Need For Speed and Other Racing Games

Plasmanta

Banned deucer.
Welcome to the thread were you can discuss Need For Speed and Forza, two of the most predominant racing video games out there. (Fuck you fast N furious) I dont really think there are a lot of things to be spoiled in these games, if there is something major I'd use the hide tag just to be safe.


I don't really play forza, but I decided to throw it in here because it is a popular racing game and it'd be kinda worthless to give it another thread.

My list of played NFS games:

Need For Speed: Nitro - Probably one of the worst NFS games ever, but it was my first. It has no free drive, terrible controls, the cars are fairly bad. It does have arcade and 4 player, so I'd guess that's a plus

Need For Speed: Most Wanted 2 - Bought this after the masterpiece of a movie was made, thinking it was based off this game. It's a great concept in having a free drive overworld, and driving to find news cars, events, and more cars. Not really sure what the fun is in having 3 copies of each car to be found, guess that's something they put in to enjoy overworld driving. The most wanted races are amazing, except for that one where I had to get the Lexus and the fucking spike strips were EVERYWHERE.

Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit - I got this game recently and can't say much about it. It has better graphics then the aforementioned and it has some of the best cars I've seen. The fact that you have weapons during hot pursuits is really fun, and I enjoyed being able to play the cop for once.

[EDIT] During posting this thread I decided to open this up to all Racing Games, the end.
 

Trinitrotoluene

young ☆nd foolish
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hey, if you have played other games in the need for speed series but not the original need for speed: most wanted, you're doing yourself a disservice. it's the best game in the series imo (but underground 2 does give it a fair bit of competition in that regard), and the best part about it has to be its soundtrack. the tracks in the most wanted soundtrack, regardless of genre, sound rougher and darker, which fits the overall background of the game rather well. among other things, i'm glad the people in charge of organizing the soundtrack decided to add 3 dnb tracks (you must follow (evol intent v.i.p.), broken sword, barrier break) from evol intent and dieselboy, two of the greatest dnb producers out there. having tracks from the prodigy and celldweller made it even better. beyond that, the gameplay is exhilarating and the storyline simple, but effective at the same time. the car selection is top-notch, and the game feels fast. my only gripes are that the police officer ai used in that game is kinda dumb at times and that the game does feel a bit slow at the beginning. overall, great game.
 

Plasmanta

Banned deucer.
most wanted 1 is actually something I was looking into getting for the holidays. How expensive is it in modern times? (too lazy too look up fucking amazon)
 
most wanted on pc is a great experience, too bad no Ferraris lol. You can probably find one on ebay for pretty cheap. I really loved Hot pursuit 2 (the old one) because of the scenic maps but I seem to have misplaced the cd code so I can't play it. it has my favorite cars (cl55, m5, diablo) and yeah. it's fun
 

Soul Fly

IMMA TEACH YOU WHAT SPLASHIN' MEANS
is a Contributor Alumnus
Bona Fide NFS patron here.

Most Wanted was really a game changer. The plot was a filler, but who gives a shit it's NFS. But I didn't like the fact that the game never really forced you to diversify, and it was basically "How fast can I unlock a Lamborghini". The Pursuit Sequence with all the environmental effects was fun, but outrunning the police was really rather easy and the time dilation thing was basically auto-god mode. Still it pushed the envelope in terms of graphics and I really feel this is where NFS really started nailing the arcade control aesthetics.

Carbon was recycled Bullshit. I hated perpetual night mode anyways. Canyon drifting was a bad gimmick. The overcomplicated customization options were unnecessary given the game's rather dumb A.I, and even so there was always some one single ideal setting for each car, give take some minor change for control v/s acceleration rendering all that variety useless. Chases were even dumber with the helicopters gone.

