Need For Speed: The Killer Cycle And The Racing Genre 

"But there's also the theme tunes to CSI:Miami and CSI:NY" When people call those tracks "CSI theme tunes" I think it's funny because it makes me imagine The Who playing at a concert in the 70's and saying "This is one of our current chart topping songs, and reached #2 in the U.S and #6 in the U.K, our dream is that it will decades from now, be used in a crime drama" for the songs that were eventually used in CSI.

I like how you pretend The Run just doesn't exist.

the worst example of the rubber-banding in NFS 2015 is the time trial races where you have to get the fastest lap time. In those events, actually trying to drive fast causes the ai to rubberband and achieve times that are legit impossible to beat, the only real way to win those events is to drive slowly so that the ai rubberbands backwards. Once the curtain is lifted, so to speak, you realise that the best way to win basically every event in the game is so drive badly and let the ai rubberband back to you. The game becomes about abusing the ai instead of driving well, that's why the game is an utter failure in my eyes

"African style plains..." *Shows American style desert...

2012 Most Wanted is more accurately Criterion vision to combine the-never-come Burnout Paradise sequel, with NFS Most Wanted reboot. On other hand you can find on youtube how 2012 MW should be. It's not purposely to become like Hot Pursuit, it's want to make something like NFS payback. With story like old MW. It's not pure Criterion fault, that's because EA is too greedy

My only contradiction with the videos entirety is that you kept blaming criterion for the poor job of mw2, not ea. if you watch any of the beta build and removed features analysis videos of those who have datamined the coding of the game, you'll see that criterion was originally trying to make a game true to the original with their own flavour. Cooldown spots, a story, weapons, more cars, an extra area to the map which never made he game. It was even going to be call Most wanted 2 based on the original boxarts for the game. Basically, what I'm trying to say is, criterion tried to spend 2 years making a proper game, and EA made them walk the plank for a game they wanted.

Excellent vid. Well worth watching. And good point about physics needing to match the map, Hot Pursuit 2010 nailed this. Love that game :)

"this game might have been made by tod howard, because everything just works,accept that's true so maybe not." 1:33 oh damn, shots fired ^^

This video made me buy Hot Pursuit... and _holy mother of god,_ I can't thank you enough. *THANK YOU.* You really weren't exaggerating - that game is just arcade racing design _precision._ They _knew_ what they were freakin' _doing,_ they just _did._ The physics, the road design, the progression, the UI, the style and atmosphere - the _everything! _*_Geez!_* Again, can't thank you enough! And as a not-so-side note, amazing video! Subbed just recently, and I'm _very glad_ I did!

I thought this was a 20 min video, I just noticed I watched an almost hour long video. thats how good this video was, gg subbed

Midnight Club L.A. had a nice mix of fun arcade drift physics, story progression, nice city map, and a good traffic system with options for traffic density.

As someone who's grown up playing racing games, way back in the SNES days with Top Gear 3000 and the like, Need For Speed died for me after Blackbox got shafted. I started with Porsche Unleashed and played each of them with dedication up to ProStreet. ProStreet was their chance to change the formula, to adapt with the times. To court Gran Turismo and Forza fans with the ability to become a near sim while still maintaining the ridiculous customization there since Underground. Instead EA pigeonholed the game to maintain the arcade-y aspect and forced Blackbox to scramble and finish up the troubled Undercover, which turned out to be a bomb. They looked at their own abuse of the studio and decided that it was Blackbox's fault and ripped the series away from them after nine years of being the core developers. When Criterion took over it became too much like Burnout and less like Need For Speed. The massive amount of customization with things like Autosculpt was gone, the overworld events were taken out for a long time, and the climbing and plateauing that had been there since Hot Pursuit II (the 2002 one) was dead. It meant you had no reason to go for new cars, no reason to do anything other than jump from race to race, and no feeling of having a resting point where you could continue later. The games bored you and wore you out. Need For Speed was supposed to rectify that, but Ghost Games sucks at game feel and they repeat too many of the problems while trying and failing miserably to emulate the Blackbox games. Mia, Roger, and Razor were by no means anything more than one dimensional characters. But they didn't get annoying and provided enough of a story to make you feel like you wanted to get your BMW M3 GTR back, even if by that point you had a hilariously dolled up Fiat Punto that could run circles around it. I can't even sit through video footage of the idiots in Need For Speed or Payback because I want to hurt them to shut them up. And compared to Underground II, Most Wanted, and Carbon, the much touted "customization" was like a joke they tried to pass off as a serious gift. Need For Speed's lack of parts meant you never really felt like messing with a car because it was a coin toss if you could do anything, and Payback made it a lottery that robbed you of any feeling of reward for unlocking something. Need For Speed as a series has been dead to me for ten years now, and it won't come back to life any time soon.

