First things first, let me say where I am coming from in this review. I have been playing racing games for nearly 20 years now, Arcade, simulation and anything inbetween. Just like many others, my childhood is full of fond memories of Underground and Most Wanted. However I realize that these games have not aged terribly well and are rather difficult to reproduce, so I consider myself fairly open to any new NFS. And there have been plenty ever since then that I did enjoy. I enjoyed Criterions Hot Pursuit, if I may even say, i enjoyed the 2012 Most Wanted and I have at least given every following NFS a proper try before deciding if these games are worth playing till the end. And for me, the answer with most of the recent NFS parts was no.

So is this part any different? Yes and No. NFS Unbound does many of the same things of the previous titles, it is not a revolution but rather an evolution. And yes, I played the entire game, the 7h on Steam is only the Trial period, I played the rest on EA Play Pro.

Let's start with my first impression and I have to say my first impression was not very good with this game. My first big disappointment are the driving physics. They pretty much remain unchanged throughout the last few parts and I do not consider this a good thing. I am fairly competent with a gamepad and I cannot see how me or a casual player who is not that great on a gamepad would enjoy these driving physics. Tuning your car for GRIP is no fun as it feels like you are torturing the car when you want to corner it the normal way without drifting. And even if you go the Grip route with your tunings, drifts are unavoidable and will happen for example in a change of surface. However it feels almost necessary to have a drift car either way because there are drift events or drift zones in the open world (like in Forza Horizon) while there really is no grip equivalent.
On the other hand tuning your car to drift isn't that much fun either because the drifting physics in my opinion just do not feel very well refined. It is hard to drift at a small angle, it is hard to control your drift, games like Criterions 2008 Burnout Paradise or 2010 NFS Hot Pursuit did a far better job when it comes to drifting.
And little spoiler alert: It does not get better throughout the game to a point where I am comfortable saying that I like the physics. Yes you can tune them and it is not as bad once you do some fine tuning but realistically most people are not gonna do that. I may do that, since I also have my simracing background in which changing setup options to your liking is integral but your average NFS console fan is probably not gonna do too much with the settings, so a good out of the box/default experience in my opinion is very important and this game does not deliver it.

While we are on the negatives, let me first explain all the other things I disliked about the game and then continue to neutral and positive things and yes, there are a lot of positive things to say about this game.

The story is weak, kind of as always. The dialogue is weak, as always. The characters are mostly weak, especially the protagonist is just...so out of place. That is not how a street racer would talk, its not how they would act and while I am no expert on actual street racing, I know for damn sure this is not how they talk and interact. The guy I have chosen for my character has an absolutely terrible voice actor that just does not fit at all into this game and its artstyle.
Another thing I hated is the social commentary. I am not against social commentary in any art form but it must be well done which in this game is not the case. It just comes off forced like a propaganda piece. I thought it would lead to something bigger in the story but it did not.
The last negative thing I will say about this game: I am tired of an american open world in a racing game. I have seen and experienced it what feels like thousands of times and especially with Forza Horizon going a different route, going to places like South Europe, Britain, Australia, Mexico, The Forza Horizon franchise leaves any other open world in the dust and that of course does not mean that I want this game to feature more offroading or big jumps or anything but just the general culture and style of a city. Lakeshore is boring and not memorable.

Now to more neutral points:
Obviously the artstyle is very controversal, I have seen many people disliking it. I however feel rather neutral about it, I dont hate it but i dont love it either. However I am happy that they have at least tried something new because normal generic characters probably would not have made this game much better anyway.
The car sounds are alright, I have heard better but also worse, I do like that you can tune your exhaust sound to your liking which I think you could already do in the previous titles but it is a cool feature nonetheless.

