The Need for Speed franchise of games has lasting power, and for decades they have been safely re-adjusting the formula to bend genres in and out of an action game designation. This is precisely where Need for Speed Unbound inserts itself, the safe area of being a fun racing game while hitting all the proper action notes of police chases, but does so without committing to changing the tried-and-true NFS formula.
Like most titles in the series, Need for Speed Unbound places you dead centre in the street racing scene. This time, behind a grizzled old mentor named Rydell and with Rydell’s Rides as the ragtag group’s—your create-a-character, Rydell, and Yazmin the car tuning prodigy—base of operations, you have to make a name for yourself in ‘the scene.’ This may sound corny, but somehow the fictionalized Chicago city, Lakeshore, does a good job of translating the culture to the entire setting. The characters, especially Rydell, are extremely well written and are incredibly believable.
After creating a filler protagonist with a shallow creator who will therein be referred to as *cringe* ‘Speedie,’ you’re let loose on the streets with one of three junker cars, kind of like choosing a starter Pokémon but without needing to put all THAT much thought into it. This is all part of the tutorial disguised as a prologue that MANY games do now, but this one lays the groundwork for the narrative.
This is the strongest point of the title, the narrative. Although it is very predictable, the voice acting—yes, including both voices for the protagonist—are well done. I can’t get enough of how fleshed out a character Rydell is, he just rules, while wearing tough guy armour he has shortcomings like not knowing what an app on the phone is while showing you the ropes of the scene. Dwayne Barnes absolutely kills this role. The storyline is also about 30 hours depending on how you place in races, and doesn’t overstay its welcome, unlike the murder-based racing film with Aaron Paul that shares a series with Unbound.
“Like most titles in the series, Need for Speed Unbound places you dead centre in the street racing scene.”
The controls are simple to grasp but HARD to master. RT accelerates and LT brakes/drifts. There is no simple E-brake which is a nice addition, instead there is a boost/nitrous button, which blurs everything while shooting your car forward. This is a fantastic way to implement different controls than Forza Horizon 5, or Grid Legends, the arcade-like action. The way the car shoots forward with graffiti, cel-shaded visuals is reminiscent of 2010’s Blur, but without the other weapons which is kind of a bummer. There is also a Mario Kart style accelerate off the line when beginning an event, where the proper amount of acceleration will give a much-needed boost off the starting line, I dig this too.
For a game with prominent artist A$AP Rocky plastered all over it, especially with his likeness included in the narrative and some seriously good music for the MENUS, the point A to point B music needs to be tampered with to hear something worthwhile. This is an oversight, overall, the title has excellent sound development, but the music culture could be more front and centred, not hidden away. Also, oddly enough, the cool remix of the song from the trailer is seemingly nowhere to be found, but the base song is. Need for Speed Underground reliably pumped hit pop/rap tunes into your ears the entire way through, Unbound should have taken notes.
The open world is a sight to behold. The graphics of Need for Speed Unbound are excellently done, with a mixture of the cel-shading around the tires, different colour smoke that comes from your tires which is customizable, and the city is pretty to look at. The city feels empty otherwise, besides the constant cops harassing you when trying to go to the next racing event. Over the radio, your sidekick who constantly reminds you to earn money is heard non-stop almost, and it would be nice to be able to turn it off and just drive. There are also alerts to do certain activities like pick up a fellow racer with heat to unlock safehouses, but it feels tiresome at times you just want to race.
“The graphics of Need for Speed Unbound are excellently done, with a mixture of the cel-shading around the tires, different colour smoke that comes from your tires which is customizable, and the city is pretty to look at.”
I must mention, Car customization returns with a vengeance. While the human avatar creator is shallow, you can make some seriously cool car designs and share them online with other players. I LOVE this aspect of creation and community, and Need for Speed Unbound hits this out of the park.
The structure of Need for Speed Unbound is based around competing in events to earn four different car classes—another racing game staple, car classes from C to S — then winning four different qualifiers to compete in the final race called the Grand against your arch rival. This involves competing in day to night events of the typical sprint and circuit races, drift events, and a special type of ‘destroy that obstacle’ event to rack up a score. While the racing is the best part of the title, drifting is a main factor of the game to earn boost and beat the competition, so the forced drift segments pull momentum away from the fast-paced racing segments and just feels like another activity to pad content. The smashing items bit is good fun and can help a budding player learn better car control.
Speaking of ‘padding content,’ there is no fast travel in the story. You MUST drive to every event which just feels empty after a while, adding a method to selecting races from the menu could have gone a long way. I understand the implementation to build upon the heat system, but sometimes you just WANT to race, and then a cop derails that making you drive in circles to just play the next event. There is are also confusing race layouts. When a path branches during a race, BIG yellow arrows show you the two or more entryways, but the arrows BLOCK your vision, making it very easy to hit a wall. This happens far too often to count, and its annoying restarting after two perfect laps to be overridden by catch-up AI that overtakes one flaw that doesn’t feel like the players.
The heat system is solid and has flashes of the excellent Need for Speed Most Wanted title—Unbound even lets you drive THE special BMW M3 GTR GT—but Need for Speed Unbound never fully commits to making it as polished. There are roadblocks, and different pursuit vehicles, but when you ‘takedown’ a cop car it doesn’t feel like you did much except tap it a couple of times. Maybe Michael Bay explosions would help this as it is VERY difficult to take down the interceptor vehicles, a small note on the screen of ‘cop car takedown’ doesn’t make me feel like I did anything except ruin the guy’s breakfast. Every time a cop chases you, and they witness you make a mistake by hitting a wall, they hurl insults at you for driving poorly. This is an excellent touch, no one likes to be made fun of.
Need For Speed Unbound checks most of the boxes to make a racing game exciting and fun, a unique boost system to constantly keep players on their toes, a cop pursuit system to test your mettle every time you think you’re safe, and a storyline that makes the entire thing feel organic. But shortcomings like no fast travel, some flawed race designs, and not committing to some of the features hold this title just shy of greatness. Need for Speed Unbound is a great leap forward for Criterion and is easily the best title in the series in years.
