Need for Speed (2015)
Graphics
The game looks great. Environments, cars, effects and lighting are all really quite good. No complaints besides wishing that we could play during the daytime. The whole game is set at night with the occasional break of dawn followed questionably back again to night.. If we had daytime we could see more of the environment that already looks good. I can understand why they did this because they want the continuity of less cars on the road but just give us the option of advancing time or something.
Gameplay
The best drifting game out there by far. The ease and fun in drifting in this game is addicting. The sense of speed is also very good and manageable without the feeling like you'll crash any second. The low amount of objects and npc cars on the road lend to the game feeling very free and open.
My complaint with the gameplay is occasional opponent racer rubber-banding. No matter how much you upgrade your car, in some races theirs just no point. The other racers will catch up to you.
This has been patched since launch to be less apparent and frequent however. So I say only SOMETIMES, this occurs. It was a huge problem at launch and now it has improved greatly. For that, I give EA credit in patching it. Because last year with Rivals the rubber banding was atrocious. The game is not like that at all, so take comfort in only ever having a couple annoying rubber banding instances overall.
Besides that the level of customization is the highest its ever been in a NFS since Underground 2. They really could have and should have called the game Underground 3.
Sound
Great sound out of the cars. Some cars have really captured the real thing be it VTEC from a slow Civic to the spool of a turbo in a Supra to the growl of a USDM or burble of a EDM. The sound is on point. The music is a mixed bag but overall not bad.
Replay value
Alot of replay value in this game actually. Once you've completed the fairly lengthy campaign you will always have leveling up to do, cars to buy and customize, online racing/drifting and plenty of side races. The only thing is you really do only ever have just point to point racing and drifting. At the end of the day you will eventually put the game down until you feel like doing more of the same. Which imo, is more of the same good game atleast.
Now whats really bad here is that literally at this moment I would rather be playing the game but since PSN is down for maintainance and the game REQUIRES a connection to PSN before even starting up then that means I cant play the game offline at all. The game is Online ONLY.
Once you are in the game you can turn the game offline so you dont race with any other online racers in the game but you first have to be ONLINE in order to go OFFLINE.
How fucked up is this? EA is always taking one step forward and one step back with me. Just when I think I can trust them again they do this kind of thing.
This is the equivilant of living in the MS controlled online only Xbox One pre-launch era. Except its just EA doing it no matter what console you're on.
In the end, this is my favorite NFS game ever and I will probably play this game very often whenever I get that itch to play a more arcady drifter and hear cheesy acting. But the online only infrastructure is a huge turn off. How will I be able to play this game in the future if PSN goes down for PS4 entirely? Another anti-consumer policy from the experts.
4/5