Need for Speed Unbound is putting the brakes on progress by removing the racing line!

Need for Speed ​​Unbound released very quickly, with only two months between an eye-catching trailer announcement and the game’s release. Need for Speed ​​was in a tough place; It’s still trying to make an annual, but it’s never quite as traditional as an annual sports franchise might get. Its most recent release, Need for Speed ​​Heat, was a game that felt like it was trying to keep itself alive without trying anything new, which is part of why this new art style is so exciting; It hinted at new ideas and a desire to return to the light-filled world of Need for Speed ​​Underground.

Related: Need for Speed ​​Unbound is different, but still excels in quirky, fast-paced racing – Review

By comparison, Need for Speed ​​Unbound comes off to a stronger start than I expected. Starting with a compelling family narrative, Unbound puts you through a tutorial using a powerful vehicle to take you through the game’s flow. It all sets up to be a great return to the series – but for me, Unbound makes the mistake of choosing not to include a feature that has become standard in many other racing games: the racing streak.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, the racing streak is a visual representation of your best move while racing. It is published by Codemasters, which runs F1 and GRID racing titles, and was acquired by EA in 2021. It lights up green on straight roads and turns from yellow to red when you need to turn. It’s less common in street racing games, but it’s not unheard of and can still be a great learning tool. There is a certain amount of joy that comes from staying on the racing line and dusting off your opponents. Similar to how exhilarating it feels to hit all the notes in a rhythm game, sitting on top of a racing line for an entire sprint and winning by several seconds can feel good.

Image via EA

I’ve spent more than 50 hours on racing games this year, and I thought all that time I’d spent would definitely help me be better at racing games. When I turned on Need for Speed ​​Unbound, I quickly realized that the lack of a racing streak had kept me falling back into horrible habits like never applying the brakes and taking turns too late. It’s made worse by the fact that every race in Unbound requires you to go through checkpoint gates or take a U-turn and lose more time.

I don’t think Need for Speed ​​Unbound is trying to be punishing; Hell, on the easiest difficulty, it gives you 10 full restarts for each in-game day. This game does not force you to win races. He wants you to succeed, even giving you reward money for defeating someone of your choosing, so that you’ll always make progress. there he is Good design here, but it feels moot to me personally because I have to start from square one. At this point, features like rewind and racing streak don’t just feel like accessibility issues; They feel that they are the core of the whole genre. Franchises are progressing all the time – imagine trying to play God of War now without a pickaxe to recall, or trying to play Fire Emblem without unit pairs. Sometimes you have such a good idea that it becomes critical and you cling to it.

We see this a lot in fighting games: if you want your game to be picked up by the community, you need to try to use net code backtracking in order to create a stable environment for online play. I think it’s time for racing game fans to get on board and rally behind the acceptance of racing stripes as a pervasive feature. I don’t blame the standard for not using it; They haven’t done that before, but I think if EA wanted to be a really useful publisher, they’d use Codemasters’ resources to give the game a racing streak and, in turn, help Codemasters implement the menu narrative in F1.

If we have to live in a world where big corporations own everything, at least help foster an environment where they can help each other.

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