Gotta say I was looking forward to this one but the first reviews are a bummer.

IGN 5.9

Gamespot 5/10

Gamespot said it was "neither fast nor furious" which I think solidifies i'll just wait for the sonic forces reviews to come out. I mean....

This game is dead on arrival unfortunately.

Should be noted some of the issues seem to be due to having to grind missions for currency to use to get lootboxes which of course can be purchased for real money too.

There are only a couple reviews and small amount of chatter about the game right now so I'm not sure how bad that aspect is but its certainly something to be aware of as well.

I've been monitoring the reviews all day, and yeah I'm kinda bummed out, but we'll see. Reviews aren't always representative of my feelings/enjoyment of a game, and 73-75 on opencritic isn't that bad, but the loot box stuff sucks too. I was planning on picking this up on friday, because everything I've seen from trailers and let's play videos looked great, especially the visual customization, open world and pretty sizable car list for a need for speed.

I have such an itch to play a great arcade racer with customization and I only have a PS4 and a PC that can't handle Horizon 3. I played a ton of Driveclub and I love it but it's still not it. PS3 had a ton of good stuff, Midnight Club:LA especially, I miss those days. It sucks being an arcade racing fan on PS4 :(

RIP Need for Speed.

To be honest, I saw this coming from a mile away.

That E3 demo where they couldn't drive 5 feet without being interrupted by a cutscene gave me a bad feeling from the get-go.

The older Need for Speeds like Most Wanted and Carbon had stories, yes, but what EA seems to have forgotten is that those were mostly compliments to the driving instead of dictating it like in The Run and this.

Ultimately, the story's just a fun little side thing. When I buy a Need for Speed, all I really want to do is drive and go nuts. Ace that and you're golden.

And according to IGN, performance upgrades are hidden behind a randomized lootbox system. Because of freaking course they are!

WHAT is WRONG with these people?!

Oh, weird, I thought early impressions were positive from that early trial thing.

They don't got this.

I miss just being able to upgrade my car to take over territory by completing races which gives me more money to upgrade my car again. That's the only loop need for speed needs. It doesn't need a cutscene heavy story that keeps interrupting you. The story just needs to facilitate that previously mentioned loop.

Damn...........

So that's why there were no promotions or trailers. Well it means that we will get it for very cheap very soon.

I completely forgot about this game.

Having now being reminded of its existence I recall it being somewhat promising based off what was shown at E3

Ouch. This appears to be a bad day for new games that happen to focus on speed. First NFS Payback and also Sonic Forces isn't reviewing all that well (5/10 on Polygon).

Just finished watching Austin Walker play this on Waypoint, besides seeing him make the most Ugly Car ever :) the game looked boring, the whole Heist part (Fast and Furious feeling was there none of with these boring voices) is "blocked by having to finish diffrent trials like drifting and other stuff, before you can get to a heist mission, and then you have to earn enough points untill you can get to the next one. And the Voices damm they sound really bad, and not in a fun way.

Nope give me another Most Wanted thank you.

Still Looking forward to hopefull a Jeff QL of this boring game.

@mocbucket62: To be fair, 3D Sonic never reviews well anymore, so it's to be expected, especially after everyone got a huge helping of nostalgia after Mania. It's hard to gauge those games based on reviews after pretty much the entire gaming community decided 3D Sonic had no redeeming qualities.

Kind of amazed how much dedication EA keep giving the Need for Speed franchise, actually think they'd be better off making a new Burnout game at this point. That said, EA would probably screw up a new Burnout game unless they gave Criterion full freedom.

The game looks boring; police chase missions now look like they are just linear checkpoint-based time trial races in disguise. Even the Fast and Furious style story missions appear to do all of the interesting stuff solely in cutscenes. Plus, the upgrade system looks like a fucking mess.

I completely skipped the last NFS but I was very tempted to pick it up solely for the FMV & the cool look of the rain-slicked streets... this game does not even have that. It looks sterile.

