What killed off Need For Speed?

[not_you]

As with what everyone else has said...

It's Criterion's fault....

NFS was good when Black Box made it...
Then Criterion came along and turned it into Burnout...

As I've said in many threads like this... Burnout should be Burnout, NFS should be NFS...

Most Wanted (2005) is still my favourite NFS game to date... (Although Underground 2 did have the best car customisations)

 

[Kinitawowi]

The downfall of the NFS franchise in my opinion was them trying to make their games too social. The Autolog feature had it's novelty, but in the end I could really care less about trying to find other people not even on my friend list who's stats I have to try to beat. Another blight is how it's been too shifty in trying to be more arcade/cinematic on one end (Undercover, The Run, Hot Pursuit, Most Wanted) and more sim on the other (ProStreet, Shift 1 & 2).

I think the biggest thing though, for those of us who are truly nostalgic, is that EA never gave us a true follow up to the Underground/classic Most Wanted/Carbon storyline. I for one would love to see some massive, Fast & Furious styled epic with characters like Razor, Darius, Cross, Nikki and so on, but of course that would take some extra money that even EA doesn't have the resources for. That being said, I do look forward to NFS Rivals...at least it's bringing back some personalization and customization, which is one of the the things I always enjoy in terms of racing games...to make the cars my own.

Bam.

The NFS games from Underground through Carbon were by far and away the finest adaptations of the Fast & Furious series to games that you could ever wish to see. Crazy cars, neon everywhere, more NAWWWWS than Vin Diesel can shake a cannister at, and Carbon's canyon races are blatantly robbed out of Tokyo Drift (which was blatantly robbing Initial D, but that's another issue).

So where did it go wrong? Tokyo Drift made a few people sick of the F&F series at about the same time Carbon did with NFS. F&F started being less about ridiculous lights on cars and started being about generic action and drama, and NFS turned away from its own street racing aesthetic and went for organised race days, and a more simulation-based model than the arcade formula it had got so right; the result was NFS: ProStreet, which was just gash. They attempted to switch back with Undercover, but it was too late, and that era of NFS was over.

And so gone were the... ahem, "hood ornaments", and the neon, and the cheesy plots, and in came legitimate racing, and nobody cared because the stupidity of the previous games was the WHOLE DAMN POINT. NFS had a sense of humour going all the way back to the 3DO original; hell, NFS II let you drive a fucking T-Rex round the track. And as of Shift, it was all gone. The series just hasn't been the same since, and neither has F&F. F&F is starting to get back on track, slowly. NFS might take a while longer.

 

[Parasondox]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4JnshyKOOQ - this right here looks like what Need for Speed should have continued to be.

 

[Racecarlock]

I like the criterion NFS games. The core is still there, they just have takedowns in it now. Most wanted 2005 and 2012 only have slightly different physics.

Honestly, not having cops, underground and underground 2 were the odd ones out.

Shift was generic and pro street sucked though. I'm glad criterion got it. At least criterion isn't trying to make it about legitimate racing, leaving midnight club with a monopoly on cops in racing games.

 

[SilkySkyKitten]

snipped

I wasn't trying to be funny?

Bleh, sorry if I came off rather assholish with my initial post there. Irritable moods make you lash out randomly, it seems...

But, well, to put it in better terms: saying that all racing games are about realism and flashy graphics/physics is like saying FPS's are all about shooting Russians with "realistic" weapons, or that RPG's are all about grinding and characters with androgynous hair styles, or that Strategy games are all about "YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS". It's taking a sub-genre and using that small sub-genre to paint a rather misguided picture of the genre as a whole that can cause even people who don't play said genre very much to go "... yeeeahh, that's not right."

----------

Anywho, On Topic: The reason the Need For Speed franchise isn't as great as it once was is due to a massive lack of direction. Originally it was all about driving extremely pricey high-end sports cars on winding roads while getting chased by cops (possibly). Basically, the wish of anyone who's fantasized too much about wanting a Ferrari or Porsche. Then, suddenly it turned into a street racing series with the Underground games in response to the Fast and the Furious tuner-craze of the 2000's. After Carbon, the series went all over the flippin' place, trying to be a sim with tuner elements in ProStreet, a hardcore sim with the Shift games, Burnout with NFS tacked on the title in the Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted reboots, a cartoony arcade racer in Nitro, a cinematic story-based racer in The Run, a pile of filth with Undercover[footnote]Oops, I think I might have inserted too much personal opinion there[/footnote], and so on and so forth...

