nordic.ign.com Open in urlscan Pro
2.22.61.133  Public Scan

Form analysis
1 forms found in the DOM

https://nordic.ign.com/se/

<form action="https://nordic.ign.com/se/" class="search-modal">
  <div class="search-input"><input type="hidden" name="model" value=""><input name="q" id="search-input" type="text" maxlength="60" placeholder="Search on IGN Nordic" autocomplete="off" value=""></div><button role="button"
    class="button button-primary">Search</button>
</form>

Text Content

WE VALUE YOUR PRIVACY

We and our partners store and/or access information on a device, such as cookies
and process personal data, such as unique identifiers and standard information
sent by a device for personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement,
and audience insights, as well as to develop and improve products. With your
permission we and our partners may use precise geolocation data and
identification through device scanning. You may click to consent to our and our
747 partners’ processing as described above. Alternatively you may access more
detailed information and change your preferences before consenting or to refuse
consenting. Please note that some processing of your personal data may not
require your consent, but you have a right to object to such processing. Your
preferences will apply to this website only. You can change your preferences at
any time by returning to this site or visit our privacy policy.
MORE OPTIONSAGREE
IGN Logo
Nordic
 * Home
 * Made in Nordic
 * News
 * Reviews
 * Previews
 * Videos
 * Features
 * Movies & TV
 * More
   
 * 
   Search

Home


MORE

 * About IGN Nordic
 * Contact
 * Advertise
 * Press
 * Privacy Policy
 * User agreement
 * Cookies
 * RSS
   
 * IGN Nordic is operated under license by eMense

Change Region United States United Kingdom Australia Africa Adria Benelux /
Dutch Brazil China / 中国 Czechia / Slovakia France Germany Greece / Ελλάδα
Hungary India Israel Italy / Italia Japan / 日本 Korea / 한국 Latin America Middle
East - English Middle East - الأوسطالشرق Nordic Poland Portugal Southeast Asia
Spain / España Turkey / Türkiye world.ign.com
Register / Login
Register / Login
Login Register
IGN Logo

Need for Speed Unbound


NEED FOR SPEED UNBOUND - REVIEW


CAR TOONS.

 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * +

When you buy something from this article, IGN Nordic might get a part of the
revenue.
by Luke Reilly 
 Posted Dec. 9, 2022, 8 a.m.

No other racing game released this year looks quite like Need for Speed Unbound,
and that can be a difficult thing to achieve in such an established genre so
steeped in convention. Criterion has gone all-in with wild, animated visual
flair that often appears as though it’s been lifted from the pages of a comic
book, even as the actual driving and split day/night structure of its races are
immediately familiar to those of us who appreciated 2019’s Need for Speed Heat.
The result is a uniquely styled racer that regularly looks quite fabulous in
motion, though its grating story mode goes over like a banana in the tailpipe
and the online mode simply feels stripped down and unfinished.



While Heat hardly revolutionised arcade racing, it was a pleasant surprise that
put the teetering franchise back on track. For its efforts, developer Ghost
Games was… disbanded, and the series drunk dialled its way back into the arms of
former flame Criterion Games for Unbound, and it’s received a striking makeover.
You can apply artistic embellishments, including smoke and illustrations, to
cars like any other visual customisation part. There are a variety of different
ones to choose from, although essentially they all seem fairly similar, with the
key differences between them mostly limited to the colour of the smoke and the
selection of graphics that get thrust from the sides of your car like wings, or
flashed above the roof like a tiny, temporary hat. The effects you choose are
globally applied to your whole garage, though, and it seems like an oversight
that you can’t select bespoke effects for individual cars.





IT'S FLASHY AND EYE-CATCHING, AND IT'S VERY WELL EXECUTED.

It’s all very stylish in an Into the Spider-Verse, street art kind of way, and I
do admire Criterion’s commitment to trialling something that sets Need for Speed
apart from its peers. It’s flashy and eye-catching, and it’s very well executed.
It doesn’t look like a superficial layer of effects pasted over the surface of
the image; it definitely feels baked into the 3D world. Donuts, for instance,
look particularly cool as the special animations hold up well even with a very
kinetic camera. 