I thought Rivals was really great and was hoping this would be a good follow up of “open world arcade racing” but doesn’t look like it. Might be good to pick up down the road on sale I suppose.

Christ, how hard is it to just make another Burnout game? That's what everyone really wants, right?

@nicksmi56: I mean, I wasn't expecting good reviews for Sonic Forces either. But I thought it was interesting that two games that seem to "specialize" in speed are getting lukewarm to poor receptions. Since I haven't seen/listened to the podcast, I'm wondering what Jeff thinks of Need for Speed Payback?

The 2015 game was on a good track to be a new Underground game, it only needed to fix some stuff but it could be done. Sadly, on this one, they stepped away from most of their ideas on 2015's game. I had a bad feeling about this one since the start, but I was hoping I would be wrong about it.

If you can find it for cheap I would say to give it a shot. The FMV is really dumb but they embrace it and don't take it too serious, the streets look beautiful at night in the rain and the cars also look damn good. The handling is kinda bad but with some time spent on the tweaks it gets better, the rubber-banding is atrocious (got better after some updates) and the always online means that the game continues even when you pause or when you crash. But if you can look past those flaws is kinda fun to go to it once in a while and just drive freely on the map, do a couple of races and costumize a car.

Man this series can't catch a break. At what point does EA just shitcan the whole franchise or some other extreme action? How long does this have to go on? At this point, it needs to be handled by a totally different dev/publisher to really reinvent this thing with a completely different vision. It needs sports cars, beautiful locales, and police chases. Not all this other garbage.

In my opinion, that means going back to when the series didn't suck. Hot Pursuit, High Stakes, and Porsche Unleashed was definitely the peak era for me. Although the old Most Wanted was like.. the best version of all this street racer non-sense, I much prefer the more classy approach of the old games. Classy sounds weird but not sure how to describe it. They were simple, fun, and clean.

But yea, my real curiosity here is how badly does this series have to perform before a drastic change is made?

Man...I'm bummed as fuck about this. The game had a strong showing at E3 and really grabbed my attention. Looks like I'll be giving this game a hard pass...

Haven't let game review scores get me down in years. Form all the reviews I've read and watched, most say it's a fun arcade racing game.

I get perfection would be...perfect. Though under no illusion that not everything will be like that - not everything can be a Nintendo game that all the hipster reviewer seem to wank over!

Still keen, bring it on!

Oh geez. Doesn't sound like a good time.

Not a great year for racing video games.

This is disappointing, I was ready for a decent, story based driving game. Looks like this isn't it.

Can't remember the last narrative driving game I enjoyed, one of the Midnight Club games maybe?

With the way games are going with micro transactions and such, I am not sure if there will ever be a new arcade racer that I enjoy as much as Burnout Paradise.

@whitegreyblack: The last game would've been awesome if I wasn't for always being online. I couldn't pause and some of the servers I lagged a lot, which never really happens to me, and there's nothing worse than going 100mph with server lag in a single player campaign.

@skinnersweet: The always-online requirement is what kept me from that last game. Unfortunately, NFS Payback has done away with the always-online part but lost all the other bits that made NFS 2015 look interesting (the tone, the FMV, the look and style).

Y'know, I've seen/read/heard some polarizing opinions about Need for Speed 2015, and I enjoyed the hell out of the game, more so than any racing game that came out since Hot Pursuit 2010, and I don't hold Burnout Paradise on a pedestal because it hasn't aged well for me. So, like with Destiny 2, this is going to be another case where I'm going to say "Fuck everyone's opinions", render my own opinion based strictly on what I'm seeing of the game, and maybe take the plunge for better or for worse.

At this point, I wonder if a resurrection of the Burnout franchise is a more attractive proposition to EA than another Need for Speed. Wishful thinking, of course.

That's twice now they've taken a year off with no dividends. At some point, the idea that NFS sells to a crowd more than the Burnout name is no longer apt. I can see them pulling the trigger on a Burnout Paradise remaster.