Need for Speed™

I am really perplexed by the development of the game. This was the first Need for Speed after about a decade to have a two-year release instead of a single year, and yet the game still feels unevenly developed. The aesthetics are excellent: the lighting and sounds are an absolute highlight of the game, and I really enjoy the map's distribution of urban, suburban, and isolation. However, there is nothing to keep you here. While the game has awesome particle and motion effects, the LOD is surprisingly woeful once you use the photo mode. Long-distance cityscapes look like comparable to PS2 titles, even at 4K max settings. The performance is optimal and consistent, considering it is running semi-photorealistic graphics. More on the map: I mentioned that I really like the distribution of the map, but it feels surprisingly small. You can get around the entire freeway loop in about 10-15 minutes, and I absolutely love the drift parks, but once again: there is only so much of it to enjoy. It feels quite small and limited in its exploration. And when you look at the event map, there is so much available on the imagery: but so little of that is actually drivable, if even visible at all. This feels half-baked, and there is nothing offensive about the map as it is, but it doesn't feel like the final product. And the AI also suffers here. The racer AI are actually quite clever. When you are approaching them head-on, they are very effective and considerate in avoiding a head-on collision. They can resist police, and they can drift and race reasonably well. But the traffic is few and far between; and the police AI is only effective in numbers. Yes, they really are as hopeless as the memes make them out to be. You can only get a decent chase going after 20 minutes — and I have to stick to the main roads and turn off the map if I don't want to lose them in a couple of minutes. The roadblocks are actually very well-done. Their stochastity does give that bit more claustrophobia and unpredictability to the chase, and I am all for it. Overall, this is a decent game — but the beauty is superficial. It has a very clear design language: night-racing, street and social racing, and exploration. Expand the map, modernise the world mesh and LOD, and offer more dynamic police chases; and you are halfway to capturing the neglected potential of this game. Buy this game on a sale, and keep your expectations low, but not on the floor.