EA have blasted the first “gameplay trailer” for Need For Speed Payback [official site] during their E3 announce-o-rama, showing a cut-down mission of cars battering cars so they can beat up a truck and steal another car from its belly. It’s fast and furious but, sadly, has no Jason Statham. Have a peek: Read the rest of this entry »
If I were in charge of a big car game, I’d be taking a long hard look at the Fast and Furious series and wondering if I could incorporate some kind of automotive heists or “IT’S ABOUT FAMILY” muscular soap opera into the equation. Turns out I might be on the same page as EA: Need for Speed Payback, coming November 10th this year, sounds like it’ll be a big, daft tale of revenge. Set in “the underworld of Fortune Valley”, it sees three playable characters taking on The Man The House and there will be heists, “high stakes car battles” and “epic cop pursuits”.
RPS Feature Amphetamine addiction is ugly
None can know the minds of EA. We were sent review code for Need For Speed [official site] yesterday, plenty ahead of its release… and told that the review embargo for this online-enhanced game would be 8am the next day. The game’s not out until the 17th. A very strange situation indeed, to be given less than 24 hours to review a large, involved driving game, over a week before the servers would be populated. Keeps us on our toes, I suppose. But obviously we’ve not rushed anything. Below are some extensive impressions of this year’s reboot of the franchise based on my first 12 hours with the game. We’ll update this into a full review for you once the game is out, and we can actually play all its aspects.
The PC version of the new Need for Speed [official site], named simply Need for Speed as if that won’t get confusing with two dozen other games bearing the name Need for Speed, was delayed for our own good, we were told. While console versions launched in November, ours was pushed back to spring to add features like an uncapped framerate. Well, open up your pencil case and remove the highest FPS pen you have (I favour a 144fps thin-tip marker in blue, myself) and draw a circle around March 17th. That’s when it’s coming. Here, see the PC version in motion:
EA, mate, I told you – don’t try to drive through Central Gamedev, you’ll be months late unless you take the ring road and cut in on… you’ve done what? You’ve stopped in Computon to pick up some extra frames? Mate. It’s your choice, I suppose, but bear in mind that your pals might rather you turn up to the launch on time than arrive months later with a big bucket of frames.
Oh! Is this thing on? Flipping Dragon Dictate! Well, readers, if you’ve been listening in, I’ll explain: Electronic Arts have delayed the PC version of Need for Speed [official site] so they can put extra time in to make it run happily with an unlocked framerate.
Look, I don’t like cars and cars don’t like me. Having said that, the new Need For Speed [official site] reboot is looking really, really pretty. I can appreciate a fine looking game, even if I can’t drive for toffee. Below you’ll find the E3 trailer. It’s all shiny paint and blinding headlights and urban fantasy. In a good way.
2014 was the first year since 2002 to not receive a new Need for Speed game, but Electronic Arts said they’d bring the racing series back for 2015 and here we are. EA today announced the game named simply Need for Speed [official site], a “full reboot” of the series.
Details are thin for now but the important stuff: yes, it’s set in an open world, and yes it’s set in perpetual night. It’s due this autumn and being made by NFS Rivals developers Ghost Games, a studio which absorbed a whole load of folks from Burnout Paradise devs Criterion. There’s a trailer.
Need For Speed has been following the same blueprint – aka, Not Quite Burnout Paradise 2 – for a couple installments now, but EA’s decided to keep the franchise from going full Callssassin’s Dutycreed. At least, for now. While Need For Speed Rivals didn’t crash and burn by any means, EA and the former Criterion folks at Ghost Games have decided to take an extra year with the hope of producing something “dramatically different.” I hope it’s Need For Speed 2142 and also we can talk to the cars.
All does not seem well at EA’s new British studio, Ghost Games. According to Polygon, there have been lay-offs in the last week, and the next Need For Speed game has been put on hold. They say that contractors have been moved on, and full-timers are being given choices over compensatory leave, or shifting over to Visceral’s currently project, thought to be the next Battlefield.
The psychology of being inside a car is kind of fascinating – in a twisted, human-limits-revealing sort of way. We tend to stop viewing our fellow road-hogging compatriots as people, preferring instead to focus on the galloping four-wheeled colossi in front of us. Other drivers become objects, impediments, enemies. Have you ever had one of those moments where you’re honking and raging, and then you finally pass the person ahead of you and briefly see their face? “Oh god,” I often think. “They look so upset. Did I do that? To another person? That’s fucked!” But I keep doing it anyway, because I’m in a soulless metal shell, and so are they. That, I figure, is why street racing games are never about anything other than competition, rivalry, and sticking it to the po-lice. It’s so easy to hate a car, run it off the road, and laugh. Need For Speed Rivals‘ title, then, strikes me as weirdly redundant, in its own way.
