I played the game over the weekend and found myself glued to the tv the entire Friday night playing the game as I wanted to see what it has to offer for the NFS franchise fanatics, this is what my view is after playing the game for about 10hours.
1. Disappointed in the damage module of the game, unless you don't look around your car you will not notice it is damaged, like the rear bumper wouldn't hang for instance. When hitting some objects like dustbins, fences, etc (believe me this is easy in the drifting mode) they look amazing like there is paper flying everywhere and fences make sparks as they go over the road BUT there are the side walks where if you hit them you crash, if you hit a powerbox, you crash, if you hit a wall, you stop immediately. There is no damage flow in this game regarding all the elements around you, instead it is about what you hit. It really sucks
2. Gameplay is okish. You play and level up going through your races. The Graphics looks amazing although you only play in the night, sometimes you don't even see the bend, so many times I have won the race 99% of the way just to miss that turn off at the last end as it is right after the bend. There is also the fact that when you crash, start your race over as you will not catch up to the guys, vice versa the computer cars catches up to you in no time and while going passed you at one h@# of a speed. So we have nos correct, well I found it to be useless as you will press the X button (PS4 here) and you can see the exhaust is blowing some flames but then that is it. There is no, what the h@# moment of going into warp speed and catching up to speedy conzales who just whoozed passed you like you were parking somewhere although your screen said you are doing 256km/h in the left corner. I just wish they fix this in a future patch as this really sucks and there is no fair ground here, like buy a Porsche to race a vw race and you will win kind of way.
3. The repeat dialog so early in the game is killing it for me and every time a call comes in, dear not answering it and the next race will not show up on the map, you answer it some idiots is talking to each other while you listen, the whole audio change to this conversation, your car and road noise becames background and is soft while they chat and this conversation is the same dialog then before, I have found in a few of them, by the end of this week I will now the words to the conversations, really sucks.
4. Then there is the fist pound everytime you get to the garage or the dinner, I mean who really does that. The actors make this part of the game look really good but that stupid fist pound is really getting on my nerves.
5. Online, this game requires a permanent internet connection, even on my unlimited 10mb adsl line I had a few disconnections. When you startup the game they want you (again I am on PS4) to subscribe to the 12month playstation plus membership. I was pi@#ed the moment I saw this and when I pressed O button to go back I saw the game loading, this is a dirty method to get people to buy into the subscription.
I lost interest by sunday to play the game further as I cant get over how bad the damage are controlled in this game, the part of when you race and at that last end misses the turn off just to loose a 5min race you just did at 00:00 in the morning, the catch up dynamics of the cars - the computer can catch up to you in about 2 turns but if you crash you never get to them unless your car is so heavy over powered to theirs that you don't even have to hold the gas all the time.
This game is cool regarding how the graphics is and it is awesome how the cars are displayed in detail, I will play it for that but that is about it. The races are not bad but they are not great, you will not win unless you miss every side of the road and NEVER crash.
I hope they fix the game in upcoming patches, oh and there was one when I inserted my game on Friday night, patch 1.02 400mb, to improve on the damage control and the catch up dynamics. I will probably still play the game but not like I did on Friday and Saturday, oh and within 5 hours I did 13% of the game so this game aint going to be a long one.
This is my view of the game and please take it with a spoon of salt. I have been owning the previous NFS of the franchise and this gameplay is completely different in its dynamics. I like the game and will still recommend it for buying and owning it. Graphics is awesome
And if anyone was wondering, BMW E46 M3 is in the game (although it says 2006) and it can be customized to look like a CSL.