izigame.me

As excited as I was for this game, I'm genuinely disappointed.
It genuinely feels like another "Need For Speed Heat" while somehow managing to be worse.
I was already not feeling the Toon-style graphics from the teasers, but was willing to look past it given the statement the developers made about being able to disable them (by the way you can't.. you can only tone them down).
The story is just terrible even with there barely being much of one. Aside from the random dialog between the Main Character and the "Garage owner" there isn't much to look forward to. Completing the story leaves you with a few unanswered questions with several "key characters" being only mentioned and never introduced.. a lot of missed opportunities there.
Their handling model also seems to have been downgraded making drift cars extremely difficult to use and for the most part completely useless outside of events. Avoid driving them in free roam if you have a heat level higher than 2. The only way to mitigate the inconsistency of randomly entering drifts when not intending to is to build grippy AWD cars as even max grip RWD seem to completely spin and/or develop a mind of their own and steer you in a completely different direction than intended. Overall, once you start messing around with cars in the S+ tier, around the 400+ performance index, you'll find yourself with one of two options when attempting to take the higher speed corners the races force you to take: Either slow down by a large margin to fight the terrible under-steer or risk it all by testing your odds at pulling off a micro-drift. Trying to race any RWD cars outside of the lower performance tiers, like A+ or lower, is incredibly slow due to either having to slowly slide around every corner or from suffering serious speed penalties from attempting to make proper entries and exits using the apex. DO NOT use drift tires for drift events, you'll have a substantially better time just using upgraded versions of the standard tires, which honestly doesn't make sense.
The customization is exactly the same as before (being able to remove bumpers on a few cars being the only exception here) which is very misleading if you have been following the development updates and content teasers pre-launch. Extremely modified cars, like the Nissan 240SX shown in small videos and screenshots can't actually be modified at all with the exception of wheels,tires, and brakes. They're pre-made bodykits and not at all an example of any new vehicle customization opportunities. Any additional cars added that weren't available in the previous title have "decent" customization in the form of extremely outlandish body kits that are, at least in my opinion, ugly (an example here would be the Dodge Charger Hellcat). The wheel selection seems to have been thinned out, you still can't adjust the wheel width or the suspension track width for whatever reason which makes certain vehicles, like the new Lamborghini Countach, just look ridiculous with certain wheels as they appear much thinner than the factory wheels. Some vehicles, like the Ferrari F40 and VW MK1 GTI, have clipping on the fenders from lowering the car and simultaneously adding bagged suspension.
The races themselves feel roughly the same with the exception of the new "Takeover" mode which feels like it's just been ripped from the DLC mode added in "Need for Speed Payback". The same "Risk & Reward" system from night races in Heat is still present, but the "Reward" portion feels like it's been removed entirely seeing as there is barely a benefit from attempting to do as many races as possible in one night given that there is no longer a reward multiplier for the heat level. The side bets function seems interesting and it's definitely welcomed, but don't expect much from it as you can't seem to increase or decrease the amount bet, they're all set based on the performance index of the opponent's vehicle in comparison to yours.
The multiplayer has it's own separate "Campaign", if you can call it that, there is no actual story to follow. You simply race other players on the same map as the offline campaign there are no cops or time-of-day progression (other than in some races). Cars are unlocked through lengthy challenges rather than campaign progression like in the single player, so you can look forward to a lot of grinding should you want to unlock anything.
The graphics themselves look perfectly fine for me, but this will not be the same for everyone as I assume not everyone is playing with a RTX 3090 or better, but with 4K Ultra settings the only issues I have seen are some frame rate drops depending on a combination of weather conditions, driving through the dense downtown city areas, and lots of special effects from the cars and those of other racers. Small update here, most every race I've done downtown has caused major lag spikes (I have verified it is not my PC) making online racing atrocious.
Your Bank/Cash values along with most other stats seem to be server sided, but the volatile money before reaching your safe-house from single-player races and vehicles prices from buying and/or selling can be modified causing some other PC players to pick up a huge advantage over console players at the start of the game.
In an attempt not to be overly negative I will add that the Soundtrack is the most refreshing part of this new NFS title. They've always done a good job of incorporating a lot of artists that may not be as "mainstream" as others, but they went above and beyond in an attempt to add as many artists from varying cultures and backgrounds as possible. It doesn't feel forced, like some sort of an scheme to capture a larger audience, it genuinely fits perfectly with the overall feel and setting of the game.
I'm sure there is quite a bit more that I am missing, but I still have more exploring to do so I'll make adjustments to my review later should I find anything else.
All in All I'll give it a 5/10 for no other reason than it's not unplayable, there just wasn't any worthwhile differences to look forward to. One of the biggest drawbacks in my opinion being the handling model as drifting around corners seems to be extremely inconsistent and risky compared to previous titles like NFS 2015 which did a great job of making the transitions substantially more fluid. NOTE: The NFS Most Wanted M3 GTR is currently locked behind an EA Play subscription paywall, as if charging ~17% more than the average price of a AAA game wasn't bad enough.
TL;DR - Save your money. Wait for a significant discount. Just play NFS Heat with the much needed UNITE mod if you want a similar and better experience than what this game currently offers.