It's been a while since the Need for Speed series lost its way of being incredible with its street racing, drag racing, and car customization. Electronic Arts have made yet another effort with a new title to revitalize the franchise, and Need for Speed Unbound marks the return of Criterion Games to the forefront of the industry after ten years. Unbound is the first installment in the series following its relaunch in 2015, taking the franchise on a new path two years after the conclusion of the last installment. This game is a pleasant surprise, delivering a unique driving experience that improves upon the foundation established by its predecessor. Even while it has the most fantastic visuals of EA's arcade racing games, it still needs to improve in some key areas to be considered one of EA's best racing games.

Need for Speed Unbound has a new appearance that mashes the visuals of NFS Heat and comic book-inspired animation elements to set itself apart. Cartoonish designs are used for the characters while varying visual effects based on vibrant sketches occur around the cars to symbolize various events. In Unbound, we see a mashup of genres, with realistic elements combined with cartoonish ones.

While the characters and certain driving effects are drawn in an animated style, the setting and the vehicles are rendered in a photorealistic style that more than lives up to our expectations and gives us a rich visual experience. In addition, you'll have the option of coming up with your own unique design for the cars or just replicating existing ones.

It's important to note that Need for Speed Unbound introduces a new kind of in-game landscape known as Lakeshore. A region heavily influenced by Chicago consists of various cities connected by roads and a few small farms. Early in Unbound, the protagonist and his friend Jaz are racing through the streets of Lakeshore in cars they've tirelessly restored. The two friends go out to achieve fame and fortune on the streets, but the player's car gets destroyed in an accident.

Players take on the role of a protagonist in the career mode who must gather funds to enter and ultimately triumph in the city's greatest underground tournament. A large street racing tournament is scheduled for Lakeshore a few years later, and the protagonist can regain his car and earn legendary status in the city. The main character in our story is out for vengeance after a terrible betrayal. The plot is still mostly subjective, which is particularly problematic in a racing game.

There's no doubt that Need for Speed Unbound's narrative mode is engaging. The plot starts out simple and unassuming and never becomes much more extravagant. Again, the same elements were crucial to success. Even though it is surrounded by signs of fiction and has many similarities with another famous racing and motor film epic, it ultimately fails to deliver. And before we know it, the story's 15 hours will have passed without us noticing it. The story's main draw is the opportunity to learn about the city of Lakeshore and its surrounding area, as well as a wide variety of vehicles and the mechanics involved in their purchase, sale, maintenance, and repair.

Players not only have the story-driven incentive to improve their driving abilities and return the car to its rightful owner but also the financial incentive to do so. You can only enter such races if you have the means to purchase the high-performance automobiles that are required to do so. A desire to win a car is ridiculous. Drivers will organize "vehicle parties" in different hidden locations throughout the day, and attendees just have to pay a small price to join in on the fun. The gameplay of this sort, which employs a busy metropolis as a track, does give an odd sensation of exhilaration in contrast to driving on a standard track.

Although Lakeshore may seem like a street racer's dream at first glance, this is not the case. You're on the road throughout the day and night, but the cops are hot on your trail, and the mayor keeps harping on the radio about how hazardous car racing is. The characters are upset with the mayor, but the next election will be between two unsatisfactory candidates. Here, the riders are depicted as an underrepresented minority who aren't out to hurt anybody and only want a platform to share their unique culture and perspectives. The city is packed with people who tend to congregate in strange locations, putting themselves and others at risk and wreaking havoc on its infrastructure.

Needless to say, Need for Speed Unbound has arcade-style gameplay. This detail has been seen before and won't shock veteran fans. Although something constantly felt missing. Skids are ubiquitous; they happen all the time, and even when you have complete command, you frequently find yourself in the background. As a rule, these track exits indicate that the racer has been defeated. It goes against everything the creative team at Criterion Games stands for.

Also, straying off the beaten path can be a lot of fun because the environment's props are vulnerable to destruction. Your car will not be stopped by anything, not even a huge tree. As a result, it's frustrating to hit a brick wall at almost every turn if you don't utilize the nitro to correct your course.

Need for Speed Unbound succeeds in what it set out to do, and it presents itself as a fresh arcade racing game in an open universe with reasons to merit one's attention. Not quite the Criterion triumph I was hoping for, and players may need to be patient with the game's mechanics. Especially considering how the enjoyment factor takes a hit due to the design constraints. This authentic arcade simulation is built on the core mechanics of drifting and nitro fueling.

The additional boosts are my favorite part of the gameplay: if you pull off a fine maneuver, such as a sharp turn, a drift, etc., you fill up a temporary boost meter. It means that you'll need to drive with precision and flair if you want to come out on top in this game since the perks you get for driving well are essential for getting to the front of the pack.

