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It makes me angry that the most liked comment (so far) praising this hilariously-written and perfectly-delivered line does so with the most boring, overused, unfunny meme in existence. And you didn’t even use it correctly. And is only made worse by the most liked reply being another overused, unfunny, copy/paste Morbius meme.
@@MX-ul5ps They were great as an independent studio, the Burnout franchise is a timeless classic, not to mention the tremendous content in Burnout Paradise (expanded map, motorbikes...) I'd blame EA rather than the studios within it.
Whitelights retrospectives are so strangely unique, his script is poetic in nature (the arkham city one especially). I cant quite describe it, but its fantastic.
It would have also been cool to have different garage designs given that you unlock hideouts from certain characters, but instead they all look like Rydells.
I noticed how older Ghost games mostly specially Payback is more alive with how it has more Ai in the city and highways and when there is a race there is park cars and people near the area waiting for the race to start...it's a shame that Unbound doesn't even try
As someone who recently went to chicago, i like the map tbh If i could make it better i would add more cars and maybe the ability to see racers from your crew or other crews on the street and be able to seamlessly street race them, upon other details around the map
Indeed He can. These Scripts are truly magnificient in many Ways. As a writer myself I find this to be one of the Most enjoyable Things about His Content.
I cant tell if its more painful to play a bad game, or to play game so dang close to greatness. I cannot wait for a racer to come out that just gets most everything right.
Id say the latter. For the reason that a bad game will just disappoint you once and then you can leave. A game on the cusp of greatness keeps teasing it's imaginary potential and will keep living rent free in your head.
@@cyberboyf13 free to play need for speed game with one city where you unlock new parts for your car until you are able to buy a better one for hard earned cash, with multiplayer being open serverses with many people like in nfs world, but the game expands on itself with new cities and cars with a story that progresses indefinitely
My problem with NFS is that you could pretty much take any of them since HP10 and say "it could've been great", but they all had decisions that just defy sheer common sense, either by Criterion/Ghost themselves, or EA interfering.
"So play it and wait for 3 more years in the painfully familiar way that Need for Speed Will Truly find itself again" - This just got me teared up.. Might as well be waiting for my whole life. But I will if I get to live the life of early 2000s in NFS again.
The core gameplay of street racing was actually good in Heat and Unbound but they all lacking the same things; wacky story and also the sense of progression. Climbing through the blacklist and/or unlocking new region, new cars and parts is what Underground 2 and MW 2005 does much better. Hell, even random street racers with their cars roaming around in Underground 2 was better at makes the game more lively than just putting actual npcs in Unbound.
They need a clear vision and not just keep half assing _potentially_ great vibes and atmosphere that is brought down by lack of commitment. It's the popular thing to do to praise Blackbox NFS, but one thing that they constantly nails is a focused and clear direction. UG is the quintessential fast and furious experience in videogame form, MW'05 is pure rebellious spirit and edge, Carbon have impeccable art direction with the duality of high energy neon night city and high thrill canyon, ProStreet is still the best trackday racer boy simulator with atmosphere to match (and it was a risk to fully commit to such a vision, but it's heart is unquestionable), UC and The Run are shameless schlocky hollywood movies experience but their identity is clear and uncompromised.
@Shirayone It's not just that. The gameplay needs a huge overhaul as well. These games have played like garbage since 2011 and they need to start from scratch.
The fairest, yet somehow most positive, and most detailed criticism of Unbound I've seen. Encapsulates everything I loved and hated about this game. Really hope the developers and EA suits take note of the complaints and praises that so many of us have expressed that you've encapsulated so well in your review. NFS feels like it has the best chance to be back in a long time, I hope Criterion takes it.
What's interesting is that a mechanic in Blur's party multiplayer racer ( how to take right angle turns using nitros) becomes an exploit in NFS unbound, just because the AI can't do it.
@@aguywithgames3135 oh that was awesome, but i was talking about boost cancelling the momentum. The boost in that game I mostly used to get my drift in control and cross corners at a much faster speed than ai.