Let's get to the positive aspects of this game:
There are 2 things that really stand out in this game.
For me surprisingly a big strong point of this game is the AI. Whoever was in charge of programming the AI, you have done a fantastic job. Despite being an Arcade racer, the races in this game feel very refreshing because of how "natural" they feel. And I mean that in the sense that chaos ensues in nearly every race and I mean that in the best possible way. The AI does mistakes like crashing into traffic, the AI, just like you, gets rammed by police cars, the AI has the same rules as you and does the same mistakes that you do which makes it so much more fun than most racing games.
The other big star of the game is the risk to reward system which is incredibly well thought out and balanced. However of course it requires YOU to take a difficulty that properly challenges you and not take a way too easy difficulty because then you rob yourself from the thrill of this system. Unlike most other racing games, it is completely fine not to win in this game, depending on the difficulty, you only have a certain amount of restarts per day+night cycle, so you have to strategically chose which races you restart and which you dont. This game also features NO rewind feature which many other racing games DO offer these days and I think that is a good decision by Criterion here because it adds stakes. Most races require an up front buy in to enter a race and only reward enough money to make up the buy in at a certain position. Combining this with the limited restarts, there are legit stakes and consequences to your approach of playing this game and that is awesome. I have caught myself multiple times finishing like 4th and thinking to myself "I could restart but I only have the 5th fastest car on paper and 4th gives me more money back than my buy in payment, so I'll settle for 4th.". Of course some races are higher stakes and some races have 8 racers but only the winner gets a big price, that is some risky business and I like that.
The heat level system that comes along with this is also well done, though I have not been caught a single time in my playthrough, so I would not have minded if it was a bit harder but it is still a great addition and I caught myself multiple times being rather nervous driving around with heat level 5 with cops everywhere, some of them not even shown on the map sneaking my way back to the garage. And I am glad I played this game for more than just the first impression because I would not be able to appreciate this system if I stopped after one hour.

I personally enjoyed the music choice. I have to say I am no that into rap but I appreciate how international the song choices were and it has to be said that rap and electronic music is simply extremely popular right now and it simply fits the atmosphere and style this game is going for. You could not use those same rock songs like they did in Most Wanted 2005 because rock music simply is not that popular anymore.

Despite its flaws, I did enjoy Unbound, 7/10.

