More stuff

Multiplayer

I was surprised at the addition of an in-game server browser for multiplayer. Everything from hosting to playing online is as easy as can be. Within seconds of loading the game up I can be running a race against my online brethren. Pings to servers we found weren’t that great, but since this is a racing game they don’t really need to be. We didn’t see too many people playing at the moment, but the few servers we did come across were generally nicely packed. The setup is fairly free form, you can pick what cars and tracks are allowed. We were saddened by the fact that you cannot play as the cop or even have traffic on the multiplayer side of things.

Leave me alone

Persistent they are

Nice sky

The tracks

This turned out to be really disappointing when it sunk in. After a few races I started to notice that the amount of unique tracks is rather limited in this game. While the tracks themselves have tons of forks in them, the scenery around them is the same. This technically keeps the amount of courses high, but in reality there are a rather limited number of tracks with roadblocks setup randomly to lead you to different paths. The few tracks that were made were nicely detailed though. For instance, the forest tracks have massive trees and off road areas that you can romp through. The city tracks have massive stretches of freeways with lots of onramps and detours that you can wander off into. The buildings and structures are probably the best-rendered items in the game. Approaching the bridges and overpasses is really quite a sight, as they seem to have the most amount of detail put into them. Kudos to the guys who did all that stuff!

Time to turn the tables

QUaint little town

Calling out the chopper

Cars

It’s all about the cars when it comes down to it. This is one area where Need For Speed has never lacked in. The variety is actually quite surprising, while not as broad and in depth as a game like Gran Turismo, for an arcade style game you do get everything from a Lotus to a McLaren F1 and just about everything in between. The handling is nowhere near realistic and neither are the physics. I think it’s safe to say that this wasn’t the goal at all for this game. The cartoon like feel of the cars is fun, but if you want something a bit more serious, stick to Porsche Unleashed.

Boom number 1

I guess 2 was enough

I have a buddy :)

The only thing we didn’t like about the cars was how the stats were displayed. Not many of us know the differences in performance between the various Ferraris or Porsches. We know they are fast and all handle fairly well. But to actually tell the difference between them would be hard if you haven’t had direct experience, that and the already cartoon-like handling is a poor judge of what car you might want for a particular track. If they’d just added some simple bar graphs for performance and handling I’d have been happy. Instead, in a somewhat cursory manner, they have some random voiceover spout off a few performance figures.