On the other hand Hot Pursuit 2010 has to be the finest NFS game I've played. They completely did away with the plot (a good thing), and the game just looks pornographically beautiful. The controls are bang on solid. The pursuit thing has also gradually sold itself onto me. I like how it's not basically a glorified wrecking truck match where my frail lambo has uncharacteristically ungodly durability like in the earlier games (lol). and the equipment actually gives me a solid opportunity to strategize, beyond "outrun the circle and hide below a shade". I still miss the environmental effects and barriers though, they could at least have kept the trucks. The cop A.I is sometimes annoyingly good, and I like how (in the later part of the story mode) the cop cars are always slightly faster and more durable than yours forcing you to think on your feet rather than just driving without bumping into anything)
The fine tuned arcade physics are also a charm making the hybrid drifting+drag racing drive really intuitive, without making every car handle more or less the same way, and gives you something to actually master and develop as a driving style. The different cards actually offer distinct advantages, giving a more versatile line-up of vehicles and choices. The roads are oftentimes too wide and the traffic is too cooperative, but hey it's NFS lol, plus hypers can't drive beyond highways without these prerequisites.

I find everything after Hot Pursuit to be based on a gimmicks, while the graphical updates have been only slightly better not offering anything new except an expanded garage, while the driving mechanics are essentially unchanged.
I hope with the new gen consoles being better understood developers finally start pushing the envelope in major ways to give us an actually new NFS game.
 

Adamant Zoroark

catchy catchphrase
is a Contributor Alumnus
Play the original Most Wanted

FUCKING PLAY IT

IT'S MANDATORY

The plot really is filler, if it even exists (what did you expect, you're playing a racing game) but I liked how exterior customizations to your car were no longer mandatory, as they were in Underground 2, also Lamborghinis. And SMASHING INTO COP CARS WHILE GETTING AWAY WHILE SLOWING TIME DOWN, THAT WAS AWESOME <- this was all my 10-year-old self cared about. Even today, when I play this game, it makes me feel like I'm 10, and that's awesome.

Speaking of Underground 2, play it - It was the first NFS game with open world, so it represented a major advancement in the series.

Do not play these:

-Carbon
-ProStreet
-Undercover

Carbon was heavily recycled (as already stated,) I don't know what they were going for with ProStreet (it just felt like Forza Motorsport: Bad Edition or something like that) and Undercover was the most repetitive shit I've ever played.
 
My first NFS game was like Hot Pursuit 2 (as in the 2002 version) but i was fairly young at the time and only remember loving to drive the CLK GTR around the crazy circuits that game had.

Underground was the first i remember clearly and it was nothing short of awesome - the soundtrack, races and cars/customization were all god tier, especially for a 2003 game. Only annoying thing about it imo was the style ratings, to get a 5 star you had to make the car look silly in one way or another. Underground 2 just raised the bar even more, the hidden shops, URL races and the free roam made it my 2nd favorite of the whole series. Bad sides included Jackson Heights -drifting on it was cool but having to drive up that place to reach races or explore for hidden stuff had me falling asleep, and the lack of interesting circuits (no memorable races like the one in the 1st Underground called "Stadium" which had a jump my younger self couldnt get enough of).

Most Wanted - easily the best game due to the sheer amount of innovation it brought, fun plot, and showed that you can make fun racing games without it being constantly nighttime. To this day i still cant finish that 30 minute pursuit in the challenge series. Not much else to say here.

Carbon - It seems others in this thread arent fans but i personally loved it, car balance sucked ass (or maybe it was the AI) use whatever you want until you get the corvette, gg. It was fairly recycled but it was stuff i liked that was brought back again so i cant complain.

ProStreet - I tried to like the game but the cars were just awful and really boring, those long races out in the desert i forgot the name of drove me insane since if you made one mistake you found yourself driving up the side of the canyons backwards.

Undercover - I would rate this as my 3rd favorite, the handling of every car was absolutely hilarious but it was good fun, the thing that made the game great for me was the soundtrack, i'm a huge pendulum fan.

Shift 1 / 2 - I dont even acknowledge these games, maybe i was awful at them but i could not drive to save myself in these games. Once you got to the tier with hypercars you would need sheer luck to actually finish the races since you had like 0 control over them especially with so many other cars on the tracks, and i always felt the AI were faster than me when i was supposed to have the advantage. Not sure what went wrong here.