I just want to say this... Keep doing what you doing. It's awesome! Great work man!

Very well made video! Thank you so much for making it and sharing. I really loved it.

I found this channel last night, and goddamn. This is some quality content.

Damn dude, it actually took you a while to write all that NFS formula down and then put all that script into a nearly 1 hour long video without boring me. Nice job, you earned another sub Cx. Keep up the good work 💪🏽.

Wow. Your video went so in depth, I actually watched the entire thing. You explained everything so well, and the physics matching the map never struck me before. I loved Hot Pursuit 2010 and still do and I always wondered how the physics were so good in that game but then turned out to be shit in the others despite having the same physics. Well done, you earned yourself a sub! 🙌🙌🙌

Your writing and analysis are really good! I have never seen a video on NFS series like this!

I never thought I needed a NFS retrospective video until now, you just got yourself a new subscriber, I really hope you decide to talk about the older NFS games in the future

I have watched this video from start to finish and i liked every bit of it, very nice video.

God damn, this video is a masterpiece - review. You have done an awesome job on properly addressing your points in order, you kept the general flow of topic and thought flawlessly, and even managed to snag in those few jokes here and there. This here is the best review, of anything, i have ever seen.

A very well thought out profile on some of the modern "NFS" games, as a long time huge fan of the series who has & have played every console game in the series I greatly appreciated your take on a few of them. I personally love "NFS The Run" & am surprised you didn't address it & a few other contemporary installments in the series which would have been good to compare to those mentioned. I might have to do a in-depth rant on the better 7th & 8th gen "NFS" games as your profile here is intriguing & inspiring my friend.

Some great analysis here.

Good vid, Whitelight. My personal favorite Need for Speed game is High Stakes. My first racing game in general, and on PC. It had everything - Career Mode, Hot Pursuit, and just good ol Free Roam. I spent hours on all the tracks just driving around and listening to the soundtrack. It was like heaven for me. I miss that one, and wish it was remastered. But, knowing the racing game genre now, I wouldn't trust EA or any sort of publisher to make a remastered version of High Stakes.

As far as traffic in racing games goes, I think Burnout Revenge did it really well. You could shunt traffic cars like missiles if they weren't driving right at you. Hell, there was an entire game mode centered around wrecking traffic cars, and I loved it. Yeah, it was hilariously arcade and impossible but it was fun as all get out. And yes, I too uninstalled Paradise after I had been hit by the Griswalds station wagon for the 500th time during one of the late game burning routes.

nfs should go back to its 2003-2008 physics and driving

This is the best video ever. Thanks mate

its half 1 o'clock in the night.Imma gonnna come back next morning and talk something sensible about you and the video.Greetings from Estonia

I was pleasantly surprised with hot pursuit, especially with the racer's AI, being able to drift those corners so well.. at one point I felt like I was going up against actual humans. The only thing I disliked were those "game moment" cameras. They existed in Most Wanted as well, but you had the option to simply turn them off.. but not on HP for some reason.

For me, one of the things that you don't understand about NFS is that Hot Pursuit, MW 2012 and Rivals fucked up the franchise. These games are drifting simulators. It might be fun for a couple of hours, and I won't say I didn't enjoy playing HP, but it's just a car on rails and the world itself it's pretty much dead. In previous games you had more of an "accurate" driving experience, without having to drift everywhere, or didn't drift at all. Also, not having a story what so ever made it kinda weird, coming from the Underground games, Carbon and even Pro Street, that even though it was a massive change in setting, it had the feeling of progression and story that the previous games had. This, for me at least, gives no point for what you'd call "progression" (that it's practically non existant in MW 2012). And a thing that I'd like to point out is that, as you said, you mostly played Forza (lol). What kind of story does that have? It's just racing to win cars that are easily given to you, at least on the latest games. That comes also to personal reference, but as for a franchise such as NFS, story plays a big part on it. HP, MW 2012 are just driving simulators, it doesn't matter if you have good physics or map design. For that I'd just play, idk, BeamNG driving or something like that. Obviously, this is my opinion, but you also have to consider the points that I had previously written.