The gameplay is split up into smaller halves. Monday morning is the beginning of your journey. You can compete in challenges there to earn rewards and so fundraise. Money from this will go toward upgrading your current vehicles and purchasing brand-new ones. But your wanted status will rise with each new race you add to your ancestry. It will take more manpower and equipment for the local authorities to bring you to justice if the wanted status is higher.

And if you're captured, you'll lose whatever money you've earned this time. Thus, you must make a reasonable estimate of how many activities you want to finish, how much you can earn, and how much you can spend. If you want to skip a section, all you have to do is visit one of your secret locations. After that, the funds are automatically placed in your account.

Fans of the franchise who are also acquainted with its distinct racing style will find that Need for Speed Unbound has both an accessible gameplay concept and new aesthetics. In the story mode, you undertake side quests in between events, and they come in two flavors: those where you have to deliver a car within a certain time constraint and those where you have to evade the cops before delivering cars.

A well-modified car might serve as inspiration for your own vehicle customization projects. It serves as a source of inspiration as well. The multiplayer mode, however, seems unfinished since it excludes police pursuits, lets you participate in just standard races, and doesn't allow you to take part in drifting or Takeover tasks. Between the two modes, it's clear that additional material is needed in the form of future patches.

The game provides a wide range of racing options, including closed-course races with many circuits and open-course races with a single lap. There are also special events called Relay races, which don't really use a relay but do need us to complete a course while maintaining our combo by drifting, jumping, and demolishing barrels and other items strewn around the track to get more points. The Takeover is a different mode in which we must simultaneously drift and smash as many things as possible.

A cost is associated with attending one or more events, while some are free. Free Roaming is fun to test your skills, but this part of the game gets annoying due to your wanted level. The cops seemed fairly friendly initially, but as the wanted level rises in the free world, they become increasingly frustrating. In-game methods of evading cops are limited to high-speed and underground or aerial passageways.

To decide which activities to participate in, we must compare the potential rewards against the risk of being caught by the authorities. In addition, being the first in every race is not required under any circumstances. In particular, the initial few hours include some of the most challenging combat and grinding the game has to offer. Since most of the rivals have rather more high-performance cars than us, racing offers little financial benefit and is very exhausting. After the first few hours of the game, when the first weekly final is over, things seem to have returned to normal. After that, the game gets into a good rhythm, with exciting races, plenty of room to experiment with automobile modification, and never-ending car chases with police cars.

As a genre, open-world games have reached a point of maturity, and this concept sadly isn't effectively deployed for the Need for Speed Unbound. Despite its natural beauty, Lakeshore City is usually rather deserted. You are going to transfer from one area to another for nothing more than a race or a return to your starting position. Criterion hasn't included much more in the city they've created, so you won't have as much freedom other than just A to B racing.

However, the game provides the freedom of five driving cams and 143 cars, plus 19 more already customized. You can get these automobiles by completing events and progressing through the narrative. Once you have succeeded in advancing through the levels or clearing various obstacles, you will be asked to leave the cash in the cars to activate ownership.

Like the Heat, Unbound will have multiple game modes, each with its unique twist. While the Easy mode is available for newcomers, it doesn't seem to change anything about the game itself. The NPCs' driving abilities are challenging to master early in the narrative mode and remain unbeatable throughout. Everyone's driving talents are so finely tuned that it's not uncommon to drop from first to eighth with the slightest misstep.

The game provides tracks that will constantly provide new challenges; these mini-quests have three stages each, including speed cameras, speed zones, leaps, and skids. You're sure to run across one of them anywhere in the city since they're all over the place. You also have artifacts, such as graffiti, posters, and inflatable teddy bears, which we will need to locate and destroy.

Need for Speed Unbound ran well at 4K resolution on PlayStation 5 and a solid 60 frames per second. The terrain and vehicles are rendered realistically, while the people, cutscenes, and driving effects are cartoonish. The game has character customizations allowing you to outfit your character with well-known streetwear labels everywhere you race, thanks to the game's robust customization options. The same holds true for car customization; you'll get fond of your brand-new Lamborghini once you've had some time to play with its color scheme and choose from the wide variety of available colors, markings, and patterns.

Need for Speed Unbound isn't flawless, but it's close to the standard set by the best games in the series. Criterion Games has differentiated itself from other studios by providing a unique creative approach. Regrettably, Heat's irritating framework, rigorous day-night changes, and the presence of too violent cops make it a bit less fun. Modifying the game's difficulty might just make things better for the newcomers. The visuals and the gameplay are definitely arcade, and playing it is mostly satisfying. While we may not be up against EA's finest racing title, we see a Need For Speed that hopes to propel the series into the spotlight. It's a decent game and racing fans wouldn't mind checking it out.
 

Azfar Rayan (@AzfarRayan)
Editor, NoobFeed