994. Prat? W Yes, I know. And I continue to be a W prat, because I now own a Saturn 1 rather than a PlayStation.
But that's a different story, so back to The Need For Speed, and just for thosewho never even got to see the original game (even on the pc), maybe a brief outline would be in order...Six tracks: The Need For Speed contained six tracks, which doesn't sound like a particularly big deal until I tell you that three of these weren't 'closed circuits', but were in fact proper open roads. Eight vehicles: Or eight 'flash motors', of which could be bought - if rich enough - from real-life car showrooms: a Porsche 911, for example: a Ferrari something-or-other; a Lamborghini Diablo: and so on. All the cars, incidentally (or so they said), handled in a realistic manner. I can'tvouch for that, but I can add that they certainly differed greatly from one to another. (My fave was the Porsche, 'cos the back end was twitchy.)Traffic: The selling point! Two way traffic! Cars to overtake on a blindcorner at isomph, and, more importantly, oncoming cars to smash into on that same blind corner. Some of the crashes were stunning, and there was a comprehensive replay mode.Filth: Overtake a cop car at over ssmph and a car chase ensued, with you, obviously, as the chasee.More: And there was more, but I want to end this paragraph and tell you what was crap about the game. Cue the next paragraph...
The next paragraph...
Discover Need For Speed video games, collectibles and accessories at great prices as well as exclusives available only at GameStop. 1.62E12 FREE shipping on orders over $35. Need for Speed Forums Buy Now All Games Forums Buy Now Learn More Buy Now Hit the gas and tear up the roads in this legendary action-driving series. Push your supercar to its limits and leave the competition in your rearview or shake off a.
Crap things about The Need For Speed...Okay, due to the design of the game engine the roads could only be viewed from one direction. It was possible to drive Cthe wrong way', but in doing so you could only access the exterior car view, meaning you were constantly driving towards yourself, your joystick, and your monitor screen, with not a clue as to what bend or road vehicle was coming up next. Poo!
Another slightly crap thing about the game engine was that it tended, occasionally, to give you that Cstreamed straight from cd' feeling. You know? Like when you're confined to a small lateral area, and the scenery is being shoved at you?
Onto the artificial intelligence of the computer-controlled road users, then, and it wasn't brilliant. The general two-way traffic had pretty much no ai whatsoever, although oncoming cars would beep at you when you Cscared' them (just like real-life ones do, ho ho). Oh, and the coppers weren't overly bright either... but then again you could call that realism, I suppose. And as for the computer-controlled competitors, probably the best word to use here would be Cpredictable'. They'd block and they'd shunt, but you tended to know where and when to expect this behaviour.
Er, but apart from that little lot, the original The Need For Speed was (and still is) one of the best car games about, so one can only assume the sequel will be /naff American accent) Cawesome, and will kick ass'.
So what's the score?
I've got an incredibly unfinished version of the game which contains a couple of courses, but with no trackside scenery: just roads suspended in space, in other words. No Ctraffic' in it, either, but I was able to do the main thing you couldn't do in the original - namely drive the wrong way round the track. So, an all-new game engine then, I bet. Let me just check the press release for details. (Reads for five minutes.) Yes, I was right, it's an all-new rendering engine. I'll paraphrase some of the other just-gleaned nuggets of info before I forget them. Righto, firstly is the fact that there's going to be a hell of a lot of Coffroad freedom' this time. I've already said that you can drive the wrong way, but apparently this is as nothing: there are to be short-cuts and alternative routes, some obvious, some harder to find. Ramps, too, and also loads of unusual terrain, plus interactive roadside objects. Add to this the Call new revamped instant replay system' and things are beginning to sound very groovy indeed (what with the proper 360 degree view of the track allowing for panning cameras rather than just Cbehind the car' jobs).
But what about the actual track visuals? Where's the game set? Well, it sounds as if things are a bit more cosmopolitan this time around, not to mention surreal (or naff - time will tell). No longer are we confined to the States, because the programmers, and I quote: have taken areas of the world that they believe would provide a captivating driving experience, and have compressed all the distinctive characteristics of these regions - much like a caricature - into the courses. In other words, they've done stuff like take Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Opera House and the desert roads of the outback and spliced them into the Australian track. Likewise they've taken twisty mountain roads, ice caves, Tibetan villages, swinging rope bridges and scrunched them all into the Himalayan Track. (If England's in there, I bet you a zillion pounds that Big Ben will feature.)
What about the cars?