Need for Speed: Rivals was actually a very good game honestly, I loved it.

interestingly i liked most wanted the most out of the three...

Great and detailed analysis, I played hot pursuit (after the original most wanted), and enjoyed it like you said.

This is amazing. A person who can express the flaws of NFS MW12 and explain them in a manner which is coherent and understandable. I really enjoyed the game and get irritated by blithering idiots saying its bad 'just cuz'. This has been a really refreshing video.

I played NFS 2010 when i was young and i loved it I'm kinda upset that no other game to me was able to beat it so you can i say i really enjoyed it so when you describe NFS Hot pursuit 2010 I'm like he just described what i love in that game when before i couldn't describe why i loved it also i wish they would add pursuit equipment on the newer games would make the cops more fun. So thanks for the video man i mean it.

"Rivals feels like a demo" fun fact, it was one of the early titles when the new-gen had released (ps4 / xbox one), and most of the sales where due to that. So calling it a tech demo isn't far fetched.

"I couldn't play any racer without traffic" I mean - obviously unless it's a game centered around professional racing, like GRID or DiRT. Traffic would be plenty weird in those games. x)

UG2 and MW2005 are the best 2 need for speeds.

The video touches in quite a bit, but it also fails to note that Criterion didn't do Rivals. Rivals was Ghost's first shot at a Need for Speed title. The 2015 reboot was their second. They picked up the resources from Criterion, thus utilizing the physics engine, but from what I recall from news at the time, Rivals was not a Criterion game.

47:16 ayyyy that’s my event :D

First of all, great video! Always nice to hear someones opinion when its based on facts and experience. And I can cleary see your points, BUT (that was pretty obvious ik) I have to defend both Most Wanted and 2015 from some critique. Personally I loved Most Wanted, maybe cos it was my first NFS (yeah im 17 leave me alone ^^) or because I loved searching those billboards (google translate says thats the right word, sounds wrong but whatever, those ad boards basically). Call me crazy, I found every single one. And since I basically always take my favorite car - good old gallardo - I never really saw a point in grinding speed points. I just spent 20 hours or so searching my boards. And it was quite fun. Idk for me it was pretty enjoyable. But I can understand that people who search for races would hate Most Wanted, cos I know from all the races I done, they were pretty bad, cos like you mentioned the cars are way to "slow" to do well in a city. But you dont have that problem in free roam. So yeah I liked it, but I can totally understand your points. Now to 2015. I only played it a month, cos I bought myself Origin Access (or whatever it gets called) for a month to try out some new games, without giving EA hunreds of €'s just to test shit. I have to say, I never had ANY kind of problems with the performance, no out of map, no crash, no desync. (playtime of 20 hours or so) And since I own a Xbox One controller I never even noticed the PC controls are just not logical in any way. Srsly Left right? xD Whatever besides the more than cringy cut scenes it is the best NFS for me. Still dont forget I only played Most Wanted, Rivals, 2015 & Payback (I regret the 60 bucks every day.) But again, I can totally see your points, and I totally hope that if a new NFS comes, it will be good if not better than the last entrys. Also its a shame that Forza is Xbox exclusive. (Oh PC specs cos I can 100% say that with my PC I never had any problems running a single one of these games:) I7 7700K (bit OC) GTX 1060 6GB (bit OC) 8GB DDR4 Ram (2400MhZ) Gigabyte B250M-D3H (mainboard, sucks at OC, just didnt read careful enough when I bought it lol)

35:50 bold statement there knowing there is original most wanted and undergrad.

"The stig's not part of a dead show cousin" NOOOOO the memories...

What i despised about Most Wanted II was: "Crashed"

Carbon still my most favorite, second close being Underground 2 by FAR.