I've still not even raced the AI yet. Any racing game without at least 20 different difficulty settings is just a joke to me. You people don't know what it's like to be 100% focused for an entire hour 1v1 fighting for 3rd place for it to come down to the last lap and realise all the difference was made thanks to your pitstop plan. Either play arcade racers online until they get good ai difficulty settings, or play a sim racer and get a wheel
The day/night system of Heat was such an amazing idea, shame they removed it completely. After the first 2 weeks of the "story" I literally just speedran through the game, and after the story I had to cheat in a ton of money to at least get a couple more hours of enjoyment by customizing some cars. I got barely 30 hours of gameplay out of the 80€ palace edition.
Why did you buy the palace edition if it doesn't have more content and you want to customize cars yourself. Not defending the game but that wasted money's your fault
The day/night system is a great idea until you max out your reputation. Once you're Rep 50 and collected the Ultimate parts, why would you ever go back to night? Why would you risk losing all of the money you made during the day (Unbound improved on this system a lot, with only the money earned in the current session being lost, rather than most of your overall money) for absolutely zero reward? Now you're "stuck" only racing at day for more money to build more cars, but there's no risk. And really, it should've been the other way around. The publicly broadcast, official races during daytime should've earned you rep, because a lot of people will see you race, and the illegal races should've made you money, because classically, illegal street races are for cash or pinks.
I waited and got it dirt cheap on sale. I can't believe anybody buys games full price. It doesn't matter how much money I accumulate; I'll always wait for a big sale or buy preowned.
Buying a ps2 that comes with all of the popular arcade racing games makes your point all the more alarming. Flatout 2, MC3, Ridge Racer, the nfs games, fast and furious, auto modellista, juiced, gran turismo, burnout. They can't be beat by todays games.
@@shawklan27 burnout..the only need for speed i can play that scratches the itch that i am a burnout junkie is payback. I don't know why but it feels more like burnout but nfs
The Crew had the most interesting take on police. They change depending on the terrain and state that you're in. Sure they weren't as hard as NFS cops could be, but they were really fun
Many things you describe as a plus point here existed back in the Midnight Club games, people behind the wheel, living streets etc. Rockstar really should bring it back, still the undisputed king of arcade driving games.
exactly, and it even carried in the ways that unbound lacked with some of its customization options, the fact that each meet up was different AND you could see the other racers on the road during free roam!! one of my favorite things about mcla that i didnt even realize was a fav until i played unbound was that the cops were actually COPS. and by that i mean you had to actually obey street laws when you were near one because they'd actually stop you for running a red light or stop sign, obv for speeding but just doing overall dumb shit would cause the cop to chase you. not like unbound where you could cause a 6 car pile up going 120 mph and the cop will just keep cruising on by. little stuff like this makes unbound feel so dull even though it is still a good racing game
@@doyouwannarollwithme Sure dude, that's why the team behind the games do all the vehicle stuff in GTA nowadays, clearly bad and the police were realistic unlike the NFS games. If the aesthetic was so bad then why did they team up with real world manufacturers and Dub magazine?, nevermind using the name Midnight Club which is a real world driving crew.
Hit the nail on the head with the “insular book club” feeling, NFSU2 felt alive in ways because of being able to see other racers in their riced out cars cruising the same as me, hearing their engines loud over the droning normal cars quick glance at the minimap to confirm I’m hearing another racer close by. Unbound dropped the ball massively just felt like that scene from whatever show or movie it was “how do you do fellow kids”
Hard not to notice the surface level similarities between the story of Unbound and Most Wanted 05: Car stolen, race to get it back, top dog of the city wants to stop you. What makes MW05's story "great" (or, rather, servicable, I should say) is how little it gets in the player's way. Most of the story happens in the text messages you get from the characters, the tone of the story doesn't change at all,
It was the same in Payback which is also a game all about revenge - which is what Most Wanted 05's story boils down too: revenge against Razor. EA has been subconsciously trying to mirror the same success as Most Wanted 05 with little result.