However, the juxtaposition between Unbound’s cars (which continue to strive
towards photorealism) and its cartoon characters and effects is a peculiar one.
It isn’t jarring, especially considering that there have been some big
improvements with the lighting since Heat and, at its best, Unbound looks like a
highly stylised, interactive trailer. But I can’t shake the feeling that it’s a
compromise, accidental or otherwise, that Unbound’s vehicles and world haven’t
been given the same treatment – like a modern-day Auto Modellista, or 2020’s
Inertial Drift. Would that have been controversial? Probably. Divisive?
Certainly. But I think it would’ve looked better than this blended solution.


PERFORMANCE TOONING

Beneath the snazzy effects, Unbound sticks more closely to Heat’s gameplay
format than I’d expected. This isn’t exactly a bad thing – Heat was a very
welcome course correction after Payback and I enjoyed it. That said, it does
make Unbound feel like an evolution of Ghost’s work rather than something
Criterion has really put its own stamp on, like it did with its acclaimed 2010
reboot of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, and its take on Need for Speed: Most
Wanted from 2012.

Unbound’s new Chicago-inspired Lakeshore map has some nice, grid-like streets
and tunnels for its urban racing, but the city itself is actually a bit vanilla
compared to Heat’s neon-bathed, Miami-like Palm City. Unbound’s countryside is
also quite typical and unmemorable – which, to be fair, was also a criticism of
Heat. It’s just freeways, backroads, and trees draped over some hills. There are
a couple of nice mountainside segments with multiple switchbacks for drifting,
but overall there’s nothing particularly interesting to look at outside the
city.



In single-player, Unbound’s cops function similarly to Heat, although I think
it’s a little easier to slip out their grasp this time around. Unbound seems a
lot better at detecting if I’m accelerating into clear space so, unlike Heat,
I’m yet to be arbitrarily busted simply because the cops are nearby my otherwise
escaping car. This happened quite a lot in Heat, so I’m glad it appears to have
been addressed.

The strictly arcade-style driving model is also inherited from Heat, which means
cars can be tuned for grip, drift, or a balance between the two. I haven’t been
able to figure out whether it’s my driving style or my handling slider set-up,
but my attempts at grip tuning seem plagued with understeer. The drift handling
is more reliable in my experience, and definitely my preference. The ability to
choose between a classic brake-to-drift cornering style or an extra pump of the
throttle to get sideways remains, too. Continuing to cater to both camps is very
smart.

Like Heat, racing is divided into day and night events, but Unbound tweaks the
formula slightly. While Heat alternates between sanctioned street racing during
the day and illegal events during the evening, all of Unbound’s racing is
verboten, 24 hours a day. Cop heat accumulated during the day carries over to
the night too, so deciding how much police attention you want to take with you
into the evening is an interesting juggling act. Higher-paying races require
higher initial heat levels, but they also require higher buy-ins – so it’s
actually possible to lose money if you perform poorly, especially since Unbound
limits restarts. I’m not entirely sold on the gambling angle in general due to
some highly questionable manoeuvres by the AI stacking the deck against me, but
having more on the line does increase the tension in a mostly satisfying way.

TO ITS CREDIT, PROGRESSION THROUGH UNBOUND ISN'T BUILT AROUND WINNING EVERY
SINGLE RACE WE COME ACROSS.

To its credit, progression through Unbound isn’t built around winning every
single race we come across, which means it can be consistently challenging
without entirely stalling our progress. Building up the necessary cash to both
craft a competitive car and afford the hefty buy-ins for the high-risk races can
become a bit of a grind though, certainly early on.

There are three levels of difficulty, and Unbound can be a stiff test at times
regardless of your selection. It does cross the line from tough to cheap on
occasion, and there were times where an AI racer would blitz ahead so quickly
that no amount of perfect driving and boosting could stop them gapping me.



Having opponents able to more-or-less speed match you the millisecond you
trigger a nitrous boost is not a problem unique to Unbound – it’s a common gripe
in a variety of arcade racers – but it is a snag that tends to leave the boost
system feeling flaccid and ineffectual. What’s more annoying, however, are the
occasions where I’d blast past a crashed opponent only for them to
supernaturally respawn well ahead of me on track. It’s extremely frustrating to
lose to a racer who clearly cheated to place ahead of you – especially when I’d
wagered extra in-game cash on beating them and I’m out of restarts.

Even on the tamest setting, Unbound’s AI racers can be unexpectedly competitive
at times. I was definitely a little surprised at how ruthless the so-called
‘Relaxed’ setting is watching my kids struggle to keep up; at least, I was
whenever I wasn’t too busy wincing at the dialogue.