Be fair to Paradise, the racing had no set route, optimal routes sure, but you got to pick how you wanted to tackle each race. And to help you keep your eyes on the road, the car flashes the indicator any time theres a suggested turn coming up

17:35 for those who wanna know what the song is, its "I love it" by Icona Pop

Everything you've said you wanted seems to be represented in NFS Heat. Day vs night bringing pure tracks vs traffic and cops. There's a fun physics engine tweakable for in-city, high speed, drift, and off-road. And it has lots of "make them yourself" shortcuts depending on how you've tweaked you car. Progression seems to be pretty good to me, but not car-class balanced like older NFS games. What do you think?

I spent a lot of my time on most wanted playing multiplayer, ALOT. And some of my best memories come from here and one of my favorite need for speed titles

I would actually like to hear what you think about older games like Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition Remix. I think that game is where I've spent the most time in any single racing game. The cars were fun, customization was great, it had lots of content with it's multiple diverse cities, the courses were mostly intuitive in terms of where to go and there were lots of shortcuts.

8:25 I completely agree with all of NFS 2012's problems you pointed out. While I have had fun playing it, these issues are really annoying. I'm not much of a racing game enthusiast so I could stomach them to a degree if the crash cam didn't exist. My god its one of the most annoying "features" I've seen, and sometimes when it triggers I doesn't feel like im going that fast. Its insta-killing people in Halo CE by driving 2mph all over again.

personally I loved most wanted 2012 the sharp city corners and flowing highways made the game better in my eyes.it made me have to think hard about where i should place my car..and because of the tight city corners it made racing online very exhilarating and thrilling for me and my friends.we all ended up racing closly and being hyper aware of the traffic and obsticals, trying our very best to out-do each other while our hearts where racing.the game looked nice and I didn't mind or care too much for the campaign but I still put many ours into the game..also just a side note, you mentioned avoiding traffic at high speeds was an issue but personally I didn't find that to be a problem and neither did the many people I played with we simply looked far ahead at the road, ,saw the car, tapped the brakes, and swerved.then again I was one of the top racers online...so maybe that has something to do with it

I'm so happy u pronounced Gallardo the way its supposed to be pronounced. Most people who claim themselves as car guys don't even know how to pronounce the name of an iconic exotic

Another great example of my "videogames have devolved somehow" case, this new Hot Pursuit. It's a game from 2010, but update it in 4k/60fps with modern visual candy and it would pass as a new game from todays time. Make it really shiny and it could even pass as a PS5 Release Title...a PS3 Game...from 2010... To me, it's beyond crazy how low consumer expectations of products they pay a lot of money for have become.

Really good video, i watched the whole thing. I really wanted to know if you've played Midnight Club L.A, and if so, did you like it? Could you review it ? It's my favourite arcade racing game with hot pursuit, paradise, horizon 1, most wanted, grid and flatout2

Also very good video, you gain a sub

I loved how you explained game physics to such great depths. I have played both Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted, and though I never finished either of them, I subconsciously appreciated the learning curve and progression of Hot Pursuit. It made me feel comfortable, then took it up a notch, while increasing the reward. Sure, the physics changed, but not as much to call it an inconvenience. On the contrary, when I picked up Most Wanted, I felt as if I was the stupidest noob out there, unable to execute simple turns, and driving mechanics around that time, in general, were leaving their arcade like feel, which pulled me away from the game, instead of creating an immersive experience. One does ultimately manage to get a gold medal on those dreaded McLaren and Buggati level, but what for? The rewards feel so underwhelming and insignificant. Plus at times, the scalability of the game makes absolutely no sense at all. And my God the rubber banding is what made me give up on the game completely. I used to play it with my friend and both of us hated the game for its rubber banding.

If you want an example of a game with a great traffic system, NFS Most Wanted 2005 does it brilliantly. Hitting into traffic does slow you down and is something to be avoided, but there are no crash cutscenes and you can jump back into action without losing all of your speed. It feels like the perfect balance between easy and frustrating, just enough to have consequences but not enough to cost you the entire race

I’m probably the only person on planet earth that enjoyed the 2015 campaign.

Nfs the run : am i a f*ckin' joke to you ?!?