The original The Need For Speed had the Road & Track licence. Road & Track have now been ditched in favour of real car manufacturers in an effort to get closer to the engineers and what have you: more feedback, more realism. And the cars themselves? Eight supercars, some of which are actual production vehicles, some of which are Cconcept' cars. If you want a list, then here it is: the McLaren Fl, the Lotus Esprit v8, the Ital Design Cala, the Ford GT90, the Lotus gti, the Ford Indigo, the Isdera Commendatore 1121 and the Jaguar XJ220.
If the early code we've seen is anything to go by, TNFS2 looks to be shaping up very nicely indeed. Not only will it sport all of the playability of the first game, but the developers claim that it'll run around 30 per cent faster in glorious hi-res and will also feature extensive multi-player and Internet modes. I can see those pile-ups now.
If You Had To Choose one way of describing Jean-Charles Gaudechon, lead producer on Need For Speed World at Black Box, it'd be 'excitedly optimistic yet realistic.' While not some kind of producing renegade, he's loose enough when describing his game to recognise the challenges NFSW faces.
Mmotoring
'We've wanted to do an MMO for a while, but we've been waiting for the player base to grow,' he explains. 'Even two years ago, people would ask what MMO meant, but this isn't the case any more. In other games, they're going for online, but they're looking at one aspect I We're looking to have multiple ways of fusing the game, so on the one hand phere'll be a Pursuit mode, but people will, also just be able to hang out and chat'.
And when Gaudechon says 'MMO', he means lots of players racing online at the same time, which could get rather hectic, not to mention crippling internet connections. You've seen the 'But no!' coming a mile away, haven't you?
'You can match-make or chat with anyone, but you may not be able to see everyone who's online as there are rendering limits. We also don't want to compromise on how the game looks, it's Need for Speed and we're known for the polished high-detail cars. We could put 100 cars around you, but you'd lose detail and it wouldn't look gorgeous.' I He's right, too. For an online game, NFSW does look very pretty indeed. The world itself is a mash-up of nevy and old material, with some older NFS worlds being remodelled for a modern audience. The world itself will continue to grow through the addition of free content every four months or so.
One of the ideas thrown up by Gaudechon is for desert canyon races, although expansions could also take the form of extra stuff being crammed into the existing areas.
Black Box aren't ruling anything out just yet, although currently there will be only eight players per race. 'As we said, we don't want to compromise on quality dr performance,' Gaudechon reiterates. 'The biggest hit is because the cars have so many polygons. There are a couple of multi-player modes that we're working on that we'd want more players for. There have been some awesome modes in our previous games that we want to carry over, which would be awesome in an MMO, such as having the whole cop experience and being able to take turns with your friends.'
Being an MMO, the idea of levelling has made the transition from the world of beards and elves to that of pimping and cruising. There will be 50 levels for your character to progress through, RPG-style, but it's not going to be like a grind , where you have to get to Level 28 togey that new car.
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'Racing games should be 'pick up and play' so that's why we've got the rental system that'll be a few pence or a few pounds, but you can download the game for free,' Gaudechon stresses. 'It's worth the money. You can get a GTO or a Lambo for a couple of days. So NFSW is pick up and play.'
With micro-transactions being the order of the day, the bulk of the game will be free up to a point, after which things will only become available if you stump up a small amount of cash.
Play Not Pay
'You don't have to pay your way through the game,' Gaudechon says. 'You pay to accelerate your progression or to 'rent' a high-powered car.
'Say all your friends are level 45 and you're level 30 as you haven't been able to play with them for a while, and they say 'Hey, we're doing a Porsche Cup this weekend.' You can rent a Porsche to make sure you're able to race with them. It removes some of the grinding and connects people. We're going to see what happens if things get unbalanced then well react to that. We'll be listening to the users and the community as today's 'gurus' are the users. They tell us what they want.'
This won't matter one bit if the game itself is rubbish, but thankfully it's looking like that will be far from the case. The driving model is sharp, with even the usage of keyboard controls feeling slick and convincing. Almost as importantly, server and bandwidth issues should be few and far between, as even when playing on Canadian-hosted servers, latency issues are negligible.
With Black Box promising that the main hub of NFSW will be in England, us Brit-dwellers should experience some seriously good connections to the game. And as Gaudechon says 'We've always felt that you can have loads of cool features, but if it's not a smooth experience, people won't come back to the game.' Very true.
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'During the beta,' explains Gaudechon, 'I always have the chat panel open and it's amazing what some people are already coming up with, taking the game off on a tangent, we're seeing emergent gameplay already! Like these guys playing 'golf' with garbage cans and cars, these other guys doing car beauty contests in the stadium, taking photos. If you give power to the community, you find that they support the game more than you can and it's one of the successes of MMOs such as World of Warcraft.'