@@jolejolevv funnily Criterion's last Need for Speed title before unbound was.....Most Wanted. They even had a plan to remake the story of the original but all got shoved in the end for a toned down lite version of Burnout Paradise wearing NFS clothing.
Hands down best video game essay channel out there. Keep up the great work, it's a joy listening to your smooth voice read the exceptionally well-written scripts.
You know what? I actually quite like the special Nitro from this game because it sort of works in the same way as the time slow effect from NFSMW, but real time, allowing you to do otherwise impossible turns, which I like
The game has potential. It's not perfect, no game is, but it could be a shot of adrenaline (or nitrous) for arcade racers. I'm excited for what Criterion could do with the series.
Down every minute it was a perfect review, as a long time fan of this series, i am glad that someone sees the potential but also knows what it lacks with problem. The only thing it left for me was creativity and this game brought back the idea of creativity, but falls down in other areas. I hope i get a good old racing game, where every thing was exciting enough to keep me coming back.
This game reminds me a lot of Midnight Club LA. The sense of speed, the vehicle combat, the cocky characters, drafting boosts, the risk reward of the burst nitrous.
And people saying it it’s the worst nfs game 😢. I love the fact that you have played the best racing game to ever exist. Midnight club will always stay close in my heart.
The cocky dialogue is really bad though. In MCLA it at least felt more grounded. The racing itself though is pretty good. There is a reason for why people are mixed on the game, there are improvements but a lot of flaws as well. Not to mention the weird political preaching forced in. People should really stop defending products as if it were their holy bible or something, it's a product made by a company to earn money but they clearly failed.
The burst nitrous system reminds me of the ‘slipstream nitrous’ from rockstar’s midnight club. Only took EA 15 years to pilfer that concept from rockstar; I’m sincerely surprised it wasn’t done sooner.
One thing NFS always had is style, and its funny because once a new NFS title releases, its always unique in its own way, yet people still seem to find a reason to banter about it, because they can't comprehend the fact that NFS isn't casually milking their players out of recycled content for the past 10 years [glancing at forza horizon w/ this one]
NFS was a big part of my childhood, but since 2013 most wanted came out I started to drift from that series to something like Forza Horizon. But later, there are more and more good games even from the big companies. It's a renaissance of gaming, a bit bold to say, but some of them go back to their roots, if you catching what I'm throwing and it's great to see that
Sadly not for the racing games (at least as of now), they all dying (cus of different reasons) and its probably even surprising that NFS still lives and tries (but that's cus there is no competition too).
@@ShizukiShirano it sucks we’ve been stuck in a cycle of trying to live up to most wanted and midnight club for the last 15 years but I will admit I’m glad we got games like unbound and heat. They aren’t as good as the older games but at least it’s something to scratch that edgy street racer vibe. I still like forza horizon but those games have felt more and more soulless the older the series gets.
"It's a renaissance of gaming" Heavily disagreed, most if not all racing game series have had their prime. NFS was best during the 2000s era, Burnout who?, Midnight Club who?, Forza Horizon 1 is still the best in the Horizon series, Forza 3 or Forza 4 is the best in that series, GT7 is cool but has egregious issues and GT4 is still the best in that series I could go on. Every single racing game series has past their prime. Newer entries never are truly terrible, but they also always have so many flaws that they just end up being disappointing
One of my gripes with the "modern" Need for Speed games (post black box), is the number of music tracks is always too god damn low. Especially when you find yourself skipping the occasional track it gets even worse. Same problem with every single Horizon game too. Is it the same in Unbound, where you start hearing repeats not even 4 - 5 hours in, or have they added more finally? Btw, that relieved cock line is probably my favorite Whitelight line ever. Once in a generation literary genius, and I'm all for it.
