Need for Speed First Impressions

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Bojan
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Need for Speed First Impressions

Post by Bojan »

I attended gamescom last week and got a chance to play this year's Need for Speed and talk to the producers for additional insights on what the game will bring this holiday season.
It is all summed up in this article. If you have any additional questions, post them in the comments and I'll try to answer the best I can.

If you are really impatient, here is a summary of a summary:
Need for Speed shows promise this year, this is for sure. I am actually pretty excited about the game as it is deviating away from the standard model of Rivals and Most Wanted 2012. It is trying to bring something fresh, or at least something not seen in a decade, back to the series and I really hope the full game coming out this holiday season will deliver.
Need for Speed First Impressions
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Re: Need for Speed First Impressions

Post by Eurotrash »

Deviating? It looks just like a combination of Rivals and Most Wanted 2012! Rival's horrible driving mechanics and Frostbite graphics meets Most Wanted 2012's whacky gameplay and urban theme. Exactly. The Same. Thing. It's impossible for anyone to miss that, unless it's on purpose. Kind of biased there mate :/

I laughed hard at "something fresh". Could've sworn it's exactly the kind of nonsense that has been killing the series for the past decade. Ugly cars, driving mechanics made up of 60% drifting and 40% crashing, bad music, cast consisting of badly voice acted hipsters with dialects only they understand, "celebrity" endorsements from Motorsport "legends" like Ken Block that most of us probably haven't even heard of (and for good reason), another horrible M3 GTR replica that will no doubt have fanboys throwing money at the screen... oh right, and it's always online. 'Cause it worked marvelously for SimCity.

Also doesn't seem to have Ferraris. I could be wrong, but if I'm not, anyone else get a feeling of deja vu? This would be the second time EA lost the license to Ferrari cars because they decided to make a Fast & Furious themed Mario Kart clone instead of a Need For Speed game. I honestly wouldn't blame Ferrari, I wouldn't want my cars featured in this game either.

I know it's a pretty hard judgement to pass on an unreleased game, but I've seen enough of EA to know where this is going. And this looks genuinely bad, EA just had to sneak in a few key words in their announcements to win everyone over. "Underground", "customization", "M3 GTR". They could've at least given it another crappy title instead of dragging the reboot title through the mud and killing the chance for anyone to make a proper reboot...

Oh and the graphics have been nerfed since E3, but I guess we've become accustomed to that. Thanks new-gen hardware!
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Re: Need for Speed First Impressions

Post by jayson74 »

Legitimate question here.

Where was it said that the reason Ferrari isn't in certain games because of the type of game? Is this some type of official piece of information, or do people just speculate and post like it came from Ferrari themselves?

Again no sarcasm, legitimate question.
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Re: Need for Speed First Impressions

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jayson74 wrote: Where was it said that the reason Ferrari isn't in certain games because of the type of game? Is this some type of official piece of information, or do people just speculate and post like it came from Ferrari themselves?
If you know a better reason why Ferrari would suddenly ditch the most popular racing game franchise of the time after years of being featured in it, I'd like to hear it. The two events, Need For Speed turning bad and Ferrari jumping ship, are consistent with eachother.

Ferrari are a very prestigious brand (which is just another word for incredibly stuck-up). They are even picky about who buys their cars, why wouldn't they be picky about what games they are featured in?

Of course, it's also possible that after Underground's success EA decided they weren't going to make real Need For Speed games anymore and let go of the licenses to various exotic car manufacturers, and when they finally realized they had made a mistake, it was too late to negotiate for Ferrari licenses. I'm pretty sure the only reason Ferrari returned to Need For Speed is due to Atari facing bankruptcy and being forced to sell it's assets (including licensing rights). AFAIK Atari was the only company that held rights to use Ferrari's on all the platforms, and since Rivals features Ferrari's on all platforms, that makes sense. (back when EA released Ferrari's for Shift it was only on Xbox due to the fact that they were negotiating with Microsoft, and Microsoft only holds rights to use Ferraris on Xbox and PC).
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Re: Need for Speed First Impressions

Post by TRANSFORMER »

Bojan, thank You 4 the article and 4 the summary - well wrote there everything I wanted to know... :wink:
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Re: Need for Speed First Impressions

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Eurotrash wrote: If you know a better reason why Ferrari would suddenly ditch the most popular racing game franchise of the time after years of being featured in it, I'd like to hear it.
I had asked the question because I didn't have the answer. You gave a response to my question then followed it up with "If you have a better answer, I'd like to hear it." That implies to me that all you did was guess. I'm not sure why you bothered to reply to my post when I was asking for a confirmed source as to why the Ferrari issue is what it is.

