EA strikes again. When I first saw the price for Need For Speed "Remastered" edition I chuckled and moved on, however this game has since came to EA Play and Xbox Gamepass so I had to check it out.
I remember playing this game (the original) back in the day and was pretty disappointed in its lack of pretty much anything, and the remaster is exactly the same. Simply put this is the exact original game with a lick of paint in terms of slightly improved graphics.
When it comes to gameplay it's one of the worst in the Need For Speed series with supersonic speeds, laughable "drifting" and boring Nitrous effects. The controls as always are basic and work well but most of cars steering mechanics are a cross between complete arcade with sudden and unexpected tankiness right when you need to avoid a car or stop from hitting into a barrier. There is no customisation at all, you pick a paint color for that specific race on a car that you don't own, only have unlocked and then you move on to another race and do the same again. However the worst part about this game is the events. There's absolutely no variety in races. You basically get two. One is a race. One is a time trial. That's it. They throw in a few special abilities in certain races like EMP, Spike strips, Turbo etc but why not have these as purchasable upgrades to your car and have some sort of progression ? The time trials are rage inducing routes that insist that you don't crash into any wall/barrier or you receive a steep time penalty, the "preview events" allow you to try out fancier cars than you already own but that's it, it's the same time trial. I HATE the idea of the time trials/no crash mode here as this is a Need For Speed game, not grand Turismo. It's frustrating as the cornering/drifting in Hot Pursuit is simply not good. Races are races, come first and you get a gold, simple but it can be fun.
Essentially when you play this game you chose the cop events or the racer events and hop from one event to the other selecting the car furthest to the right as it's the fastest, win it and then click on another event. Very boring and definitely not a game you could play for a long period of time in my opinion. Instead I suggest you use this is a go between game when you want something to put on for 20-30 minutes and do a few quick races before bouncing on to something much better.
Now it's sounds like I totally hate this game but I don't. The variety in cars is quite nice, lots of lambos, Jaguars, Audi's, all the way down to Nissans and mazda's, and they all look very good. Some of the races get your heart rate up as you're locked in a dead heat with another racer and have that last spike strip left to deploy or that last turbo use. The time trials are annoying but can be exciting at the end as you've got 5 seconds left with nothing but a long straight ahead, can you make it and grab the gold, that's the one exciting part here. Tracks are well varied and offer some nice weather effects. It's not all bad, buts it's far from good.
Overall this is one of the poorest Need For Speed games in the series, it has zero story, zero customisation, lack of diversity in events and no progression. I do not recommend you buy this, but if you have Gamepass or EA Play it's a decent game for jumping on, playing a race or two each day and then moving on to another game.
