27 Years of Need for Speed

[Bawlsdeep]

Underground 2 and Most Wanted I played the most. Awesome games. Went downhill since then and Forza probably took over. I have to admit that Car Simulators bore me too fast these days. Can be fun for 30-60 mins but then gets too repetative and boring.

Last Car Sim that hooked me was GRID (The First One).

Never really tried Forza much. Maybe I should try Forza 4 after it went on Steam but price is ridiculously high..

 

[bluetooth fairy]

Hot Pursuit 2 and the Run had great soundtracks. I heard them much more often not in-game, consider them as pretty solid standalone music albums. But Porsche Unleashed was the best overall, and I'm still checking stores for remake sometimes. Kinda Half-Life 3 story.

 

[fb020997]

I played nearly all of them, being a car lover. Porsche 2000 (the first I played) was very cool for its age (I played it in 2007-8 on a crappy laptop).
I then played (and played, and played, and…) Underground 2, as I didn’t like the lack of open world of the first one. And to me it’s the best in the series. I probably wore down the arrows in an old keyboard by playing it, and I spent an awful lot of time with the dyno and test track. Damn, I miss that… With the 16:9 mod and with better textures it was even better!
Most Wanted 2005 was the next one I played, and while I liked the police and variety of cars, I was very disappointed by the tuning. Good game, though.
I temporarily skipped Carbon because I played Undercover on my DS first, then again on PC. I hated the piss-filter, but it wasn’t a bad game. Also, it has the best soundtrack of any NFS.
Next was ProStreet. I liked it quite much, because the tuning part was great and it had a good soundtrack, but unfortunately I never finished it because I lost the saves after an emergency backup+clean install. I didn’t like the not-illegal vibe, though.
Carbon was… meh, because of the car class system, and a constant light stuttering that irked me an awful lot (it still does that in my 5600x+Vega64 current system)… also I didn’t like the “clan war”.
Shift and Shift 2 were too much sims and too little arcadey for my taste.
A surprisingly good NFS was Hot Pursuit 2010, except for the lack of tuning and for some extreme rubberbanding, but I had fun with the chases on both sides.
And now, the disappointments (except for one that was an half of it)
The Run was pure crap IMHO, as it was Most Wanted 2012. You couldn’t buy/unlock cars with experience/cash. I finished The Run because it was short, but I was tired of MW2012 after… half an hour maybe?
Rivals…. 30fps lock means no play. I have a damn PC, not a conslowle!
The 2016 entry was great, except for the MFing online-only part and for the *****s that rammed you out of a race. Good tuning, good handiung, good graphics.
Heat was the epitome of meh, but its worst was the (again) MFing loot system. I finished it thanks to cheats, but it was bad.
Rivals though, was the one with the sh!tt!est soundtrack ever, and that made me hate it (I hate playing without the soundtrack). Also, it had an horrible handling and bad graphics , at least on PC and compared to Forza Horizon 4.
I have ZERO hopes for the next NFS, BTW. With every Forza Horizon being better than the already extremely good previous ones, with a great return of Dirt (loved 2,3 and 5, hated 4) and Grid (same thing, 1, 2 and 4 were very good, the Aurosport bad) the future of NFS is bleaker and bleaker. Except if they do an offline-only, good-looking, good-handling NFS Underground 3 with a good mechanical tuning system like the 2, with modern and older cars and with a killer soundtrack…

 

[trgz]

I've played several of the series but the only ones I really enjoyed were NFS NFS2SE and NFS Porsche - after that I felt they went downhill. Moved on to playing Colin McRae, Richard Burns, GTR & GTR2 etc., and then onto Project Cars and Dirt Rally

 

[Skyhopper83]

While I was only able to enjoy the first 3 before financial situation went tits up, reconnecting with NFS No Limits has been awesome in show how far it’s grown! Having just retired, I can play as much as I want. A LOT!!! Best game to play!!!

 

[Geralt]

And the excellent Hot Pursuit (2010)? They forgot it in the article.

 

[Danny101]

NFS: Hot Pursuit. My first and only in this series and enjoyed it thoughly.

 

[kenny loris]

The version that revolutionized the gameplay and the entire game was Underground. That game was like a revolution in the Need for Speed franchise.

 

[m3diapers]

Riders On The Storm

 

[Diwiak]

Thanks for great story. Had nice hours spent with all the NFS, NFS 2, 3, PU which was great "step aside", and all finished by MW.. After that it was not bad games at all, but just can't keep me nailed to the seat like before, missing basic mechanics like manual transmission, bumper/dash view was just massive fail, I know NFS from 2015 was a nice try but can not overtake that online and alway-dark status of the game. NFS just need proper restart, fun and joy from first Most Wanted, cars modifications from Underground and physics from Porsche with all the great music tracks.

 

[BigRedPDX]

I remember playing the very first NFS using a voodoo2 graphics accelerator. Those were the days! I have played every single one of the NFS games. NFS3, Hot Pursuit 2, Underground, Rivals, and Payback were my favorites.

 

[Geralt]

Unforgivable that Hot Pursuit (2010) hasn't been included in the article.

 

[In Car]

The Need For Speed (1994) is still my number 1.

I'd still play it today if I could get it to work with my Wheel & Pedal setup.
The cars were a great selection, the open road levels (City, Coast, Alpine) are still classics.
The Music was excellent, it had an In Car camera. I still believe -even 28 years later (!)- the multimedia section has no equal..

Assetto Corsa is technically waaaay better as a Sim, but TNFS is a better all-round package when you combine: Main Menu, Multimedia, Music, Voiceover, Record Leaderboards.