For me, Hot Pursuit's time-trial and rapid response missions feel like filler. I don't want to do them nor do they give me any sense of accomplishment, and I finished about 2 of them before losing my patience and just giving up with those events. I still got an "endgame" message, but there's definitely an empty space in the mission lineup that could've been filled with an exciting police chase or heart-stoppingly close race. Although, all of your other points I completely agree with.

I like burnout revenge style traffic, cars just fly out of the way when you hit them from behind

finallly someone has acknowledged the greatness of hot pursuit. most wanted was okay, and everything after that was terrible

I get so bored watching a 5 min video but somehow I finished watching your 50 min video😅

W-S and Left-Right configuration is brilliant, it's a lot easier to play, especially with brake to drift handling model.

NFS: Hot pursuit was my first xbox 360 game, beated it like 5 times, loved it sooo much!

Iceman "I've been asleep for 55 minutes. I've been asleep for 55 minutes and I had one dream" Ray Ray "at least you had one"

Good video, finally someone stands up and say nfs 2010 is a good game

2012’s “Most Wanted” is only wanted for identity theft. Yea, I know I’m not funny

You could always get a throwback and try the actual Hot Pursuit 2. It’s a lot more arcadey and the cars are light, rather than heavy.

See the main problem isn’t how the game plays or does current game modes or ways the cars handle, the biggest problem with every racing game out rn is they are all the most boring games you can play rn, I could probably enjoy playing chess with more excitement, simply because no racing game, not a sim racer, not a “arcade” racer is fun to play, it’s always “grind to get money/ experience to get new car to grind, and then end up getting literally nothing at the end”. There is nothing a single racing game that isn’t burnout or midnight club is fun in any fashion. I could dream all I want to drive the newest Bugatti, pagani, or specially a very rare and specific version of a car, but if the second I unlock it, I can’t customize it, make it my own as the same way I would if i could own it in real life, and even after the idea that I can’t customize it, leaving the garage, have literally nothing to do but race from one point to the next, there is no single reason for me to play a racing game, nothing, no crazy fast sense of speed like burnout, no crazy soundtracks like burnout or midnight club, no crazy customization like mid night, no incredibly unique map that feels like as fun as a kid entering a juggle gym for the first time, I want to play a racing game that have a car that is so fast, looks so unique, and drives like how I have a hot wheels set, that I’m driving and crazy like it’s a fucking Michael bay flick. No racing games do that anymore, and especially never do it right.

Man, in Rivals it would've been so cool if you showed up as a racer on the minimap, and could join races in UC cop cars, until you flipped your lights. It would've given the UC cop cars a really interesting purpose in the game.

I have to disagree with a few points about Most Wanted, having played it again recently. The outcomes and the time it takes to escape is definitely not random - it requires skill (yes) and smart driving. Trying to gun it on confined routes is not gonna work. Secondly: not having big flashing signs constricting the route and telling you which way to go was never really an issue during a race. I knew where to go 99% of the time. Glancing (yes, glancing) at the minimap for not even half a second wasn't an issue either.

there is something about most wanted 2005 that I'm always drawn back to , the story , the characters . ones like Razor , Cross , and Mia . It almost feels like I'm right there , racing to get my ride back from razor who screwed me over , or Rog sending me texts and voice messages , giving me help and advice on taking out other blacklist racers . winning races in that game plus taking on the cops it feels like an adrenaline rush and a good one . Another thing is the mods , say if you don't like a car that's already in the game , swap it with something else like a classic 69 dodge charger r/t or a 56 Chevy belair or a 87 pontiac firebird transam . when I'm in the fictional city of rockport it feels alive and awesome to drive in . say you don't like the soundtrack , swap that out with your own songs to have the best of both worlds , a good racing game with classic songs of your own choice . the same can be said for Carbon great game and great cars . Same for Underground 2 and Underground . I highly doubt Payback will impress me , same with 2015 or even Rivals , I tolerated 2010's Hot pursuit and put up with it but I could have swapped out the soundtrack with something of my own same with the cars , no hot rods .