The way the nitrous cancels momentum is a really interesting concept to me, since it reminds me of the way boosting works in Hydro Thunder, I love that franchise because the boost can be used to take really tight turns, the boost is fired the way your boat is facing, so you can go into a corner, turn 90 degrees, and boost hard to get out of it, your sideways momentum is quickly reduced by the side of your boat hitting the water, causing a ton of drag, but your forwards momentum is rapidly increased by the boost, this lets you take tight turns better. In that game it feels less like it’s overpowered, it still needs skill and timing and careful usage of the boost to do it, and it feels like the game was really designed around using it, but hearing that Unbound’s nitrous works similarly makes me want to give it a go.
Shoutout to all the based video essayists out there calling out the piss poor state of arcade racing. We might mot see you under the mountain of sim racing nerds complaining they're not realistic, but we certainly hear you.
What a pristine review, the part about the police is spot on, it's never been easier yet it's the most annoying when you trying to move between events and you see like 10 to 20 cops free roaming on every possible corner of the map, you'd think half of the population of lake shore is police patrolling men
Its nice to see a video talking about the good AND the bad instead of trying to murder a game, there is way to much hate on the internet for some reason on new releases. Loved your video, amazing job.
Great critique and analysis of this game! I'm a fan of the burst nitrous personally; The advanced mechanics involve burst grip turns, and maintaining combos to keep the burst meter full throughout the race. I think that's where the game's arcade racing truly shines. It comes close to how much fun I had in MCLA- though I do miss the querky abilities and open race courses from that game.
My biggest complaint with the story is just how obvious and boring they built up the betrayal. Jasmine came off super annoying and most of her responses to Rydell came off as written so badly it was painful to hear. I haven't even bothered finishing it
It blows my mind that the devs don't see these problems as they're making the game. It's almost like it's done on purpose. If they make a perfect game, nobody will buy the next game. Lol.
They probably do but unfortunately they either don’t care or are under pressure by the time management and orders to go back and fix things with the cost of delaying the game.
Unbound had potential. If they kept on it, or inspire someone else to do what Unbound did but better... we can have a great arcade racing game in the future. In this season of so many simcades, some fun arcade racing games would be lovely to just sit back and enjoy. Also Whitelight, very good narrative in explaining what's in Unbound.
One of the best video essays I’ve seen on RU-vid. And that’s truly saying something. I loved this game but felt the same as you, it was missing something. And still is. I think a revenge story based around Alec could have been crazy. If the really villainized him. Made him manipulate Jaz and such. Could have made this much more
Yes, but what actually makes them undercover is that they’re completely black and have no top lights. They just hide them in Unbound to make it “harder.” Like even MW05, Carbon, and Undercover had the undercover cops in your map
Escaping cops started to feel repetitive so fast. So many times during one game session, it made me want to play solo less. Didn’t even feel like a racing game anymore, but more like a ‘don’t get caught’ game.
I'd love to see you do a follow up on Watch Dogs Legion someday, then you'd have the entire series under your belt! The DLC for that game is great too, it could honestly probably be a video by itself, and does bring into question why Ubisoft's recent games have been getting fantastic DLC when the base games themselves are nothing special.
The DLC is the only redeeming factor of WDL, other then that it's kinda shit. It's a shame too, I liked WD1 and 2, then they threw it right in the bin after.
My impression of the crash sensitivity is that maybe they wanted to make the consequences of a crash very low, but were afraid of potential situations where a less than destructive mistake- like spinning out into a wall at relatively lower speed -might actually cost you more time than one in which you absolutely destroyed your car due to the quick and fast respawn. So they attempted to balance things by preempting time-consuming mistakes by just "crashing" the car and restarting you, or at least trying to predict (and not necessarily succeeding) when this might be happening.