The series simply lacks a consistent tone or style to it anymore, trying waaaayyy too many different things and mixing things up far too much that people are getting kinda fed up with it. It's like the opposite of CoD in that regard. With CoD, everybody complains that all the games are supposedly "the same thing", whereas with NFS in recent years it just hasn't been the same thing between games and people complain about it.

If anything, I'd personally want a return to the original style they had between NFS 1 and Hot Pursuit 2. Fast cars, winding roads, cops, and no tuner/customization/simulation/story-based/Burnout-with-a-different-title bullshit. Of course, I'm probably in the minority when I say that...

[small][small]... unfortunately.[/small][/small]

 

[Something Amyss]

EA keeps changing the developer of the Need for Speed games. Criterion are an AWESOME developer, but I don't think having to work on Need for Speed, really allowed them to play to their strengths. The people who enjoyed the previous NFS games wanted more of the same, and Criterion pretty much turned it into Burnout, but not as good as Burnout!

Im hoping Criterion get back to Burnout, and EA can let others developers mess with the IP.

I really hope this happens. I love Burnout. I want more Burnout. I also enjoy Need For Speed. I'd like the two franchises to be separate, though.

 

[WanderingFool]

Let's all face it, Need for Speed hasn't been the same since it was on the previous gen consoles with Underground 1 and 2, Most Wanted (2005) and maybe Carbon. So what do you think is the downfall of the Need for Speed franchise?

I thought Underground 1 was awesome, and was thusly blown out of the water by Underground 2. And than again with Most Wanted. And then greatly dissapointed with Carbon... and IMO, it all went down hill from there.

I think the main problem was that they had several different NFS games, but kept them almost all together instead of seperating them. You have several differetn styles of NFS games, which result in NFS not having any real identity anymore.

The series simply lacks a consistent tone or style to it anymore, trying waaaayyy too many different things and mixing things up far too much that people are getting kinda fed up with it. It's like the opposite of CoD in that regard. With CoD, everybody complains that all the games are supposedly "the same thing", whereas with NFS in recent years it just hasn't been the same thing between games and people complain about it.

THIS! THIS RIGHT HERE! I couldnt have said it better myself. If COD has a problem of being to much the same, NFS problem is that its far, far to varied.

If anything, I'd personally want a return to the original style they had between NFS 1 and Hot Pursuit 2. Fast cars, winding roads, cops, and no tuner/customization/simulation/story-based/Burnout-with-a-different-title bullshit. Of course, I'm probably in the minority when I say that...

I personally like Most Wanted. IMO, had the perfect balance of customization and racing. Plus, unlike Carbon, the cop chasing you actually made sense from a gamplay perspective. In Carbon, it was a massive annoyance.

 

[Wintermute_v1legacy]

I don't know what killed it, I guess they just couldn't stick to a formula, and that made me lose interest over time. What I know for certain is that the last NFS I played was... I think it was either Most Wanted or Carbon, whichever came later. The last interesting NFS games were Underground and Underground 2.

I like to think I know how to fix it, though. My favourite NFS is easily Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed, which had nothing but Porsches in it, from the early days all the way to the 2000s. And I've been waiting for another NFS game in that vein ever since. Just make another one of those, make a Need for Speed Ferrari or something, and I'm buying it.

Or perhaps take some inspiration from fighting games and make a Super Need for Speed BRAND 1 VS BRAND 2 Ultra Turbo Edition. I'd play that too. In fact, now I want to play that. Fuck. Make it happen, EA.

 

[LaoJim]

I think that "lack of direction" is basically right. I love racing games and I buy pretty much anything half decent (over a 7 say), but these days "Need for Speed" doesn't really mean anything more than "a racing game published by EA". As others have pointed out, while Call of Duty or Assassins' Creed get blamed for not innovating enough, but at least you know what you are going to get when you buy one. The NfS games have been incredibly inconsistent in tone over the years, some have been great, some have been terrible and they don't have a whole lot in common any more.