First things first, let me say where I am coming from in this review. I have been playing racing games for nearly 20 years now, Arcade, simulation and anything inbetween. Just like many others, my childhood is full of fond memories of Underground and Most Wanted. However I realize that these games have not aged terribly well and are rather difficult to reproduce, so I consider myself fairly open to any new NFS. And there have been plenty ever since then that I did enjoy. I enjoyed Criterions Hot Pursuit, if I may even say, i enjoyed the 2012 Most Wanted and I have at least given every following NFS a proper try before deciding if these games are worth playing till the end. And for me, the answer with most of the recent NFS parts was no. So is this part any different? Yes and No. NFS Unbound does many of the same things of the previous titles, it is not a revolution but rather an evolution. And yes, I played the entire game, the 7h on Steam is only the Trial period, I played the rest on EA Play Pro. Let's start with my first impression and I have to say my first impression was not very good with this game. My first big disappointment are the driving physics. They pretty much remain unchanged throughout the last few parts and I do not consider this a good thing. I am fairly competent with a gamepad and I cannot see how me or a casual player who is not that great on a gamepad would enjoy these driving physics. Tuning your car for GRIP is no fun as it feels like you are torturing the car when you want to corner it the normal way without drifting. And even if you go the Grip route with your tunings, drifts are unavoidable and will happen for example in a change of surface. However it feels almost necessary to have a drift car either way because there are drift events or drift zones in the open world (like in Forza Horizon) while there really is no grip equivalent. On the other hand tuning your car to drift isn't that much fun either because the drifting physics in my opinion just do not feel very well refined. It is hard to drift at a small angle, it is hard to control your drift, games like Criterions 2008 Burnout Paradise or 2010 NFS Hot Pursuit did a far better job when it comes to drifting. And little spoiler alert: It does not get better throughout the game to a point where I am comfortable saying that I like the physics. Yes you can tune them and it is not as bad once you do some fine tuning but realistically most people are not gonna do that. I may do that, since I also have my simracing background in which changing setup options to your liking is integral but your average NFS console fan is probably not gonna do too much with the settings, so a good out of the box/default experience in my opinion is very important and this game does not deliver it. While we are on the negatives, let me first explain all the other things I disliked about the game and then continue to neutral and positive things and yes, there are a lot of positive things to say about this game. The story is weak, kind of as always. The dialogue is weak, as always. The characters are mostly weak, especially the protagonist is just...so out of place. That is not how a street racer would talk, its not how they would act and while I am no expert on actual street racing, I know for damn sure this is not how they talk and interact. The guy I have chosen for my character has an absolutely terrible voice actor that just does not fit at all into this game and its artstyle. Another thing I hated is the social commentary. I am not against social commentary in any art form but it must be well done which in this game is not the case. It just comes off forced like a propaganda piece. I thought it would lead to something bigger in the story but it did not. The last negative thing I will say about this game: I am tired of an american open world in a racing game. I have seen and experienced it what feels like thousands of times and especially with Forza Horizon going a different route, going to places like South Europe, Britain, Australia, Mexico, The Forza Horizon franchise leaves any other open world in the dust and that of course does not mean that I want this game to feature more offroading or big jumps or anything but just the general culture and style of a city. Lakeshore is boring and not memorable. Now to more neutral points: Obviously the artstyle is very controversal, I have seen many people disliking it. I however feel rather neutral about it, I dont hate it but i dont love it either. However I am happy that they have at least tried something new because normal generic characters probably would not have made this game much better anyway. The car sounds are alright, I have heard better but also worse, I do like that you can tune your exhaust sound to your liking which I think you could already do in the previous titles but it is a cool feature nonetheless. Let's get to the positive aspects of this game: There are 2 things that really stand out in this game. For me surprisingly a big strong point of this game is the AI. Whoever was in charge of programming the AI, you have done a fantastic job. Despite being an Arcade racer, the races in this game feel very refreshing because of how "natural" they feel. And I mean that in the sense that chaos ensues in nearly every race and I mean that in the best possible way. The AI does mistakes like crashing into traffic, the AI, just like you, gets rammed by police cars, the AI has the same rules as you and does the same mistakes that you do which makes it so much more fun than most racing games. The other big star of the game is the risk to reward system which is incredibly well thought out and balanced. However of course it requires YOU to take a difficulty that properly challenges you and not take a way too easy difficulty because then you rob yourself from the thrill of this system. Unlike most other racing games, it is completely fine not to win in this game, depending on the difficulty, you only have a certain amount of restarts per day+night cycle, so you have to strategically chose which races you restart and which you dont. This game also features NO rewind feature which many other racing games DO offer these days and I think that is a good decision by Criterion here because it adds stakes. Most races require an up front buy in to enter a race and only reward enough money to make up the buy in at a certain position. Combining this with the limited restarts, there are legit stakes and consequences to your approach of playing this game and that is awesome. I have caught myself multiple times finishing like 4th and thinking to myself "I could restart but I only have the 5th fastest car on paper and 4th gives me more money back than my buy in payment, so I'll settle for 4th.". Of course some races are higher stakes and some races have 8 racers but only the winner gets a big price, that is some risky business and I like that. The heat level system that comes along with this is also well done, though I have not been caught a single time in my playthrough, so I would not have minded if it was a bit harder but it is still a great addition and I caught myself multiple times being rather nervous driving around with heat level 5 with cops everywhere, some of them not even shown on the map sneaking my way back to the garage. And I am glad I played this game for more than just the first impression because I would not be able to appreciate this system if I stopped after one hour. I personally enjoyed the music choice. I have to say I am no that into rap but I appreciate how international the song choices were and it has to be said that rap and electronic music is simply extremely popular right now and it simply fits the atmosphere and style this game is going for. You could not use those same rock songs like they did in Most Wanted 2005 because rock music simply is not that popular anymore. Despite its flaws, I did enjoy Unbound, 7/10.