I think an easy and more believable fix for the cops would be to have dedicated police stations that put out an AOE of police concentration on the map. A station would most likely be somewhere in the city, where the most people are located, so the most cops would be there. As you moved further from the city towards suburbs and rural, the police population gets lower, like in real life. Maybe 2-3 smaller stations with a smaller AOE could be spread out, but they would also send less police after you until you got closer to the concentration. City races would reward more cash and XP too, versus rural races, but rural races could be longer or emphasize needing cleaner and faster driving to win, since other racers and yourself would not to need to worry about cops or more objects around city streets to crash into. However, going off the road could mean hitting a tree or cliff and having a very slow recovery over driving on a something like a sidewalk. If you are trying to escape, the easier way would be to move away from the concentration. But you could risk escaping closer to city to have quicker access to the next event. There's more ways to break line-of-site in a city too, versus open fields in the country. You pose less risk as a street racer in rural areas than in cities, so the police would want to put in less effort compared to racers closer to the city. Pair this with other cop fixes, and it could feel more realistic and also more rewarding.
Absolutely great analysis of the game. Most of this is stuff I really think they could fix in a patch but it's been out long enough that it doesn't sound like that is happening.
I think the main thing games like these suffer from is short development cycles. The fact they're as good as they are is a testament to the skill and hard work of the dev teams involved. Also middle management meddling.
Since launch like 5 people I’ve seen online like the art excluding the humans but to me it’s such a good style, EVERY part of it EVERY person it’s just perfect to me
Thank you for you amazing work Whitelight. I've been trying to work out what about this game isn't gelling with me. Then you eloquently and succinctly summed it up for me. You have a true gift.
Maybe if your stolen car belonged to your little dead sister it would make more sense to recover it I guess. But definitely they took the easy route of NFS Most Wanted (the old one) and copy/past it along many other of the features inexistance. In Most Wanted they also fill they had that issue of forcing player to spam slow motion camera as it was impossible to take short curves without it and wasn't for lack of skills.
Cops were extremely frustrating because the game cheats and spawns them ahead of your GPS and also they constantly immediately re-acquire you through bullshit mechanics.
IDK if it is only me, but the physics doesn't feel right in this game. My reference if the original 2005 MW. There, in straight line you could see the car having micro jitters which gives the feeling of tires gripping the asphalt. Present day cars in games run smooth. During turns, the cars would just skid enough along with drift to give the feeling of speed. Present day, the cars go into drift without any skidding. At high speeds, the surroundings would blur, again giving the feeling of super speed. I'm aware many people are not fond of blurriness, but I think an exception can be made for racing games (especially arcade ones) The drifting felt feathery, I felt in full control of the car. But in the modern NFS it feels the car tires have glue on them, it feels I'm losing a lot of speed while drifting.
In MW you could barely even drift, I don't think it's THAT realisitc. Also Most Wanted had glue as well, and even much more than Unbound. With half of the cars in MW you didn't even have to brake and you could hit a wall to slow down anyway. The sense of speed was the best of all tho
It's the physics that kill new NFS games for me. I know not to expect racing sim physics from NFS but my god what is happening here?? I would rather you put a spider in my mouth than me try and drift around a turn successfully in the last 2 NFS games
I'm currently playing since it was free for PS+ members. I think the fact they listed it there will give the game a bit more life. This is the best racing in NFS in a long time. The last few really struggled with a good balance. I feel like this one is getting back to the core of good street racing gaming.
Honestly I never liked the Days in Heat - I felt the circus races were mostly boring and felt more like a chore than a fun experience. I probably wouldn't have minded a Night-only NFS game, though that might just be the Midnight Club in me speaking.
I don't think the driving is intense at all, even with all the colours and lines. Reason being, when you crash, it's like, "oh shit, I've crashed, that was unlikely, given I can drive through literally everything, and now I'll just catch up again", and then you go on like nothing even happened. How intense is that? Ah, whereas in Hot Pursuit, when you crash, it's a big deal, as it should be when you travel that fast.
Whitelight is definitely one of the only channels on here that manages to produce long, in-depth reviews without massively overwriting and coming across as pretentious. Brilliant content.
I would really be curious to see your opinions on NFS Most Wanted (2012). With the blindness of nostalgia I've always thought it was great but I'd definitely like to see a quality assessment of the matter.