Like lots of others on the forum, I loved Underground 1 & 2 and that seems to have been fixed in peoples mind's as the typical Need for Speed game, even though the earlier Porsche/Hot Pursuit games were quite different. In this generation the 2005 Most Wanted and Carbon followed that basic template then it seems like something happened within EA. It may just be they were worried that the formula was getting stale but I have a pet theory that someone high up in EA decided that they shouldn't encourage kids to take part in this illegal street-racing malarkey and tried to change the whole philosophy of the games from above. So we next got Pro-Street which got rid of the whole open-city racing (which was really what made those games great) and replaced it with circuit based racing, but kept tried to keep the jarring "attitude" of the earlier games. So what you ended up with was Forza but without the handling. Next they did Undercover which was basically the old formula, but you were an undercover cop so they could say "look this street-racing gang is evil and dealing in drugs, so it's ok to take part in illegal street-racing to stop the illegal street-racing". And also it was yellow, oh so very very yellow.

The following year they released Shift. Having seen that Pro-Steet couldn't compete with Forza they just tried to release their own version of Forza. I actually really enjoyed Shift, but it wasn't even remotely connected with any of the other NfS games. After that it seems like executives realized that the franchise was in danger and recruited Criterion to try and rescue the series. Hot Pursuit was a great game. I have to disagree with those who are saying that it was a Burnout clone. Hot Pursuit, being set in the countryside and being focused on police chases was a completely different game from Burnout. Actually I think lots of us wanted Burnout 2 and didn't really care what it was called, EA wanted their annual NfS game so last year we got Most Wanted.

Finally the Run was one of those completely frustrating games that I which someone would do a "remix" of. It looked wonderful, the idea of a coast-to-coast race was just original enough while fitting into the spirit of Nfs, I just wish someone would take all the assets and make a game that was fun to play with them and either make the story fun or get rid of it all together.

 

[Elijin]

Wasnt aware it was dead, since I can get full mp lobbies any time of the day in the current one.


Ohhhh, whats that? You're one of the ones that insist NFS 'lost its spark' since the Underground generation? When the series existed long before that generation, and the games not in that style, outnumber the ones in that style?

Okay guy.

 

[josemlopes]

The downfall of the NFS franchise in my opinion was them trying to make their games too social. The Autolog feature had it's novelty, but in the end I could really care less about trying to find other people not even on my friend list who's stats I have to try to beat. Another blight is how it's been too shifty in trying to be more arcade/cinematic on one end (Undercover, The Run, Hot Pursuit, Most Wanted) and more sim on the other (ProStreet, Shift 1 & 2).

I think the biggest thing though, for those of us who are truly nostalgic, is that EA never gave us a true follow up to the Underground/classic Most Wanted/Carbon storyline. I for one would love to see some massive, Fast & Furious styled epic with characters like Razor, Darius, Cross, Nikki and so on, but of course that would take some extra money that even EA doesn't have the resources for. That being said, I do look forward to NFS Rivals...at least it's bringing back some personalization and customization, which is one of the the things I always enjoy in terms of racing games...to make the cars my own.

Bam.

The NFS games from Underground through Carbon were by far and away the finest adaptations of the Fast & Furious series to games that you could ever wish to see. Crazy cars, neon everywhere, more NAWWWWS than Vin Diesel can shake a cannister at, and Carbon's canyon races are blatantly robbed out of Tokyo Drift (which was blatantly robbing Initial D, but that's another issue).

So where did it go wrong? Tokyo Drift made a few people sick of the F&F series at about the same time Carbon did with NFS. F&F started being less about ridiculous lights on cars and started being about generic action and drama, and NFS turned away from its own street racing aesthetic and went for organised race days, and a more simulation-based model than the arcade formula it had got so right; the result was NFS: ProStreet, which was just gash. They attempted to switch back with Undercover, but it was too late, and that era of NFS was over.