Please for anyone that doesn't know that actual answer, do not reply as if you did. I mean that in the most polite way.
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Re: Need for Speed First Impressions

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jayson74 wrote: I had asked the question because I didn't have the answer. You gave a response to my question then followed it up with "If you have a better answer, I'd like to hear it." That implies to me that all you did was guess. I'm not sure why you bothered to reply to my post when I was asking for a confirmed source as to why the Ferrari issue is what it is.
It's called an educated guess. And it's the best answer you'll ever get, neither Ferrari nor EA make their dealings public.
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Re: Need for Speed First Impressions

Post by jacoja06 »

Nice write up Bojan! As I mentioned before, like many other people I've really been hanging out for a NFS game like this for a long time. The last game I bought in the series had to be the first Shift, then I seemed to lose interest really quickly as all of the games felt like they had been rushed during development. This reboot looks like a return to form, though I really only have one concern. I know Ghost mentioned before that manual transmission would not be included, so I'm wondering if it will be included in a future update after the game is released?

Do you have any special insider info on this Bojan? :P
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Re: Need for Speed First Impressions

Post by UltimateGTR »

The last NFS which satisfy me is back in 2006, when NFS Carbon is out, I really hope this will be the next one. For Pro Street, Shift, and Shift 2, I don't hate them but it's not a traditional NFS. I like NFS The Run if there's free roam but unfortunately not. I know the game industry massively change from 2006 but I wish there won't be too much DLCs this time.
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Re: Need for Speed First Impressions

Post by Bojan »

Sorry, but the question of manual transmission did not really come out. With an arcade driving model which it has, I'd be surprised if they ever add it.
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Re: Need for Speed First Impressions

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UltimateGTR wrote:The last NFS which satisfy me is back in 2006, when NFS Carbon is out, I really hope this will be the next one. For Pro Street, Shift, and Shift 2, I don't hate them but it's not a traditional NFS.
Neither is Carbon. In fact Pro Street and Shift are closer to "traditional" NFS games than Carbon or Underground ever were.
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Re: Need for Speed First Impressions

Post by Overreactman »

I personally am very much looking forward to this game. I always enjoyed the NFS games, but Underground is what hooked me on the series. I have always been a fan of tuner cars and games like Underground and Pro Street really filled that niche for me. If there are no Ferrari's in the game, or even any exotics at all, then I will be satisfied completely because I am likely only to design tuner cars.

That, and I want to see a game that increases the frequency of designs in the Showroom. Back when I first started on this site I couldn't go a day without seeing a bundle of new designs, but since Shift it has become increasingly rare. So it is my hope that this reboot will bring life back to that section as well.
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Re: Need for Speed First Impressions

Post by UltimateGTR »

Eurotrash wrote:
UltimateGTR wrote:The last NFS which satisfy me is back in 2006, when NFS Carbon is out, I really hope this will be the next one. For Pro Street, Shift, and Shift 2, I don't hate them but it's not a traditional NFS.
Neither is Carbon. In fact Pro Street and Shift are closer to "traditional" NFS games than Carbon or Underground ever were.
In my opinion NFS1 to NFS HP2 is style 1, NFS Undergound to Carbon is style 2, NFS Pro Street, Shift and Shift 2 is style 3.
I guess there are many fans of style 1 and 2, EA should give out the successor of each style each year, and two teams develop the successor of each style so a team has 2 years for one title.
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Re: Need for Speed First Impressions

Post by Eurotrash »

UltimateGTR wrote:
Eurotrash wrote: In my opinion NFS1 to NFS HP2 is style 1, NFS Undergound to Carbon is style 2, NFS Pro Street, Shift and Shift 2 is style 3.
I guess there are many fans of style 1 and 2, EA should give out the successor of each style each year, and two teams develop the successor of each style so a team has 2 years for one title.
Rivals, The Run, Most Wanted 2012 and this mess all had two years development time. Nuff said.

What EA needs to do is stop messing around with the Fast & Furious knock-offs and make a Need For Speed game, AKA Style 1. Criterion proved that there is still a market for it before EA ran them into the ground.
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