Hot Pursuit (2010) - Another great game, graphics were drop dead gorgeous, new mechanics were awesome fun to play, car list was actually really good and the soundtrack was nice too. After playing this i thought the good games were coming back but then shift 2 was released so yeah...nah.

The Run - rly EA. the game was somewhat fun but the plot had me in stitches with how dumb it got.

Most Wanted (2012) / Rivals - I have these two grouped together because i felt like they were almost the same game. They looked similar, the way they played was similar, taking out the whole idea of actually having to unlock something important just left the games feeling very dry, but they were cool i guess.

I probably sound like the usual older NFS fanboy, but i do think EA needs to get their heads out their ass and stop taking the weird direction of dumb plots and 0 customization and make an Underground 3 kinda game.

About other racing games:

Forza: I've only played since 3, but i can safely say that the games got worse every new one that came out. Sure, they look better but i felt so restricted with how many things i could do in Forza 5, and cars were handed to you on a silver platter. Microtransactions killed my love for the series for reasons im not even sure of yet.

Test Drive series: I played them since the old days of Test Drive: Overdrive (good game for its time btw), Unlimited was like my fav racing game for some time before the servers died and hacked cars were everywhere, and Unlimited 2 was a disappointment due to awful servers, shame the developers dont exist anymore because i think it could have gotten better with time.

Side note: does anyone remember Rage Racer for the original Playstation? ahhh, nostalgia.
 

DHR-107

Robot from the Future
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Orange Islands
Just so this doesn't turn into NFS the thread...

I'm a big fan of other racing games over NFS... Forza, GT, Grid, TOCA, Colin McRae, DiRT etc...

CodeMasters are pretty much the king of racing games for me. DiRT and Grid are both awesome series. I hope DiRT goes back to more traditional roots though, and they get away from this nasty Gymkhana style driving and the like. I want to race, not perform tricks... Rallying is something I really enjoy in racing games because its that much more different than the usual track racing stuff. Grid 1 imo is better than Grid 2 or Grid Autosport, but they are all great games :D

I play some of the F1 games too, but they are kinda samey after a while. Forza is probably one of my favourite racing series because of all the mods/changes you can make to your cars over time, even up to and including new engines and stuff. Having a 4WD V6 VW Corrado shutting down Lambo's over a 1/4 mile is pretty funny. GT is a dying series in my eyes... They didn't deliver half of the stuff they needed to in GT5 and GT6. Neither lived up to expectations.

F Zero is something that I've always had a soft spot for, same with WipeOut. Star Wars Racer (With the pods) is probably my favourite racing game ever :P
 

Adamant Zoroark

catchy catchphrase
is a Contributor Alumnus
I don't know, releasing Forza 5 WITHOUT THE FUCKING NURBURGRING and instead making it DLC later seems like a pretty shitty move. You can't have a racing simulator without the fucking Nurburgring. You better remember that for Forza 6, Turn 10.

I wanna wait to see what the Gran Turismo series has to offer for Gran Turismo 7. They seriously need to get rid of that standard car bullshit. At least brake upgrades were in Gran Turismo 6.... How did GT5 manage to go wrong in that regard?
 

Soul Fly

IMMA TEACH YOU WHAT SPLASHIN' MEANS
is a Contributor Alumnus
I ditched forza when they pulled nurburgring-gate. Seriously fuck them.

anyone remember the old classics? :D

My Favourite was Midtown Madness (2). I might just pirate the game and play it again for massive nostalgia value.
Another Was Midnight Club. OMG that Hype. :'D
 

Adamant Zoroark

catchy catchphrase
is a Contributor Alumnus
Midnight Club was awesome. I most clearly remember playing the second one, never played the first one. I didn't play it over the Need for Speed series much, especially when NFS Most Wanted came out. I did play Midnight Club LA and thought it was the best game in the series by far, though I never played the first one so I'm probably not the best to judge that.
 

Plasmanta

Banned deucer.
Midnight club is that game that I run into every time I check the video games section anywhere in my local area. It's one of those things that looks good but I probably wouldn't play because I have the NFS games.
 

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