And so gone were the... ahem, "hood ornaments", and the neon, and the cheesy plots, and in came legitimate racing, and nobody cared because the stupidity of the previous games was the WHOLE DAMN POINT. NFS had a sense of humour going all the way back to the 3DO original; hell, NFS II let you drive a fucking T-Rex round the track. And as of Shift, it was all gone. The series just hasn't been the same since, and neither has F&F. F&F is starting to get back on track, slowly. NFS might take a while longer.

I completely agree, the movies did seem to have a huge influence on the games since whatever theme the movie had the game would follow. The other problem really is the lack of identity due to them wanting to release a game every year, when I think of Need for Speed I have no idea what to really think about, the first ones were closer to sims, after that it was running away from cops in luxorious cars, then you got the Fast and Furious tuning types, Pro Street was mostly drag races, Shift tries to be a sim again, once in a while another game like Undercover shows up with a Fast and Furious like premise, they go back to Hot Pursuit then come up with Michael Bay's The Run, jump back to Most Wanted, etc...

If I was a fan I had no idea if the next game was going to be a game that I would like since they jump so much on what they are trying to do.

 

[Bad Jim]

Fair enough but NFS was always on the realistic side of things wasn't it? How much more realistic can it get once you're using a top-notch engine and stat-of-the-art graphics?

No. A good rule of thumb for being realistic is how easy it is to finish. If it is realistic you will probably be flying off the track and smashing your ride for hours before you finally manage to finish a race, and a lot longer before you start winning them. With games like Carbon on the other hand you can drive straight into a barrier at 200 MPH and just carry on driving. You also get a lot more traction than would be realistic. It's not unusual to win your first few races on the first try.

Try playing Dirt or GTR:Evolution if you don't believe me. Or the Formula 1 games like F1 2012. You'll quickly see why most racing games are not realistic. Realism comes at the cost of fun and accessibility.

 

[Starik20X6]

I don't think its been a steady decline for NFS, more of a Hit and Miss.

I loved Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted 2012, The Run was...okay..I didn't play Undercover, Prostreet or any of those but I hear they are pretty bad.

One thing though....

Bring.
Back.
Customisation.

In other words, the ones that are all about racing are fun, and the ones that try to be The Fast and The Furious with shittier writing are bad. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to put story in a NFS game? And thought it was such a good idea that they put it in so many more? Oh wait, I'm trying to find logic in EA's decisions, silly me.

Totally agree with the customisation though- that absolutely needs to come back.

 

[LaoJim]

I'm a bit surprised by all the hate for last years Most Wanted. It's been on my wishlist for a while and it seemed to be well reviewed (certainly better than a lot of the most recent NfSs). Forget about whether it's a Need for Speed game or a Burnout game, what exactly is wrong with it? Is it seriously worse than The Run, or Undercover or Pro-Street, or is it just worse than the original Most Wanted or Underground games? How does it compare to say Forza Horizon?

 

[TomWiley]

Nobody and nothing "killed" Need for Speed. The series is alive and well, doing better than ever before.

Ironically, with Hot Pursuit 2010 and the upcoming rivals, the NFS series is actually returning to it's roots with wild police chases and exotic rides like Hot Pursuit 1 and 2.

The gansta/street-racing NFS era (U1, U2, Most Wanted), which most young people today seem to complain and whine about the series leaving behind - was NOT at any point the defining roots of the series. It was a temporary period, just like realistic racing was.

 

[TomWiley]

I don't think its been a steady decline for NFS, more of a Hit and Miss.

I loved Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted 2012, The Run was...okay..I didn't play Undercover, Prostreet or any of those but I hear they are pretty bad.

One thing though....

Bring.
Back.
Customisation.

In other words, the ones that are all about racing are fun, and the ones that try to be The Fast and The Furious with shittier writing are bad. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to put story in a NFS game? And thought it was such a good idea that they put it in so many more? Oh wait, I'm trying to find logic in EA's decisions, silly me.

Totally agree with the customisation though- that absolutely needs to come back.

Alright, your comment doesn't make a lick of sense. ProStreet didn't have any story, and forced plot elements has never been a problem for NFS.

Heck, the most beloved Need for Speed games like Underground 1,2 and Most Wanted were the most story-heavy!