Criterion, one of gaming’s most established arcade racer developers, has returned to the racing scene with Need For Speed Unbound. The game features the intense races and incredible visuals the series is known for, but it also brings some unnecessary baggage that weighs it down.
Street racing, customized rides, and a great soundtrack make their return in Need For Speed Unbound. The Chicago-inspired map known as Lakeshore City dazzles with rainy streets and impressive reflections and lighting, making losing time in the game’s photo mode easy. While the city of Lakeshore and the game’s customizable rides look realistic, Unbound sets itself apart from other racers by adding a variety of stylish features like cel-shaded smoke, light trails, and other effects that trigger when the player performs a specific driving maneuver. These effects stand out when placed in Unbound‘s more realistic environment. Unfortunately, that realism feels like it’s holding Criterion back from making a vibrant and colorful racing game that goes all in with these sorts of visual effects.
Visual Flair Helps Set Need For Speed Unbound Apart, But It’s Sparse
The impressive visuals and photo mode are taken a step further thanks to the many cars and customization options at the player’s disposal. Like other racing games of this age, cars can be upgraded from the inside and out. A large selection of car parts can improve each car’s performance as players progress through the game’s story. Each car manages to feel unique to drive from one another, especially with performance upgrades adding further deviations.
Unbound succeeds in making each car feel unique and fun to drive in the often wet streets of Lakeshore. However, the game’s story threatens to detract players from its fun street racing and exciting police chases. At its worst, long-winded monologues often don’t move the story forward or succeed in making its characters likable, threatening the style points that the game manages to gain. However, the new Need For Speed game’s story mode improves when the game involves other street racers and expands on their personalities through side quests. Side missions usually task the players to drive from point A to point B, sometimes with cops in hot pursuit. However, other times players must pick up a fellow racer in need of a quick ride which provides an opportunity to add more personality to the NPCs the player will race against.
Besides the game’s overabundance of dialogue, the gameplay flourishes with an open-world format that allows players to drive their vehicles around Unbound‘s extensive map from one money-making event to the next. While the driving mechanics make Need For Speed‘s impressive gameplay feel fast and intense while weaving between pedestrian cars, fellow racers, and cop cars, the world ultimately feels unresponsive to the player’s actions. Police chase players with increased intensity depending on which events are completed before retiring to a designated safe house, but they hardly offer a challenge compared to the difficulty of earning the number one spot in some Unbound‘s races and challenges. Major performance upgrades and expensive rides will need to be acquired to progress through the game’s story mode and unlock its more challenging missions.
Multiplayer is also a fun addition to Need for Speed Unbound that allows players to bet other players and unlock cars that become available in both the game’s story and multiplayer modes. Racing other players feels satisfying but would be more interesting if Unbound‘s world was more interactive and had a larger variety of activities. While Criterion has successfully returned to the genre, it feels like the developer is being held back from delivering a truly colorful and over-the-top experience it’s previously achieved in games like the Burnout series. The team should take the driving mechanics and the cartoony visual flairs from Need for Speed Unbound and turn those features up to the next level in their next arcade racer.
Need For Speed Unbound is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows PC. A PlayStation 5 code for Need For Speed Unbound was provided to Screen Rant for the purposes of this review.
Source: Need For Speed/YouTube