HIGH The Day/Night split is both interesting and well implemented.
LOW: The stories in this series continue to be insufferable…
WTF: …which would’ve been more bearable with a healthy dose of FMV, which ain’t here.
HIGH I didn’t pay for it.
LOW Every time anyone opens their yap.
WTF Couldn’t spring for live action cutscenes anymore? Really, EA?
HIGH Unlike last year, this is a deeeeeeep, full-featured racing sim.
LOW Tires seem to be held together by bubble gum and prayer.
WTF Frame tearing, stuttering and jaggy lines made me wonder which console I booted up
HIGH A great sense of speed and lovely visuals.
LOW The braindead, cheating, rubber-banding opponent AI.
WTF They sure do like phoning up this dude who never, ever talks.
HIGH Narrowly escaping a pursuing squad of police cars and power drifting into the safety of my hideout with hundreds of sounds of speed points under my belt.
LOW For an open world driving game, there are not nearly enough alternative paths and emergent gameplay moments that use the geography.
WTF The non-ironic gritty and serious tone of the "story."
HIGH Blistering down a sunset highway at almost 200mph.
LOW Hurtling straight into a divider at almost 200mph.
WTF Where is the start menu?!
I was listening to a podcast recently (and I've heard this same thing multiple times from other people over the last week or so) and I was shaking my head at the way the speakers were discussing recent Events Which Shall Not Be Named. Over and over, they were so insistent that reviewers are "getting paid off" for good scores.
HIGH Race that avalanche!
LOW What, you again?
WTF Man, I'm killing way too many people in this racing game.
I never play racing games. There are a number of reasons for this, but part is that I'm not very interested in cars in general, and I'm even less interested in playing a game that makes me repeat sections over and over and over in an effort to get my performance exactly right.
I’ll admit that I’m not especially familiar with the history of the Need for Speed franchise. My first experience with the series was with 2006’s NFS Most Wanted, an average arcade-inspired racing game with a single standout feature: Amazing police chases. The follow-up, NFS Carbon, added a couple of new modes: the mildly diverting "drift" and the frustrating "canyon chase". The police chases were back, but hamstrung by the fact that the city map was so labyrinthine in its construction that it was nearly impossible to get a good chase going.
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