The huge problem with Criterion racers is not the traffic per se, but the maps. Dense Traffic works well on straight roads, to the point where you can even drive between lanes, or on corners where you can stick to walls to sneak between cars and road borders. However. Criterion, for whatever reason, puts non-transparent map restrictions on intersections while allowing the traffic to pass through, discouraging sticking to them.The worst offenders though are the weird spaces in road borders, punishing you for sticking to them to avoid traffic. During drifting through a corner, when you pretty much have no other choice. I think most people will remember a certain city map from Burnout Dominator with 3 intersections in a 100 meter stretch, with the road itself wiggling about. You had to simply pray you won't hit anything when passing it at 200mph.

I love that Burnout Paradise was the comparison for Most Wanted 2012; my friends and I call it Need for Speed: Burnout. That game alone caused me to say 'Fuck Need For Speed, and Fuck Criterion' from the day it I first played it (shortly after release, because I was sold on the idea of a remake of NFS:MW'08, which was awesome)

There is always action in Rivals and the feeling of speed is the best. Even after 10 years!

You're totally right about all the Need For Speed games you talked about, but outside of those games it's clear you really don't know all that much. 9/10

Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2 (also known as Kaido Battle 3 : Touge No Densetsu), a game that's so underrated barely anyone would even brought it up to the racing games discussion, it features real-life Japanese roads like Hakone, Haruna (better known as Akina), Akagi, and even Hokkaido rally, the game's drift mechanics we're akin to that Gran Turismo, coupled that hitting wall stops you from earning points until next corner, making it quite hard especially if you're a beginner to GT style drifting, it also had roads on each sections on every track at occasion, so you wanted to strategically equipping tires, or for worse, changing your driving style just so you to be able to going past through "under construction" sections at one piece, because that was essential once you reached Hokkaido, it was one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had in racing games in a long time PS; you should give that game (or the TXR/Shutoku Battle series in general, including the Racing Battle C1 thanks to the game never actually see any overseas release) a chance just so you'd be able to knew most of the Rival' backgrounds even further

Nobody even mentions The Run... damn, feels like only a few loved a mechanics of the game.

19:10 "there is no story in rivals" you gotta be shitting me, right?

The Dirt series, Dirt Rally in particular, is great on PC. Assetto Corsa is great as well. Also, PC has the definitive version of Project CARS.

I really liked the physics in NFSMW'12. You really had to concentrate to win the races. (especially the Most Wanted ones)

You see, when you say "hot pursuit", I think of NFS: Hot Pursuit 3 on PC; not this.

The track indicator thing seems to have been put in to compensate for the disappearing road.

You forgot about Rivals's amazing soundtrack

God got pursuit was my child. I fell in love with the cop career. I really miss games where you can play as police. I have no idea why but I played that so much just because of the Crown Victoria Interceptor and all I did was free drive and make my own scenario. I loved the fact you could switch the car off, change from Code 2 to Code 3 with the sirens, and turn the headlights on and off. I wasn't a fan of rivals because there was no police cars you actually saw driving around in irl expect for the charger.

Now I want you to talk about the original Most Wanted. It's one of my favourite games of all times.

Please make a list of your favorite songs from NFS Most Wanted 2012

Okay, so talking about Need For Speeds from Hot Pursuit but skipping The Run? Okay. I don't know the reason, but two reasons for you to play that game are:- 1. It's short. 2. The traffic, which was probably mentioned by Moses B in his The Run review. Love your content, so would be nice to know your thoughts on the older Need For Speeds, especially Black Box ones. Anyways, great work. I have a feeling you'll do Unbound but still won't do older titles.

Anybody here feels that satisfaction when you nail that 'Perfect Moment' in NFS 2015?

Oh. Never thought why do i like heat so much better than rivals. Alltho rivals, for me, is a fine game. Good video Btw.

A interesting video about the 3 Criterion NFS games. I only played Hot pursuit and Most wanted of Criterion versions of those games and yet liked MW a lot more, spend over 800 hours on MW (PS3 for most of it, PC, and Vita) and now slowing down on the game since I unlocked everything besides the DLC content. I can say that I only struggle with the races at the first 5 hours with the game due to the physics and the map handle. But as I go on I just got better with the races and know every inch of the city, races, physics and how they work. I do agree that the physics are much suited in wider spaces, there was a lot of blind corners in the game with traffic... Why is there so much traffic? I know it's a city but damn, it's not like the Forza Horizon series. Hot prusuit is the clear winner but Most wanted is where I like the most. As for Rivals, I never played it so I have no answers to it. And yes, I play many racing games. Have you ever herd of Daytona USA 1&2?