OKAY ZOOMER

Heat’s script wasn’t exactly in line to win itself an armful of Primetime Emmys,
but it was a pleasing pivot away from the pish that was Payback. Unbound feels
like a step down from that. The overall story itself is harmless enough, but its
trite cocktail of 2020s teenage angst and Tik Tok philosophising definitely
pushed me to my tolerance limit. Personally, I suspect Lakeshore’s mayor is just
tired of family minivans being speared off the road by 900-horsepower JDM
missiles and innocent commuters being hosed off the hard shoulder, so it’s a
little hard to empathise with the cast’s constant whining about their personal
freedoms being repressed by traffic laws meant to curb wanton vehicular
manslaughter.

To be fair, I don’t know that there’s an elegant way for a 28-year-old franchise
like Need for Speed to truly speak to the full spectrum of its audience at once,
but I should warn you that if you’re a veteran player from the mid-’90s I’d
hesitate to suggest you’re going to feel very represented in Unbound. Certainly
not by any of these young and slim Instagram influencer avatars, whose fashion
aesthetic appears to be music festival drug dealer, football match drug dealer,
or off-brand Weird Al Yankovic. The mechanical expression enabled by the deep
car customisation that previous developer Ghost began reinjecting into the
series in its 2015 Need for Speed reboot has universal appeal, and that’s all
very much still here in Unbound, but there’s definitely a generational
disconnect in terms of the characters and tone.

THERE'S DEFINITELY A GENERATIONAL DISCONNECT IN TERMS OF THE CHARACTERS AND
TONE.

There is a way to engage with Unbound without this story layer, as the
cross-play enabled online multiplayer is a separate mode that does away with it
and focuses purely on racing and upgrading your ride. Unfortunately, that’s not
all it does away with, and online mode is missing quite a few features at launch
– the biggest of which is cops. Equally unfortunately: when I say that online
and single-player are ‘separate’, I mean entirely separate. Your single-player
garage and progression isn’t shared online, so you need to build a new stable of
cars. I have to admit that after 30-odd hours of working my way to the top of
the story mode, the prospect of starting from scratch online really took the jam
out of my donut.


THE VERDICT

When the rubber hits the road it’s evident Need for Speed Unbound hasn’t strayed
very far from the fundamentals of 2019’s Heat. This is a little surprising
following the series’ shift back to Criterion – a studio that has traditionally
had a very distinct style of its own – although it isn’t a bad thing considering
Heat was a welcome splash of gas for a franchise that was close to running on
fumes. Unbound should, however, turn heads thanks to its bold new animated
characters and special effects. Despite the odd juxtaposition between its
traditional graphics and the cartoon-inspired flourishes, they are strikingly
well done and make for an instantly recognisable instalment of this 28-year-old
series. However, while the car customisation tools are as expressive as ever, it
does feel unlikely that older players will be able to connect with the
single-player mode’s preening cast of entitled chuckleheads, and unfortunately
the separate online mode is currently missing core features like cops.

When you buy something from this article, IGN Nordic might get a part of the
revenue.

In This Article


NEED FOR SPEED UNBOUND

Criterion Games
 * Platform
   PC PS5 XboxSeries


NEED FOR SPEED UNBOUND REVIEW

7
IGN Logo
Good
Need for Speed Unbound hasn’t strayed very far from the fundamentals of 2019’s
Heat, but its bold new animated style impresses.
by Luke Reilly 

More Reviews by Luke Reilly
4
Fortnite Festival - Review

4
Bluey: The Videogame - Review

8
Forza Motorsport [2023] - Review

7
The Crew Motorfest - Review
More Like This
6 months, 4 weeks Comments


MICROSOFT ANNOUNCES NEXT WAVE OF XBOX GAME PASS GAMES

10 months Comments


FORMER NEED FOR SPEED LEADS FORM NEW STUDIO TO CREATE A 'BLOCKBUSTER SPECTACLE'

1 year, 1 month Comments


THE BEST RACING GAME OF 2022

1 year, 1 month Comments


THE BEST RACING GAME OF 2022

Come Play Mortal Kombat 1 With Us!


COMMENTS


Please enable JavaScript to view the comments.



Ad
IGN Nordic is operated under license by eMense