Need For Speed Unbound
Developer/publisher EA (Criterion)
Format PC (tested), PS5, Xbox Series
Release Out now
When your tyres scrabble for grip on Lakeshore’s tarmac, a cloud of cartoon smoke bubbles up around them like escaping vapour from an anime just beneath the game’s surface. Need For Speed Unbound takes the series to a place it’s never been before, not visually at any rate – somewhere brighter and sillier than reality, where the tenets of tuner culture spill out from beyond the vinyls and spoilers, like the cars are being scribbled over, before your eyes, at 140mph.
For a series this longstanding and famously formulaic, it’s quite a statement. It has no right to work as well as it does, this odd marriage of cartoonised effects, Fortnitelike avatars dressed in Fila hoodies, and photorealistic car models on rainy streets. But somehow Criterion, back at the helm of the series for the first time since 2012’s Most Wanted, makes it feel like a perfectly natural and logical extension of Need For Speed’s character. The game looks like it drives: like reality, but more.
Credit is due for taking a risk and committing to it. But those cel-shaded smoke trails aren’t the herald of a totally fresh take on NFS. Devotees of narratives about streetwise automotive enthusiasts double-crossing each other and local law enforcement becoming bizarrely fixated on policing speed infractions will be comforted to know that Unbound is built around just such a tale. This one takes place in Lakeshore, the kind of indistinct American everytown that only exists in EA games. Your customised protagonist and their friend Yaz have grown up in foster care and learned a thing or two about the tuning and racing of motorcars along the way. Your mentor Rydell is old-school, which in this case means he’s fine with you competing in illegal street races as long as you do it carefully and pull your weight at his tuning shop during your day shifts. Before the prologue is out, there has been betrayal, a hastily assembled revenge plot, and the latest in a long line of starter vehicles snatched from you by a scriptwriter’s hand.