I justwant to correct u on one place Burnout paradise's map is way bigger than NFS rivals and I really mean way bigger it can be still counted as one of the biggest open world maps till date otherwise nice video👌👍

yea, I played NFS 4 back way back. NFS was car gamer's "NHL" or "FIFA", with yearly updates. That kills series with time, since all time and effort and resources both publisher and studio, go to marketing every year or even twice a year and those conventions. No time for regular daily (development) work.

I agree with everything you say about Most Wanted. Although I need to mention that Criterion spent more than an year to make a proper Most Wanted sequel with a proper story and their own materials from Hot Pursuit. You can even find an early build beta version of the game that looks exactly like OG MW (except the atmosphere). That was EA who teared all things apart and rushed Criterion to make a Burnout knock-off. Criterion actually knows how to make a good racing game. It is EA that doesn't know. Actually they don't care. Also I think Rivals is also a solid game as nearly as Hot Pursuit. I never found the physics system to be hard to use in the map. Because I haven't had any accidents more than about 8-10 times in this game. It's my second favorite NFS game after HP. Cop AI is the best thing I like in that game.

The fact that Honda is in this game is a breakthrough in general. Honda doesn't like their cars in games with cops/sense of anything illegal because they want to distance themselves from that image. This is the first game to feature Honda and Cops officially since the fast and the furious incident.

I preferred Most Wanted to Hot Pursuit. The Hot Pursuit open road maps got stale after a few races. Once I adjusted to the city maps were fun and challenging. The ambush events were "total shit show". Sometimes you could fail an ambush for hours, but randomly get a gold in that same event by luck

liked the video when u mentioned the traffic being unaceptable.

Hello there, devil's advocate here! I really liked your vid, it has a lot of good commentary on modern Need for Speed games. But I can't agree with your critique of NfS MW 2012. I should state at beginning, that it's my favorite NfS game to date. It may be due to fact, it was one of my first Xbox 360 games (I was late to consoles tbh), but I think I should state that, cause for many people it may be sign of bias. First of all physics. I can't help but feel, that you are really dishonest here. It may be personal feel, but I played shitload of both HP 2010 and MW 2012 (both games maxxed out), and both of those games are fundamentaly different in handling feel. Cars in MW2012 are much more eager to turn normally, and if you manage to control your drift, you can move very fluently around the city. And the design of Fairhaven is honestly, the best one in whole franchise (there, I said it), with huge chunks of zones where you can move fluidly from place to place, from one jump to the other, like in one huge gymkhana video, and generally good street placement. The city makes sense both from perspective of city design, but also from perspective of racing map. And while, there is huge feel of HP 2010 in the physics, it's fixed enough, to be something, honestly much better, a perfect mix between this stiffness of HP, and ability to move in corners. It moves fluently into another topic - police, and the chase missions you describe as random. I can't really agree though, why there is still element of randomness, it doesnt play huge factor in the game itself. The map design, with a lot of hidden alleys should give the hint, that it's not about outrunning the cops, but rather, moving around your surroundings in the way to fool them. If you manage to do that - you can get yourself easy win. Combined with natural flow of the city movement, you can see the feel Criterion went on, with this game. Think about it like, Stunts mode from Burnout Paradise, with someone chasing you. That being said, I have to agree with you, about progression system. While, I managed to max the game out, and really enjoyed it, It was more about the challenges I was giving myself. And here lies the problem I think. I see MW 2012 as sort of Racing Sandbox, not just open world. You have all the toys in the middle of the field, but you have to find out the way, that will be best to use them. Also there was story in Rivals. It's more interesting when you play as cops though... That being said, I still loved your vid. Especially insight in the part about Rivals, I can't help but find it very helpful, since I'm working on racing game myself. Would love to see some more analysis of NfS franchise, before Criterion took over, that would be interesting sight into downfall, which was Black Box era...